international womens day is a celebration of women across the world celebrated on march 8 womens day is a day to honour and appreciate the women in our lives and their endless contributions this years theme eachforequal is a reminder of the much needed gender equality in our society many women authors have written about it and expressed themselves through their writings in turn inspiring generations of readers after all words have the power to shape our thoughts and make us better informed people reading not only opens a door of endless possibilities but it also introduces us to different world views and inspires our lives in many waysthis womens day we spoke to some popular women authors in india who have created a niche for themselves we asked them to tell us about a woman author who inspired them the most heres what they shared kavita kanekavita kanejournalistturnedauthor kavita kane is known for her mythofiction writings especially through the point of view of lesserknown women characters in indian epics her stories depict womens issues which are relevant even today sharing her inspiration she said authors with their works have an incredible but often underestimated power to influence for me both as a reader and as a writer but it would be unfair to single out one author specifically a woman writer who inspired me the most when at school you grow up on an indispensable diet on the classics by jane austen the brnte sisters louisa m alcott george eliot and later shift to lighter reading in the teens like agatha christie ruth rendell ayn rand to eventually graduate to the literary works of iris murdoch virginia woolf emily dickinson doris lessing the world is just not enoughyears later i got hold of irawati karves yuganta the english translation and for the first time saw the epic the mahabharata through a different lens altogether it was the most searing read an almost cynical study sort of a sociological treatise on the chief characters of the mahabharata she treats them more as historical characters than revered figures of the epic people with flaws who made mistakes all the while employing their follies their attitudes and actions to seek insight into the sociopoliticalcultural ethos of those times while drawing parallels with the countrys historythat karve was essentially an anthropologist and a sociologist who made the needed difference but as a reader and later as a writer it made me aware of the power the potential and pull of alternative perspectives and unwittingly i did follow on those lines when i eventually got down to write my debut novelvenita coelhovenita coelhoscreenwriter novelist and artist venita coelho has published 10 books so far from childrens books to ya literature to ghost stories she has written books spanning various genres so when we asked the multitalented writer about an author who has inspired her the most she answered ursula k le guin because she has written for a genre which was majorly dominated