Play Along with Our Read More Women Literary Trivia

We asked these questions at our event for PEN America’s LitCrawl NYC, and now you can play along at home!

First Round

1. Robert Galbraith is the pen name of which bestselling author?

2. Name the author of this quote: “we all tell ourselves stories in order to live”.

3. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf takes places in a course of a ____.

a) a day b) a week c) a month d) a year

4. This test measures the representation of women in movies and literature. The criteria is that it has to have at least two women in it, who talk to each other, about something besides a man. Who invented the test?

5. Crazy Rich Asians is the first Hollywood movie in 25 years with an all Asian cast. What was its literary predecessor and who was the author?

6. What genre is Octavia Butler known for?

7. This quartet spans a lifetime and revolves around two women growing up in post-war Italy. Name the series and the author. Hint: The first book has just been adapted into an HBO series

8. Which novelist co-founded the indie bookstore Books Are Magic in Brooklyn with her husband?

9. What is the world’s first novel? Hint: it was written by a Japanese woman.

10. Pulitzer prize-finalist Michelle Alexander wrote a book calling what the new Jim Crow?

Picture Round

Final Round

1. Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James started as fan fiction for which book?

2. Who is the first African American to win the Pulitzer prize?

a) Alice Walker b) Lynn Nottage c) Gwendolyn Brooks d) James Baldwin

3. This short story is set in a small town where every year the village people gather with stones for an annual ritual called “the lottery” where a villager is stoned to death to assure a good harvest. Name the author.

4. Name the book and the author of this first line: “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”

5. Name this poet: “The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown

but longed for still”

6. Name the author and the author that this quote is from: “The four March sisters couldn’t be more different. But with their father away at war, and their mother working to support the family, they have to rely on one another.”

7. The novel Pachinko by Min Jin Lee is set in which two countries?

8. An unnamed college graduate decides to spend a year asleep in her apartment by using a combination of drugs. Name the book and the author.

9. The House of Spirit spans three generations of the Trueba family in an unnamed Latin American country. Who was the author?

10. This author disappeared for 10 days in 1926 and claimed not to remember what happened during that time. Name the author.

Answers

First Round

1. J. K Rowling
2. Joan Didion
3. a) a day
4. Alison Bechdel
5. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
6. Science Fiction
7. The Neapolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante
8. Emma Straub
9. The Tale of the Genji
10. Mass incarceration of African Americans

Picture Round

Top row: Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros, Jenny Han

Bottom row: Jhumpa Lahiri, Zadie Smith, Clarice Lispector, Donna Tartt

Final Round

1. Twilight
2. c) Gwendolyn Brooks
3. Shirley Jackson
4. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
5. Maya Angelou
6. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
7. Korea and Japan
8. My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
9. Isabel Allende
10. Agatha Christie