Sean Stewart also writes good women, as does Greg Rucka. Earl Emerson, however, does not. Oy.

I don't recognize any of those names. What do they write?

Sean Stewart writes science fiction novels, and he was also head writer for the completely and totally awesome A.I. web game (and incidentally, one of the main characters, and the one who was kind of the players' surrogate, communicating with us through her journal and various e-mails, was female). Greg Rucka writes crime fiction but is probably better known as a comic book writer. Lots of great Batverse stuff.

Sean Stewart wrote Mockingbird, about a pregnant woman (and from her POV), and it was quite good. (Though, since I've never been pregnant, I can't say whether it's accurate.) His most recent is Perfect Circle, with a male protagonist.

Stewart's shtick is interesting/odd characters, and the use of magic/unreality/fantasy to explore the protagonist's emotional problems.

Sean Stewart writes mainly sci-fi/fantasy (his debut novel was pretty much cyberpunk, but he's more on the fantasy side of things these days, but the sort generally set in our reality, just with magic), Greg Rucka writes mainly thrillers (and comic books, and he went to college with JZ), and Earl Emerson writes mysteries.

If you ever need to get a feel for what Seattle was like two decades ago, pick up some classic Emerson. He does local description and action much better than female characterization.

Sean Stewart wrote Mockingbird, about a pregnant woman (and from her POV), and it was quite good. (Though, since I've never been pregnant, I can't say whether it's accurate.)

It was pretty accurate. As someone who has been pregnant, I consider it more of a not-quite successful attempt (and his second-weakest book), and think he'd have been better off with the slight distance of third person limited, but I'm really picky about first person.

He has the honor of writing the most accurate fictional portrayal of someone who has miscarried (in Resurrection Man) and never quite healed emotionally.

One thing I noticed not too long ago is that while I really liked Ursula K. LeGuin's earlier works, the most recent stuff that she's done as a "feminist" writer has left me cold. I certainly don't begrudge her writing a female protagonist (which she also did back in The Tombs of Atuan during her earlier period), but the women = wise and good and longsuffering, men = cruel and stupid or resentfully powerless before the awesome generative power of the Womb-bearer really starts to rankle after a hundred pages or so.

I certainly don't begrudge her writing a female protagonist (which she also did back in The Tombs of Atuan during her earlier period), but the women = wise and good and longsuffering, men = cruel and stupid or resentfully powerless before the awesome generative power of the Womb-bearer really starts to rankle after a hundred pages or so.

Wait, I can blame LeGuin for Everybody Loves Raymond?

I think that one of the best romance authors at writing interesting and believable heroes is Nora Roberts. You can tell that she's had extensive real-life experience with men (she has four brothers and two sons, in addition to her husband), because she really does a good job at making them believable. My favorite of her trilogies is the Chesapeake Bay series, featuring three adopted brothers. The trilogies that focus on women more, while mostly fun to read, just aren't as fascinating to me. I did like Three Fates, mostly because of the Irish family that's at the core of the story, as well as the excellent opening sequence on board the Lusitania.

Matt, are you referring to just the stuff in the Earthsea universe, or all her work? I thought that Tehanu was rather weak -- or, I guess, rather too obvious in its retconny feminist intent -- but that the last novel was OK. The short stories seemed a bit scattershot, in their political intent, but tended to be good stories after all.

When you look at it, really, The Tombs of Atuan buys into a lot of the woman=connected to the earth, and actually kinda evil, nonsense, which I think she tried to revise in the later novels.