Mieko Kawakami
The Japanese writer's sleek, jet black bob is as precise as her prose.

"The space around my head was wild with baby hair or stray hairs that had come free. My shoulders sagged, and the skin around my eyes was sunken. My arms and legs looked stubby while my neck looked long and skinny. The tendons around my collarbone and throat stuck out, and my skin was anything but supple, as if the flesh had been deflated, leaving bizarre diagonal lines on my cheeks. What I saw in the reflection was myself, in a cardigan and faded jeans, at age thirty-four. Just a miserable woman, who couldn’t even enjoy herself on a gorgeous day like this, on her own in the city, desperately hugging a bag full to bursting with the kind of things that other people wave off or throw in the trash the first chance they get." - All the Lovers in the Night

Miranda July
The filmmaker, artist and author of the smash hit All Fours is famous for her curls, which she's worn in various forms over the years: a bouncy bowl silhouette, cropped smoother curls and today's look, a sort of full up-top pompadour style.

"She took a sip of her milkshake and pulled her mountain of black curls into the hair band she always wore around her wrist." - All Fours

Ocean Vuong
The queer poet and writer is famous for his debut novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and recently published a follow up The Emperor of Gladness. His own hair is also a study in experimenting while short; in photos for a recent New York Times profile, his tousled cut sits with a braided rats tail.

"She sat up, her shoulder-length hair splayed out behind her like a cartoon character just blasted with TNT." - On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Roxane Gay
She wears her hair short and natural. Her work often explores the reclamation of the female body, and she has written about the politics of Black hair: in 2010 she wrote a piece about getting a Jheri Curl as a teenager.

"I caught my reflection as I left the salon more than $150 poorer and tried to ignore my disappointment. I had a bowl hairstyle, only curly. It was karmic retribution for all the bowl haircut jokes I had made since the second grade. As I rode the Peter Pan bus back to school, I played with my hair incessantly, ignoring the greasy residue left on my fingers. There was such bounce to my curls. When I turned my head from side to side, the curls swayed gently. As I disembarked from the bus, I did the Thriller zombie walk, ignoring the grapefruit sized grease stain I left behind on my seat. I could live with the bowl because it had bounce." - May Your Hair Mark the Path Behind You

Sylvia Plath
Sad girl hair with perfectly pinned waves. The doomed author, who enjoyed fashion and beauty, was said to go bright blonde when she wanted to look more sensual and 'outgoing' and dye her hair brown when she needed to be 'taken seriously in her career'. Which is deeply sad!

"The reason I hadn't washed my clothes or my hair was because it seemed so silly ... It seemed silly to wash one day when I would only have to wash again the next. It made me tired just to think of it. I wanted to do everything once and for all and be through with it." - The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath’s childhood ponytail from August 1945, shown as part of the exhibition 'One Life: Sylvia Plath' at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C..

Photo from The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The author regularly wears her hair in sculptural styles that align with her advocacy for Black identity, feminism and self-expression.

"Relaxing your hair is like being in prison. You're caged in. Your hair rules you ... You're always battling to make your hair do what it wasn't meant to do." - Americanah

Megan Nolan
The Irish novelist, and writer of Acts of Desperation, is known for her sharp, short bangs and shade of red (she recently had a brief flirtation with blonde).

"In London I was a stranger to everyone and myself. I cut all of my hair off and regretted it instantly. I bleached it and then dyed it back to normal. I wore cutesy dresses with bows and frills, and then I wore his old death metal t-shirts and black hoodies." - Wetherspoons

Zadie Smith
Beautifully styled and expressive, the British author is often seen with long locs or braids, and head wraps (which she has said is a way of saving time and connecting with her African ancestry).

"Some of us are happy with our African hair, thank you very much. I don't want some poor Indian girl's hair. And I wish to God I could buy black hair products from black people for once. How we going to make it in this country if we don't make our own business?" - White Teeth

Sally Rooney
If normcore was a hair style, it would be Sally's understated brunette bob.

"When we came out of the theatre it was raining again. I felt pure and tiny like a newborn baby. Philip put up his umbrella and we walked toward his bus stop while I sort of grinned manically at nothing and touched my own hair a lot." - Conversations with Friends

Yrsa Daley-Ward
The English writer, poet and former model, known for her debut book Bone, regularly shares hair updates on her Instagram, from full afros to cropped and bleached.

"There’s so much world-stuff taking us down.
All the stress and disaster thinking.
All the hair dye and carbon monoxide.
All the anger and horrible let-downs.
All the grey time we spend on our phones." - HOW TO MISS YOUR LIFE EVEN AS IT’S HAPPENING

Virginia Woolf
Soft waves and Edwardian texture, an intellectual's tousled chic.

"With stars in her eyes and veils in her hair, with cyclamen and wild violets - what nonsense was he thinking? She was fifty at least; she had eight children. Stepping through fields of flowers and taking to her breast buds that had broken and lambs that had fallen; with the stars in her eyes and the wind in her hair - He took her bag." - To the Lighthouse

Oscar Wilde
The ultimate foppish (and very vain) king, with his centre-part and curls.

"Her hair clustered round her face like dark leaves round a pale rose." - The Picture of Dorian Gray