María de Zayas

María de Zayas y Sotomayor (baptized 12 September 1590; died around 1661) was a Spanish Golden Age writer born in Madrid, the daughter of an infantry captain.

In 1637 she published in Zaragoza her first novella collection, Novelas amorosas y ejemplares, followed in 1647 by the starker Desengaños amorosos, whose heroines expose the wrongs women endured in their day; both collections are now read as early feminist fiction.

Admired by Lope de Vega, who dedicated poems to her, she was called the Sibyl of Madrid. She vanishes from the records after 1647.