Extraordinary Wing Women

A beautifully illustrated gift book celebrating the beauty, power, and joy of female friendship.

Wingman: a pilot who flies behind and outside the leader of a flying formation.

While researching her first book, That’s What She Said, Kimothy Joy discovered that the famous women she was profiling were not alone in their success. Each of them was propelled forward by a supporter—a wing woman—a sister, a mum, a best friend, a close confidant. The remarkable partnerships they shared were as multifaceted and complex as the individual women themselves.

Extraordinary Wing Women is Joy’s tribute to the importance of female camaraderie. This collection features 33 stories, each varying in length, accompanied by watercolour portraits, illustrations, and hand-lettered quotes. Some will be familiar power duos—Oprah and Gayle, Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan, Venus and Serena Williams. Others are less known though just as inspiring, such as the friendship of Julia Child and her editor Avis DeVoto, Junko Tabei and her all-women mountaineering team, and the Mariposas—the Mirabel sisters who overthrew a dictator in the Dominican Republic. The women featured are from across the world and from diverse periods of history. They are activists, artists, scientists, politicians, athletes, musicians, writers, and more—role models for every woman.

Joy dedicates Extraordinary Wing Women to the generations of women who are dismantling the myth that we must compete with one another to pursue and achieve our dreams. History and fiction have shown that we are stronger when we support one another. Joy hopes to inspire and teach us that we, too, have our own wings and can soar higher than ever before with our wing women beside us.

The book includes a blank spread at the end which readers can use to honour the Extraordinary Wing Woman in their own lives by writing or drawing their own tribute story.