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From Stephen Elliott
Poet, memoirist, and Beat figure Hettie Jones is, like most of us, unhappy about sexism in the publishing industry.
In a blog post on the subject, she discusses VIDA statistics, Deborah Copaken Kogan’s Nation essay, and (drumroll!) Elissa Bassist’s amazing Funny Women essay “Writing the Next Great American Woman’s Novel.”
Jones calls Bassist’s humor “indelible” and ties it into the “frustratingly sad” larger picture.
...moreAre male and female writers interviewed equally? Loraine Berry at Talking Writing thinks not.
It’s gone to show that interviewers are often more interested in a female writer’s dietary habits and marital problems than their literary processes and work. Jodi Picoult says that she has been asked how she lost weight many, many times.
...moreThis year’s VIDA stats gave us a (depressing) wide-lens view of women’s status in the writing industry, but for a (depressing) close-up perspective, read Deborah Copaken Kogan’s recent essay in The Nation about the sexism she’s encountered during her career as a photographer and writer.
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I’ve done the math and it turns out that I’m part of the problem.
...more...moreWe reached out to several of the worst offenders to ask where they thought they had gone wrong…but got very little in the way of responses. So we decided, instead, to reach out to the editors of the publications that actually had managed to show a relatively gender-equitable byline distribution in 2012.
VIDA, the organization that tracks the status of women in the writing world, has posted their annual count of female writers published in major literary magazines in comparison to male writers published in the same places.
This year, they’ve posted side-by-side statistics for 2010, 2011, and 2012, all in easily readable bar-graph form.
...moreOn her blog today, respected critic Ruth Franklin wrote an open letter to the editors of Bookforum. She writes:
...moreI have considered opting out of writing for magazines at which women are not represented among the top editors, such as Bookforum.
“Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. Write your self. Your body must be heard.” — Hélène Cixous
Over at The Awl, Eileen Myles shares her thoughts on seeing the VIDA pie graphs. She tells us that writing by women is inherently more interesting: “Why? Because the female reality is still largely unknown. And language is the thrill that holds the unknown in its vague and shifting ways.
...moreBefore VIDA released its latest count, there was Ann Hays’ open letter to The New Yorker complaining about the dearth of women in its pages, and I remember applauding the letter while thinking the whole time that it wouldn’t matter if the conversation didn’t somehow jump into the mainstream.
...more“I do not believe that apparent authoritative literary voices of validation would ever make such a grand claim about a novel written by a woman. I say this because I believe there are many novels by women that are about the same sort of world as presented in Freedom. Sadly, the culture usually calls these books domestic or family sagas. Are the novels of Anne Tyler, Marilynne Robinson and Mona Simpson any less white and middle “American” than Franzen”
At VIDA, author Percival Everett explores the big assumptions and unpsoken prejudices behind Great American Novels (like Freedom.) (Via)
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In which two female writers from VIDA: Women in Literary Arts crunch the numbers and let us know how The Rumpus is doing in the gender disparity department: