A Funny Inevitability: In Conversation with Siel Ju
Siel Ju discusses her debut novel-in-stories, Cake Time, the difference between our online selves and real-life selves, and who she hopes will read her work.
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Posts Tagged: chick-lit
Book Covers: A Symptom of Sexism
For Lit Hub, book designer Jennifer Heuer reflects on sexism in publishing and analyzes “chick-lit” book covers that rely on gender stereotypes to target female readers: The bigger discussion is the genre itself: light-weight novels aimed at a female audience is a symptom of sexism in publishing. Whether high or lowbrow, the marketing of many […]
...moreOn Writing “Chick Lit”
At the New York Times, Jennifer Weiner writes about her experience with the gendered devaluation of popular fiction: Somewhere between my birth and my novel’s publication, I’d gotten the message that there were books that mattered and books that did not; writers whom an Ivy League institution would be proud to claim, and those who […]
...moreAre You the Woman Reader?
It’s not that the books that get someone into the “serious reader” club are all or even mostly by men these days. But the books that get you kicked out of the club are almost exclusively written by women. Hannah Engler writes for Book Riot on “women’s literature” and the still-unevolved stereotype of the Woman Reader.
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The Last Book I Loved: The Loss of All Lost Things
I recognize something in the stories… It’s the culture of “I made it” versus the culture of staying behind, the culture of achievement versus the culture of guilt.
...moreBy Its Cover
Jennifer Weiner’s recent claim that a serious author photos indicate serious literature is submited to scientifically unsound empirical testing over at Slate. Comparing the head shots of “Women’s Lit” writers to those of “Literary Fiction” best-sellers, Eliza Berman discovers an unexpected trend in the process: the mysterious middle ground of the indecipherable author smirk.
...moreWhat’s Sexist and What’s Not
Novelist Jennifer Weiner has long been an outspoken critic of literary sexism, vocally demanding respect for herself and other female authors and pushing back against stodgy heavyweights like Jonathan Franzen. But how much dismissal of Weiner can be attributed to contempt for women’s issues, and how much can be attributed to the fact that her […]
...moreThe Death of Chick-Lit?
Are the days of chick lit finally over? The Atlantic seems to think so. There’s a new genre in town, and it’s called farm-lit. Novels about women who abandon their high-stress city lives to go live on farms and small, rural towns. Characters who once struggled to balance their work, friendship, love and their metropolis […]
...moreDefending Women Writers
Roxane Gay’s on HTML Giant talking about the covers of chick-lit novels and the stigma attached to their formulaic visual coding, though the feminization of book covers is taking over more than just the chick-lit genre. It’s unfortunate that women writers have to consciously avoid being pigeonholed into chick-lit genre or are marketed via book […]
...moreWendi Murdoch and her Chick-Lit Potential
The biography of Wendi Murdoch, is apparently a chick-lit story waiting to happen. Defending her husband from the fierce pie flinging attack that happened two days ago in London, she’s cemented a fan-base and has thus become somewhat of a role model. Bloggers love her and she is getting tons of praise on Chinese news […]
...moreThe Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
“Senate unable to get enough Republican votes to honor To Kill a Mockinbird.” (via) The Literary Saloon takes on the NYTBR for its lack of reviews of works in translation. “William Faulkner: Every time a sentence goes on for more than a page, drink the entire bottle. Then make out with your sister.” Jezebel has […]
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