In the Media: 11th January 2015

In the media is a weekly round-up of features written by, about or containing female writers that have appeared during the previous week and I think are insightful, interesting and/or thought provoking. Linking to them is not necessarily a sign that I agree with everything that’s said but it’s definitely an indication that they’ve made me think. Also, just a note to make it clear that I’m using the term ‘media’ to include social media, so links to blog posts as well as traditional media are likely.

(Photograph by Pedro Koechlin)

As it’s the first In the Media of the year, I’m going to begin by looking back at 2014 for a moment with pieces that appeared between Christmas and New Year. Katherine Angel’s brilliant piece, ‘Gender, blah, blah, blah‘ in The Los Angeles Review of Books; Jessie Burton, ‘Eggshells, Luck, Hope and Thanks‘ on her blog reflects on what a year it’s been for The Miniaturist; Emma Claire Sweeney and Emily Midorikawa ‘A Year of Hidden Friendships‘ on Something Rhymed; Rebecca Solnit, ‘Listen up, women are telling their story now‘ in The Guardian; Jia Tolentino, ‘The Promise in Elena Ferrante‘ on Jezebel; Charles Finch, also on Elena Ferrante for ‘A Year in Reading‘ for The Millions;  Ali Colluccio covers ‘The Best of Women in Comics 2014‘ on Panels, and  Elena Adler on ‘Why #ReadWomen 2014 has changed things, and why #ReadWomen matters‘ on her blog.

Looking forwards, there’s been a spotlight on diversity again this week with Celeste Ng writing about a male professor telling her there were few Asian-American women writers. There’s a fantastic list of writers at the bottom of the article. Nalo Hopkinson wrote ‘To anthology editors‘ on how to go about creating anthologies with a diversity of voices on her website; Alexis Teyie wrote this great piece, ‘Invoking the women in early African writing‘ on This Is Africa, while Lyn Gardner declared ‘Diversity is key to Creativity – and British Theatre’s Challenge for 2015‘ in The Guardian and Stella Duffy wrote, ‘Making Arts for All for ALL‘ on her blog.

While The White Review has kicked off the year with an all translation issue. You can read online pieces by Herta Müller (tr. Philip Boehm); poetry by Alejandra Pizarnik (tr. Yvette Seigert) and Angélica Freitas (tr. Hilary Kaplan); a short story by Tove Jansson (tr.  Thomas Teal); extracts from novels by Minae Mizumuru (tr. Juliet Winters Carpenter) and Han Kang (tr. Deborah Smith), and an interview with Magdalena Tulli (tr. Bill Johnston).

(Photograph by Kuba Kolinski)

The best of the rest articles/essays:

• Guilaine Kinouani, “Hatred breeds hatred”: Charlie Hebdo, marginalisation and terrorism on Media Diversified
• Harriet Evans, ‘I was living in a house where babies had been murdered‘ in The Guardian
• Margaret Talbot, ‘The Talking Cure‘ in The New Yorker
• Marta Maretich, ‘Landfill‘ in Boom
• Samantha Ellis, ‘How To Be a New Year Heroine‘ on Vintage Books and ‘Baddies in Books: Bertha Rochester, the madwoman in the attic‘ in The Guardian
• Antonia Honeywell on the writing of The Ship on the Curtis Brown blog
• Jenny Colgan, ‘What Makes Me Happy‘ in The Guardian
• Rivka Galchen and Leslie Jamison, ‘Why Do We Hate Cliché?‘ in The New York Times
• Maev Kennedy, ‘Families in Literature: The Clocks in The Borrowers by Mary Norton‘ in The Guardian
• Lindesay Irvine, ‘Families in Literature: the Tulls in Dinner at the Homesick restaurant by Anne Tyler‘ in The Guardian
• Sarah Crown, ‘Families in Literature: the Bagthorpes in The Bagthorpe Saga by Helen Cresswell‘ in The Guardian
• Meg Wolitzer, ‘My Debt to Sylvia Plath‘ in Time
• Naomi Skwarna, ‘How to Be a Woman: Lorrie Moore as the mother you never had‘ in Hazlitt
• Maureen Younger on why Simone de Beauvoir is still important in Standard Issue
• Shelley Harris, ‘Timey-Wimey: A Letter to My (Former) Self‘ on her blog
• Rebecca Makkai, ‘Second Time’s the Charm‘ on The Ploughshares’ Blog
• Elisa Gabbert, ‘Notes on a Trend‘ on Real Pants
• Hannah Marriott, ‘Joan Didion and Céline: why old age is having a fashion moment‘ in The Guardian
• Kevin Fitzpatrick, ‘Six Women You Didn’t Know Were Members of the Algonquin Round Table‘ on Huffington Post
• Alice Popplewell, “What’s This Issue All About” Five Dials and @ReadWomen2014 on Cloudbanks and Shimbleshanks
• Lizzy Dening, ‘A Year of Reading Women‘ in Grazia
• Jess Connett, ‘Transphobic Parents: The Problem Is You, Not Your Kids‘ on Rife
• Victoria Law, ‘Against Carceral Feminism‘ in Jacobin
• Qaisra Shahraz, ‘Researching a Novel in Morocco‘ on Women Writers, Women’s Books
• Amy Klein, ‘Fertility Fog‘ on Aeon
• Chloe Angyal, ‘The Paradoxical Rise of the Viral Marriage Proposal‘ on Buzzfeed
• Glynnis MacNicol, ‘Growing Up Meant Learning to Wear Red Lipstick‘ on The Cut
• Mallory Ortberg, ‘I’d Love to Help My Wife, But I’m Trapped Under Something Heavy‘ in The Toast
• Van Badham, ‘It’s time to open your eyes, Rusty. Female actors want better roles because none exist‘ in The Guardian
• Sinéad Gleeson, ‘Nollaig na mBan and the (gendered) horror of housework‘ on her blog
• Claire Fuller, ‘Dear Jane: A letter to my husband’s dead first wife‘ on her blog
• Claire Furniss on sick lit in The Guardian and ‘No matter how much research you do, it’s the story that matters‘ on the Waterstone Blog
• Laura Lippman, ‘A Detective and a Mother‘ on Publishers Weekly
• Caitlin Horrocks, ‘Live Demonstrations of Love‘ on AGNI Online
• Fatima Bhutto, ‘My Other Thing‘ in Granta
• Leesa Cross-Smith, ‘Bro Country and Tiny Littles‘ on Real Pants
• Elaine Blair, ‘All Told: Rachel Cusk’s autobiographical fiction‘ in The New Yorker
• Sarah Hughes, ‘The Gone Girl effect sparks year of flawed women behaving badly‘ in The Guardian
• Lucy Ribchester, ‘I vote we honour those brave Scottish suffragettes‘ in The Sunday Times (£)
• Cathy Rentzenbrink, ‘Elizabeth Jane Howard Remembered‘ on BBC Radio 4 Extra
• Lynn Shepherd, ‘Frankenstein: Mystery – Monster – Myth‘ on Wordsworth Trust Blog
• Emma Claire Sweeney, ‘Mary Lamb and Dorothy Wordsworth‘ on Something Rhymed
• Claire King on not being the most anticipated on her blog
• Vanessa Lafaye, ‘The Beast in Residence: Writing After Cancer‘ on her blog
• Yiyun Li, ‘Listening Is Believing‘ in The New Yorker
• Carlina Duan, ‘How an English Major Found Her (Chinese American) Voice on Campus‘ in Mochi Mag
• Jenny Diski, ‘Doris and Me‘ in the LRB
• Tess Vigeland, ‘Authors are now judged by their Twitter followers, and it’s a world gone mad‘ in The Guardian
• Paris Lees, ‘Honour Leelah Alcorn’s memory by banning conversion therapy‘ in Attitude
• Hilary Mantel on Grief in The Guardian

The interviews:

• Emily Woolf in The Guardian
• Seni Glaister on the 4th Estate site
• Megan Mayhew Bergman on Electric Literature and on Bookslut
• In Conversation: Barbara Ras and Matthew Dickman in Granta
• Emma Healey in The Guardian
• Priya Parmar on Huffington Post
• Lindsey Kelk on BBM Live
• Meghan McNamara of Stillhouse Press on Wendi Kaufman on Bloom
• Miranda July in The New York Times
• Edwidge Danticat in Guernica
• Harriet Lane on One Book Lane
• Wendy C. Ortiz on Electric Literature
• Megham Daum in The Los Angeles Review of Books
• Leesa Cross-Smith on Cari Luna’s blog
• Jodi Picoult and Helen Macdonald on Scottish Book Trust’s Book Talk
• Lucy Ribchester on Scottish Book Trust
• Kate Saunders in The Telegraph
• Nell Zink in The Guardian
• Vanessa Lafaye in The Guardian
• Alexandra Heminsley in The Telegraph
• Ann Patchett on The Hairpin
• Katharine Norbury in The Guardian
• Gayatri Spivak on Dawn
• Mary Costello on Annethology
• Carys Bray on Sara Crowley’s blog

If you want some fiction/poetry to read:

• An extract from Wake by Anna Hope
• ‘Sufferance’ and other poems by Rebecca Foust
• Invasive Species by Marie Gethins in Litro
• Orion’s Belt and Who it Fell On by Emily Ilett in Litro
• An extract from The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
• An extract from Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders
• Birdie by Ann DeWitt
• State of the Art Flesh Cleanser by Rahawa Haile
• Betty Came by to Say Goodbye by Claire Fuller
• An extract from Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey
• An extract from Year of the Rat by Clare Furniss
• An excerpt from La signora Rosetta by Tiziana Sferruggia (tr. Mati Colarossi) on Parallel Texts
• A Photograph of Her Showering by Elizabeth Langemak on AGNI Online
• The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel is Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime
• An extract from La Femme De Gilles by Madeleine Bourdouxhe (tr. Faith Evans)
• ‘Encounters with a Hare’ and other poems by Aoife Reilly

And the lists:

• The Best Books this Year Are All Written by Women: A Guide for 2015 on Gawker
• The Best 10 Books Shorter Than 150 Pages on Publishers Weekly
• 13 Books to Keep Up Your Post Holiday Spirits, Especially Now That the Cold Weather Has Really Set In on Bustle
• 27 of the Most Exciting Books of 2015 on Buzzfeed
• Keren David’s top 10 books about adopted and fostered children in The Guardian
• Lucy Ribchester’s Top 10 Books About the Suffragettes in The Guardian
• Lynn Kanter’s 30 Women Novelists You Should Know #20 Mary Doris Russell on her blog
• 16 of the Most Anticipated YA Debuts Due Out in the First Half of 2015 on Huffington Post
• The Best New Books of 2015 in Stylist
• 10 Underrated Novels by Women You Should Resolve to Read in 2015 on Bustle
• 10 Must Read Female Writers from the Middle East on The Culture Trip
• The Books to Look Forward to in 2015 in Marie Claire
• The TIA 100 – Best Books, 2010 – 2014 on This Is Africa
• 6 Books We’re Most Looking Forward to Reading in 2015 in Good Housekeeping
• 15 Feminist Books to Read in 2015 to Help You Stay Passionate All Year in Bustle