In the Media: October 2016, Part One

In the media is a fortnightly round-up of features written by, about or containing female writers that have appeared during the previous fortnight 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. I’m using the term ‘media’ to include social media, so links to blog posts as well as as traditional media are likely and the categories used are a guide, not definitives.

The fortnight began with the outing of Elena Ferrante. I’m not going to link to the original article, but there’s been a huge reaction to it:

• Rachel Donadio, ‘Revelation Surrounding Novelist Elena Ferrante Exposes Cultural Differences‘ in The New York Times
• Priscilla Frank ‘Elena Ferrante, Francesca Woodman, And Women Who Yearn To Disappear In Plain Sight‘ on The Huffington Post
• David L. Ulin, ‘Leave Elena Ferrante Alone‘ on Literary Hub
• Christian Lorentzen, ‘If You Want to Know Who Elena Ferrante ‘Really’ Is, You’re Asking the Wrong Questions‘ on Vulture
• Jeanette Winterson, ‘The malice and sexism behind the ‘unmasking’ of Elena Ferrante‘ in The Guardian
• Tom Hawking, ‘The Unmasking of Elena Ferrante: Journalistically Defensible, Perhaps, But Morally Questionable‘ on Flavorwire
• Marie Myung Ok-Lee, ‘Occupy Author Photo: On Elena Ferrante, Privacy, and Women Writers‘ on The Millions
• Rebecca Falkoff, ‘“To translate is to betray”: the Elena Ferrante phenomenon in Italy and the US‘ in The Guardian
• Noreen Malone, ‘Elena Ferrante’s “Unmasking” Wasn’t the End of the World‘ on Slate
• Megan Garber, ‘Elena Ferrante and the Cost of Being an Author‘ on The Atlantic
• Alexandra Schwartz, ‘The “Unmasking” of Elena Ferrante‘ in The New Yorker
• Christine Friar, ‘Female Trouble: There’s no safe way to be a woman in public‘ on The Awl
• Lisa Campbell, ‘Ferrante’s unmasking “likely to increase sales” say booksellers‘ in The Bookseller
• Erica Wagner, ‘The unmasking of Elena Ferrante: why a writer’s biography is irrelevant‘ in The New Statesman
• Rachel Donadio and Jennifer Schuessleroct, ‘ Who Is Elena Ferrante? Supporters Say NOYB‘ in The New York Times
• Charlotte Shane, ‘The Sexist Big Reveal‘ in New Republic
• Rachel Stirling, ‘The Ferrante Farago‘ on Queen Mobs
• Lincoln Michel, ‘We May Know Who Ferrante Is, But Have We Learned Anything?‘ on Electric Literature
• Adam Kirsh, ‘Elena Ferrante and the Power of Appropriation‘ in The New York Times
• Frances Wilson, ‘Elena Ferrante: the story of a new name‘ in The TLS
• Ann Friedman, ‘Kim Kardashian West, Elena Ferrante, and the Right to Privacy‘ in The Cut
• Arifa Akbar, ‘Exposing Elena Ferrante whiffs of misogyny and is without purpose‘ on The Pool
• The Guardian view on unmasking Elena Ferrante: an impoverishing act
• Suzanne Moore, ‘Who cares who Elena Ferrante really is? She owes us nothing‘ in The Guardian
• Stig Abell, ‘Why the TLS would not have named Elena Ferrante‘ in The TLS
• Elena Avanzas Álvarez ‘What Our Insistence on Ferrante’s Identity Actually Means About Women, Consent, and Art‘ on Books and Reviews
• Lana Schwartz, ‘Drafts of Emails Elena Ferrante Never Sent to Claudio Gatti‘ in The Hairpin

Photograph by Kate Neil

The other big story of the fortnight has been the release of the film version of The Girl on the Train.

• Interviews with Paula Hawkins in The Wall Street Journal and Woman and Home
• Anne Helen Petersen, ‘“The Girl On The Train” And Women’s Dark Fantasies‘ on Buzzfeed
• John Mullan, ‘How we got to The Girl on the Train – the rise of the psychological thriller‘ in The Guardian
• Erin Kelly, ‘How the psychological thriller came to tackle coercive control‘ on The Pool

And the writer with the most coverage is Brit Bennett who’s interviewed on The Cut, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Jezebel, The New York Times and Literary Hub.

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Carmen Maria Machado, ‘How to Suppress Women’s Criticism‘ on Electric Literature
• Diana Darke, ‘In Syria‘ in The TLS
• Liz Thomson, ‘Bob Dylan’s Nobel: “Yippee! I’m a poet and I know it/Hope I don’t blow it“‘ in The Bookseller
• Julia Kingsford, ‘“The Nobel Academy is breaking its trust with us” by awarding Dylan‘ in The Bookseller
• Anna Funder, ‘Sound of Silence‘ in The TLS
• Stella Duffy, ‘A London Lies Beneath Walk‘ on Virago
• Ying Ju-Lai, ‘Dispatches from a Writer’s Retreat on a Playground for the Super Rich‘ on Literary Hub
• Xiaolu Guo, ‘One language is not enough – I write in both Chinese and English’ in The Guardian
• Julie Phillips, ‘The Fantastic Ursula K. Le Guin‘ in The New Yorker
• Bridget Read, ‘Lean In, Swipe Right: On Tinder and the Politics of Singledom‘ on Literary Hub
• Miranda Popkey, ‘All the Time I’ve Wasted Watching the Better Versions of Me‘ in The Cut
• Kathleen Harris, ‘What We Write About When We’re Not Writing‘ on Vela
• Melissa Lee-Houghton, ‘Articulating your experience is remarkably life-affirming‘ in The Guardian
• Edmund Gordon, ‘Angela Carter in Japan‘ in The TLS
• Yiyun Li, ‘All that Offers a Happy Ending Is a Fairy Tale‘ in Granta
• Lina Mounzer, ‘War in Translation: Giving Voice to the Women of Syria‘ on Literary Hub
• Lidija Dimkovska, ‘How the Yugoslav Wars Shaped a Generation of Writers‘ on Literary Hub
• KJ Orr, ‘BBC National Short Story winner – a plea to publishers to take risks‘ in The Guardian
• Elisa Albert, ‘The Snarling Girl‘ on Hazlitt
• Eric Thurm, ‘Is Joyce Carol Oates Trolling Us?‘ on Literary Hub
• Nell Zink, ‘How to Become a Novelist in Ten Easy Steps‘ on Literary Hub
• ‘Gloria Naylor, award-winning novelist, dies aged 66‘ in The Guardian
• Allegra Hyde, ‘Literary Alchemy: the Wedding of Subject and Style‘ on Electric Literature

Personal essays/memoir:

• Tracy O’Neill, ‘After the Playground‘ on Catapult
• Cari Luna, ‘Under Threat of the Really Big One‘ on Catapult
• Curtis Sittenfeld, ‘My Friend Sam‘ in The New Yorker
• Laura Turner, ‘I Was Pregnant, And Then I Wasn’t‘ on Buzzfeed
• Chloe Caldwell, ‘On Female Friendship and the Sisters We Choose for Ourselves‘ on Longreads
• Christine Ro, ‘How I Talk to My Mother‘ on Catapult
• Nancy Jooyoun Kim, ‘Love (or Live Cargo)‘ on Okey-Panky
• Sali Hughes, ‘My life in makeup: the beauty products I’ll never, ever throw away‘ in The Guardian
• Kristen Arnett, ‘The Lord’s Supper‘ on Catapult
• Lizzie Feidelson ‘The Clean‘ in n+1
• Affinity Konar, ‘My Sister’s Abusive Marriage Was Never About Me‘ on Buzzfeed
• Sarah Gerard, ‘Eat Life, Not Matter‘ in Hazlitt
• Clare Archibald, ‘Paper Dolls Join Together with Dots of Whispered Steel‘ on Dangerous Women
• Gillian Flynn, ‘Be Kind to People Dressed as Food‘ in The New Yorker
• Erica Wagner, ‘The silver scent of fear: Learning to live with epilepsy‘ in The New Statesman

Feminism:

• Dayna Evans, ‘Do Women Still Need a Space of Their Own?‘ in The Cut
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ‘Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions‘ on Facebook
• Rebecca Solnit, ‘City of Women‘ in The New Yorker
• Rep. Tammy Duckworth, ‘Caretaking Equals Strength, Not Weakness‘ on Lenny
• Joanna Klein, ‘Metaphorically Speaking, Men Are Expected to be Struck by Genius, Women to Nurture It‘ in The New York Times
• Rachel Charlene Lewis, ‘Queering Gender, Queering Genre‘ on Electric Literature
• Kristen Hanley Cardozo, ‘The Terrible Power Of White Women Fears In Donald Trump’s Campaign‘ in The Establishment
• Tobi Oredin, ‘As a black British woman I still need Black History Month‘ on The Pool
• Shannon Shreibak, ‘We need to talk about the fetishization of the tattooed alt-girl‘ on Hello Giggles

Society and Politics:

• Jill Soloway, ‘on Donald Trump, Locker Rooms and Toxic Masculinity‘ in Time
• Esther Wang, ‘Asian American voters are crucial to victory. Will they actually turn out to vote?‘ on Fusion
• Rebecca Traister, ‘Trump’s One Public Service Was Exposing the Misogyny of the GOP‘ on The Cut
• Edwidge Danticat, ‘Hurricane Matthew’s Devastating Toll in Haiti‘ in The New Yorker
• Lindy West, ‘Donald and Billy on the Bus‘ in The New York Times
• Kathryn Miles, ‘Spoiler Alert‘ in Pacific Standard
• Sarah Smash, ‘Dangerous idiots: how the liberal media elite failed working-class Americans‘ in The Guardian
• Anna Merlan, ‘The Team of Men Behind Rachel Brewson, the Fake Woman Whose Trump-Fueled Breakup Went Viral‘ on Jezebel
• Alana Massey, ‘When New York Stopped: Confronting the Lingering Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy‘ in Brooklyn Magazine
•  Your Fat Friend, ‘The 400-pound hacker & fat shaming without fat people‘ on Think Progress
• Kristin Dombek, ‘Emptiness‘ (on narcissists) on n+1

The interviews/profiles:

• Margaret Atwood on Hazlitt, in The Guardian
• Tessa Hadley and Helen Garner on Electric Literature
• Jami Attenberg and Maria Semple on Literary Hub
• Anuradha Roy on Electric Literature
• Madeleine Thien in The Guardian and in Granta
• Claudia Rankine on The Cut
• Kit de Waal on Too Full to Write
• Maria Padian on Book Riot
• Marcy Dermansky on Buzzfeed
• Seraphina Madsen on The Writes of Woman and Storgy
• Holly Throsby on The Guardian
• Hettie Jones on Lenny
• Tracy Chevalier and Paulette Jiles on Literary Hub
• Marisa Silver on Electric Literature
• Leigh Stein in The Huffington Post
• Zoe Wittall on Maisonneuve
• Robin Stevens on The Bookseller
• Chloe Cadwell on Electric Literature
• Sinéad Gleeson in The Irish Times
• Natalie Baszile on Literary Hub
• Nell Zink on The Millions and Vulture
• Eimear McBride in The Irish Times
• Pamela Erens on Bloom
• Mary Gaitskill in the Los Angeles Review of Books
• Maggie Nelson on Fiction Advocate
• Ali Smith in The Observer

The regular columnists:

• Laurie Penny in The New Statesman
• Lucy Mangan in Stylist
• Roxane Gay in The Guardian US
• Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in The Independent
• Caitlin Moran in The Times
• Lauren Laverne in The Pool
• Ella Risbridger in The Pool
• Sali Hughes in The Pool
• Bim Adewunmi in The Guardian
• Sophie Heawood in The Guardian
• Eva Wiseman in The Observer
• Tracey Thorn in The New Statesman
• Chimene Suleyman and Maya Goodfellow on Media Diversified
• Josie Pickens on Ebony
• Bridget Christie in The Guardian
• Lizzy Kremer on Publishing for Humans
• Juno Dawson in Glamour
• Kashana Cauley on Catapult
• Louise O’Neill in the Irish Examiner
• Jendella Benson on Media Diversified
• Books by Women We’d Love to See in English on Literary Hub