Category Archives: Maggie Gee

In the Media: 2nd November 2014

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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.

The week kicked off (almost literally) with Julia Stephenson writing a piece in the Telegraph with the headline ‘Can a Woman Be Happy Without Having Kids?’ to which Bryony Gordon responded also in the Telegraph. They weren’t the only woman writing about children this week; The New Yorker ran an extract ‘No Babies, Please‘ from Megan Amran’s book; Kate Long wrote about ‘The Five Stages of Motherhood‘ for Mslexia, and Shappi Khorsandi wrote on ‘Raising Girls‘ on Huffington Post.

This was followed on Tuesday by Hollaback’s film of a woman being catcalled for ten hours in New York which raised issues about race as well as the way some men behave towards women in the street. Emily Gould wrote about it for Salon and Hanna Rosin for Slate.

On lighter issues, it seems I was pre-emptive putting Amy Poehler top of the list last week as this week she’s EVERYWHERE. (Which is a good thing as far as I’m concerned.) If you don’t know who she is, I’ll direct you towards her 10 Funniest Clips on the Telegraph first, then you can feast on the rest: Amy Poehler reading from the Prologue of Yes, Please on Pan Macmillan’s Soundcloud; an extract on taping SNL while pregnant on Vulture; talking about writing being ‘hellish’ on Huffington Post; interviewing George R.R. Martin on Vulture; 11 Amy Poehler Stories You’ve Never Heard Before, But Will Totally Relate to Your Life in The Huffington Post; 30 Hilarious Truth Bombs Amy Poehler Dropped During Her Reddit AMA on Buzzfeed; doing #AskAmy at Twitter HQ;

The other high profile funny feminist woman who’s had plenty written about her this week is Lena Dunham, who was in the UK promoting her book. Alex Clark interviewed her in the Observer; Emma Gannon interviewed her for The Debrief and wrote about meeting Lena and her event at the Southbank Centre with Caitlin Moran on Friday night on her blog. She’s on video on The New Yorker talking about Girls and Sex at The New Yorker Festival and there are facts about her on Oprah. While Rebecca Carroll wrote about Lena Dunham’s Race Problem on Gawker and Sonia Saraiya responded in Salon.

The best of the rest articles/essays:

The interviews:

In translation:

If you’d like some fiction to read:

Photo by T. Kira Madden

And the lists:

In the Media: 21st September 2014

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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.

In a change to usual proceedings, I’m beginning with non-fiction writers this week as there’s been so much non-fiction talk in the news with the National Books Awards non-fiction longlist and Lena Dunham’s book on the way, in particular.

Alison Bechdel was awarded a MacAuthur “genius grant” this week. Here’s a piece she wrote on her blog last year about The Test which bears her name and how she feels about it. While Elizabeth McCracken wrote this week’s My Hero piece in The Guardian about Bechdel.

Fellow graphic novelist Roz Chast was also in the news for being the only woman to make the non-fiction longlist of the National Book Awards. (More on that in the lists at the bottom.) This piece in Slate looks at why critics don’t take cartoonists seriously.

Caitlin Moran, whose photograph some people can’t take seriously, wrote in her Times column this week about the letters/comments she has from people about the faces she pulls in photographs and why she does it. ‘My face, my rules‘. (Unfortunately UK Times articles are subscriber only.)

Lena Dunham’s book Not that Kind of Girl published a week on Tuesday led Hadley Freeman to question how feminist is writing a memoir? An extract from Dunham’s book ran in The Guardian. The Times ran an interview while Meghan Daum wrote a profile in the New York Times.

Sheila Heti also has a new book out. Heti has collaborated with Leanne Shapton and Heidi Julavits for Women in Clothes. Heti talks about the book in this Los Angeles Review of Books interview, while Julavits and Shapton are in the Observer.

Also in the Observer is an extract from Linda Tirado’s memoir Hand to Mouth about the myths surrounding poverty.

In the fiction world, who else to begin with this week than Hilary Mantel who’s been causing controversy with an interview she gave to Damien Barr for the Daily Telegraph which they refused to run along with the title story from her latest collection ‘The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher’. The Guardian picked up both the interview and the story.

Also still causing a ruckus, is reclusive novelist Elena Ferrante. An essay written by her about Madame Bovary and the reoccurring themes in her work ran on the English Pen website, while Rohan Maitzen examined the critical response to Ferrante and Jonathan Gibbs articulated his thoughts on his blog and discussed the UK covers of Ferrante’s novels.

No stranger to controversy in her day either, Virginia Woolf’s essay ‘American Fiction’ was discussed in The New Yorker while Maggie Gee was ‘In the footsteps of Virginia Woolf‘ in The Guardian writing about bringing Woolf back to life for her latest novel.

Fiction faired better than non-fiction in awards this week with an all-female shortlist for the BBC National Short Story Award. Zadie Smith’s story ‘Miss Adele Amongst the Corsets‘ in The Paris Review, Tessa Hadley’s ‘Bad Dreams‘ and Lionel Shriver’s ‘Kilifi Creek‘ in The New Yorker.

Other good articles this week were:

And interviews:

While in translation news (besides Ferrante, of course!), Marian Schwartz talked about translating Russian Literature and Two Lines Press published an extract from Bae Suah’s novel The Low Hills of Seoul translated by Deborah Smith.

And this week’s lists:

Finally, I’m going to leave you with the three pieces I’ve loved the most this week:

  • Alice Bolin on ‘hoarding verbal matter‘ (with beautiful photographs of Yayoi Kusama’s work)
  • Jess Richards on love and desperately seeking a variety of things
  • Shelley Harris’ video for her forthcoming novel Vigilante. (I am having that wig!)

 

In the Media: 24th August 2014

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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.

I’m on holiday at the moment. My intention was to update this by phone in case there was a corker in the Sunday papers. However, that might not happened, in which case, I’ll save it for next week! Regardless, it’s been a bumper week this week.

Women in Translation Month is coming to an end. You can see all the reviews posted so far on Biblibio’s site. There’s also been two good pieces from/about writers in translation this week:

Two online book magazines had new editions out this week with pieces that are definitely worth reading (as are the whole magazines):

And the new issue of Bookanista is full of goodies:

I wouldn’t usually link to reviews in this piece but there have been two fantastic ones this week:

Also in the Guardian:

Finally, you were probably under a rock if you missed it, but Kate Atkinson’s publishers Transworld announced that her next novel would be a companion piece to the best selling Life After Life, focusing on the younger brother, Teddy.

And the funniest thing I’ve read this week was Celeste Ballard in the New Yorker on ‘How to Pick a Good Summer Read‘. It certainly helped with my packing!

Unsung Female Writers (Part Two)

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Thank you for the great response to our Unsung Female Writers (Part One) post. Today, we’ve got the rest of the list for you consisting of mine and Antonia’s choices. Let us know what you think of our picks and whether there’s anyone whose writing you love who isn’t on either of our lists.

Antonia Honeywell is a writer whose debut novel The Ship will be published in February 2015. She blogs each month about the journey towards publication and is a keen reader of literary prize lists – you can read her thoughts on the Bailey’s Prize and the Man Booker Prize on her website.

Maggie Gee

Gee’s thirteen novels span a vast range of subjects and settings; her work defies categorization by genre or concern. What her novels have in common, though, is a clear-sighted, unsentimental generosity about humanity and its place in the natural world. Her characters’ opinions of themselves are dissected with honesty and compassion, and this ability to create empathy where there is not necessarily sympathy is one that deserves wider recognition. Gee has a comic touch too – in her latest novel, she brings Virginia Woolf to modern-day Manhattan. Her memoir, My Animal Life, is a must-read; in novels, begin with The White Family (contemporary) or The Ice People (speculative future) and take it from there.

Stella Duffy

Stella Duffy is a powerhouse of energy. She’s published fourteen novels, several plays, she acts, she is a vocal champion of equal marriage and is the drive behind the Fun Palaces project (inspired by Joan Littlewood); she’s had cancer and written eloquently of her distaste for the language of battle that’s often used in relation to it. This concern for honest language permeates her novels – The Room of Lost Things, my suggested starting point, is London. Not the monuments and icons we’d all recognize, but the vibrancy and squalor of a life lived rather than a life created.

Marika Cobbold

If I ever have reservations about Twitter, I only have to think of the book chat it’s introduced me to and the writers I’d never heard of before I joined. I wonder how I’d have found Marika Cobbold’s writing if I’d never * butted in * on an exchange that started with Disney princes and carried on with the toads in my cellar lightwell, culminating in a photo of Rufus Sewell. Such frivolous humour led me to Tea With Guppies, a beautifully-observed exploration of aging, of dignity, of relationships between old and young. Cobbold’s latest novel is Drowning Rose. Witty, sharp and rewarding.

Edna O’Brien

Now in her 80s, Edna O’Brien has published twenty one works of fiction since The Country Girls (1960) was denounced and burned in her native Ireland for its open discussion of matters moral and sexual. She had already made her home in London, but remains an honest and precise dissector of the consequences of a repressive society on the life of its citizens. Down by the River (1996), for example, takes as its subject a teenage rape victim seeking an abortion. The Country Girls remains a relevant and fresh read and a fine starting place to explore the work of this prolific, fierce and assured novelist.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Dorothy L. Sayers wrote detective fiction. Detective fiction is genre fiction, and genre fiction rarely makes it onto the literary prize lists. But by dismissing genre fiction, readers dismiss some truly excellent writing. This is as true now as it’s ever been (see also Kate Atkinson). Sayers’ stories are masterclasses in creating character with a few deft strokes; in conveying emotion through a simple action; in using dialogue; in effective use of description. Sceptics should start with the short stories (Lord Peter Views the Body). Murder Must Advertise or Strong Poison would be a good place to start the novels.

And my choices are:

Janice Galloway

Galloway might seem like an odd choice for a list of unsung writers to some – she’s won a number of awards and her debut The Trick Is to Keep Breathing is considered a Scottish contemporary classic. However, the big prizes and sales seem to have alluded her whilst her contemporary Irvine Welsh has gone on to worldwide fame and acclaim. Galloway has written three novels, two short story collections and two memoirs. She observes ordinary life, describing it through vivid and often disturbing imagery. Where to start with her work would depend on your preference: for novels, The Trick Is to Keep Breathing; for stories, Blood, for memoir, This Is Not About Me.

Jackie Kay

Another Scottish writer who’s won a number of awards but not the popular recognition she deserves. A poet, novelist, short story writer, memoirist and playwright. She’s also a wonderful performer of her own work. Adopted by a Scottish couple as a baby, her memoir Red Dust Road is the story of her search for her birth parents – a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father. It’s a great introduction to her work. Alternatively, you could start with her novel Trumpet, inspired by the life of American jazz musician Billy Tipton who was born Dorothy and lived as a man for fifty years. The book begins as Joss Moody (the Tipton inspired character) dies and his adopted son discovers the truth about his father’s identity.

Salley Vickers

In contrast to the previous two writers, Vickers has never won an award for her books – something I’ve checked several times via a variety of sources, so astonished was I to discover this. She’s the author of seven novels and a short story collection. Her work is often inspired by art – her debut Miss Garnet’s Angel features the Guardi panels in the Chiesa dell’ Angelo Raffaele in Venice – and includes a magical element. However, it is her work as a psychoanalyst that allows her to create characters with such considered inner lives whilst maintaining a seemingly effortless style of writing. Her aforementioned debut is a good place to begin, or with my personal favourite Mr Golightly’s Holiday.

Bernadine Evaristo

Evaristo is the author of seven novels, several of which blend prose and poetry. Her writing is musical and rhythmic. She explores a variety of experiences through her work, including her own family’s mixed heritage in the verse novel Lara and the black experience in Europe through the ghosts of Pushkin’s great-grandfather and Mary Seacole, amongst others, in Soul Tourists. She was a recent winner of the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize for her wonderful novel, Mr Loverman, about a 74-year-old African Caribbean man who comes out after decades of hiding his relationship with his lover. Barrington Jedidiah Walker’s story is my suggested starting point.

Rebecca Solnit

Writer, historian and activist, Solnit is an essayist and long form non-fiction writer. She’s covered topics as diverse as nuclear testing, Eadweard Muybridge and high-speed motion photography, activism, prison, altruism from disaster, the creation of stories and walking. Her essay ‘Men Explain Things to Me’, which led to the coining of the term ‘mansplaining’ will be published in a book later this year alongside essays on marriage equality and violence against women. That essay or her book A Field Guide to Getting Lost, which explores how we can steep outside of our comfort zones – both physically and mentally – would be good introductions to her work.

Huge thanks to Ali, Susan and Antonia for their contributions.