In the Media, April 2017, 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.

Photograph by Murdo MacLeod

 

Women have been dominating the prize wins for the past fortnight. Hollie McNish won the Ted Hughes Prize and Kiran Millwood Hargrave won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize with The Girl of Ink and Stars.

While The Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist was announced. Rebecca May Johnson writes ‘Notes on . . . the Baileys Women’s Prize‘ (and reading women more generally) in the Financial Times. There are interviews with several of the longlisted writers on the prize’s site: Madeleine Thien, Naomi Alderman, Linda Grant, Yewande Omotoso, Heather O’Neill, Fiona Melrose, Eimear McBride, Emma Flint.

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Claire Armistead, ‘Is Hilary Mantel’s view of historical fiction out of date?‘ in The Guardian
• Amy Bernhard, ‘Writing Behind Walls‘ on Catapult
• Catherine La Sota, ‘Reading Across America: A Scene Grows in Queens‘ on Literary Hub
• Alicia Maria Meier, ‘Marta Rojals’s “The Faithful,” and the American JASP‘ on Words Without Borders
• Megan Hunter, ‘Fiction to see the world through‘ in The TLS
• Vincent Scarpa, ‘The Uncanny Magic of Joy Williams, in a Single Paragraph‘ on Literary Hub
• Laura Waddell, ‘Is it time for a Handmaid’s Tale sequel, to reckon with the Trump era?‘ in The Guardian
• Aaron Bady, ‘Has Imbolo Mbue Written the Great American Novel?‘ on Literary Hub
• Mallory Soto, ‘Laura Kinney, Literary Fiction, and Coming-of-Age‘ on Bookriot
• Emily Temple, ‘A Brief History of Robots‘ on Literary Hub
• Terri Kapsalis, ‘Hysteria, Witches, and the Wandering Uterus: A Brief History‘ on Literary Hub
• Ayana Mathis, ‘On Impractical Urges‘ in Guernica
• Sophie Hughes, ‘Ferrante Fever and Knausgaard nuts‘ in The TLS
• Amelia Ayrelan Iuvino, ‘What Does it Mean to Set Your Novel at Harvard?‘ on Literary Hub
• Margaret Atwood, ‘on What ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Means in the Age of Trump‘ in The New York Times
• Edmund Gordon, ‘In Which Angela Carter Gives No Fucks‘ on Literary Hub
• Sophie Gilbert, ‘The Dark Morality of Fairy-Tale Animal Brides‘ on The Atlantic
• Fiona Taylor, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale: The Lost Pence Prequel‘ in The New Yorker
• Sarah Blackwood, ‘Parenting by the Books: ‘Little Women’‘ on The Hairpin
• Emily Temple, ‘Life Advice from Adrienne Rich‘ on Literary Hub
• Danika Ellis, ‘Let’s Talk About Star-Crossed: Why We Need Bisexual Kids Books, Backlash or Not‘ on Bookriot
• Naomi Alderman, ‘Dystopian dreams: how feminist science fiction predicted the future‘ in The Guardian
• Jami Attenberg, ‘Stop Reading My Fiction as the Story of My Life‘ in The New York Times
• Salena Godden, ‘How I Did It‘ on The Poetry School
• Scarlett Thomas, ‘Why I was wrong about children’s fiction‘ in The Guardian
• Ellen Feldman, ‘A Brief Literary History of Birth Control‘ on Literary Hub
• Laura Kaye, ‘on portraying England from a foreigner’s perspective‘ on the Literary Sofa
• Valerie Derbyshire, ‘Beauty and the Beast was originally a feminist fable disguised as marriage guidance‘ on The Conversation
• Bidisha, ‘The great contradiction‘ in The TLS
• Teri Vlassopoulos, ‘When I Think About Giving Up Writing‘ on Catapult
• Alexandra Alter, ‘New Crop of Young Adult Novels Explores Race and Police Brutality‘ in The New York Times
• Jami Attenberg, ‘Topography of a Novel: All Grown Up‘ on Blunderbuss
• Kathryn Heyman, ‘Fairytales are not just harmless, innocent fun. They need to be interrogated‘ in The Guardian
• Susan Braudy, ‘‘Sisters in Misery’: What It Was Like to Interview Joan Didion at Home in 1977‘ on Jezebel

Personal essays/memoir:

• Kim McLarin, ‘Outrunning Eshu: On Finally Seeking Treatment for Depression‘ on Literary Hub
• Marissa Bate, ‘Adventures aren’t always on the other side of the world‘ on The Pool
• Daisy Buchanan, ‘I’ve been an agony aunt since I could talk‘ in The Guardian
• Laura Turner, ‘How Do You Inherit Anxiety?‘ on Catapult
• Meg Elison, ‘El Hugé‘ on Catapult
• Melissa Febos, ‘Playing Cupid for a Gay Friend on a (Mostly) Straight Cruise‘ in The New York Times
• Ethel Rohan, ‘Bringing It Back Up‘ on The Hairpin
• Sinéad Gleeson, ‘Your Chroma‘ on RTÉ
• Melinda Salisbury, ‘Was my grandmother a witch?‘ in The Guardian
• Amy Jo Burns, ‘Writing, Risk, and Moonshine‘ on Electric Literature
• Dionne Ford, ‘Don’t Call Slaves “Immigrants”‘ on Literary Hub
• Melissa Wyse, ‘Learning to Live Alone Through the Legacy of Mary Tyler Moore‘ in The Rumpus
• Whitney Templeton, ‘The Evolution of a Trigger‘ on The Rumpus
• Elisabeth Fairfield Stokes, ‘Life and Breath: On Pregnancy and the Spirit World‘ on Catapult
• Gillian Jacobs, ‘I Can’t Have Enough Mothers‘ on Lenny
• Dina Nayeri, ‘How Love Ends: Scenes from a Refugee Hotel‘ on Electric Literature
• Maria Browning, ‘Doll in Shadow‘ on Guernica
• Xialou Guo, ‘Leaving the Village: on Traumatic Uprooting‘ on Literary Hub
• Alys Fowler, ‘There is no such thing as coming out: it’s a daily negotiation‘ in The Guardian
• Eve Peyser, ‘Trump, Trolls, and Rediscovering My Jewish Identity‘ on Vice
• Porochista Khakpour, ‘Why this Persian New Year is different‘ on CNN
• Ashley Ford, ‘Seeing My Body with Fresh Eyes‘ on Cup of Jo
• Laurie Frankel, ‘We adopted by choice not necessity‘ in The Guardian
• Ella Wilson, ‘Take Care: Mothers, Daughters, and Inheriting Self-Hatred‘ on Catapult
• Daisy Buchanan, ‘I am 32, successful and I am in therapy. This is why‘ on The Pool

Feminism:

• Helen Charman, ‘Literary Representations of Maternity‘ on Women Are Boring
• Heather Kirn Lanier, ‘Superbabies Don’t Cry‘ on Vela
• Jia Tolentino, ‘The Infantilizing Ways We Talk About Women’s Ambition‘ in The New Yorker
• Leslie Jamison, ‘In the Shadow of a Fairy Tale‘ in The New York Times
• Rebecca Traister, ‘Of Course Donald Trump Doesn’t Think Bill O’Reilly Did Anything Wrong‘ in The Cut
• Salimah Perkins, ‘Choosing Sides‘ on Queen Mob’s Tea House
• Minda Honey, ‘Women of Color in Wide Open Spaces‘ on Longreads
• Jess Zimmerman, ‘Why Is Male Anger So Threatening?‘ in Dame
• Jessica Valenti, ‘Mike Pence doesn’t eat alone with women. That speaks volumes‘ in The Guardian
• Phoebe Maltz Bovy, ‘It’s time to drop the vagina as a protest symbol‘ in The Washington Post
• Morgan Jerkins, ‘How America Fails Black Girls‘ in The New York Times
• Sandra Newman, ‘Why men rape‘ on Aeon
• Mia Violet, ‘Taking Selfies As A Form Of Self Care‘ on Femsplain
• Brittney McNamara, ‘White Women Are Less Likely to Protect Black Women From Sexual Assault, Study Finds‘ in Teen Vogue
• Roe McDermott, ‘There is no perfect victim. And there is no perfect way to respond to sexual assault‘ on The Pool
• Morgan M Page, ‘Trans Women Shouldn’t Have To Constantly Defend Their Own Womanhood‘ on Buzzfeed
• Cathy Young, ‘The Other Women’s Movement‘ on Foreign Policy
• David Smith, ‘Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on transgender row: “I have nothing to apologise for”‘ in The Guardian

Society and Politics:

• Jeanette Winterson, ‘We need to be more imaginative about modern marriage‘ in The Guardian
• Taffy Brodesser-Akner, ‘The High Price of Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Life‘ in the New York Times
• Monica Mark, ‘Poor, Gifted and Black‘ on Buzzfeed
• Diana Darke, ‘A sarin attack and a swing in US policy‘ in The TLS
• Carla Bruce-Eddings, ‘Am I Going to Have Another Baby?‘ in The Cut
• Emily Holleman, ‘Is Hillary Clinton a Modern-Day Cleopatra?‘ on Literary Hub
• Hannah Goldfeld, ‘The Cool Brooklyn Dentist Who Wants Your Teeth to Look As Nice As Her Instagram Feed‘ in The Cut
• Suzanne Moore, ‘Labour is weak and immoral – as shown by Livingstone’s refusal to apologise‘ in The Guardian
• Alana Semuels, ‘Why It’s So Hard to Get Ahead in the South‘ in The Atlantic
• Zara Rahman, ‘Where Are You Really From‘ on Real Life
• Jeanne de Montbaston, ‘My Daughter’s Birth‘ on Reading Medieval Books
• Linda Besner, ‘Sleep Country‘ on Real Life
• Hilary Mantel, ‘The Tories will never confess to their social wrecking age‘ in The New Statesman
• Alana Massey, ‘Broken Links‘ on Aeon
• Sim Bajwa, ‘Multiculturalism hasn’t failed – but the rhetoric surrounding immigration has become poisonous‘ on The Pool
• Elena Passarello, ‘The Sense of an Endling‘ on Longreads
• Lisa Miller, ‘John Hinckley Left the Mental Hospital Seven Months Ago‘ in New York Magazine

Film, Television, Music, Art, Fashion and Sport:

• Jonatha Kottler, ‘Shopping at size 24: ‘The sales assistant shakes her head at me’‘ in The Guardian
• Caitlin McDonnell, ‘On Homeland‘s Carrie Mathison, Mental Illness, & the “Ugly Cry”‘ on Weird Sister
• Sophie Atkinson, ‘Feminism and the Pursuit of Relentless Happiness‘ on Electric Literature
• Christine Vines, ‘The Damage of ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’‘ on Electric Literature
• Laura McKeon, ‘Dressing Like Ladies‘ on Hazlitt
• Rachel Klein, ‘Smurfette’s Roots‘ on Hazlitt
• Lauren Schwartzberg, ‘Why Millennial Pink Refuses to Go Away‘ in The Cut
• Amy Wallace, ‘The Hollywood Exec and the Hand Transplant That Changed His Life‘ in Los Angeles Magazine
• Catherine Love, ‘Offside: the shocking moment female footballers were banned for 50 years‘ in The Guardian

The interviews/profiles:

• Durga Chew-Bose on Hazlitt
• Edna O’Brien on Kenyan Review
• Eleni Sikelianos in Numeró Cinq
• Sarah Waters in The Guardian
• Ursula K. Le Guin on Electric Literature
• Claire Fuller on Reading Women
• Julie Buntin on Electric Literature
• Ariel Levy on Electric Literature and The Fifth Sense
• Angie Thomas in The Guardian and The Cut
• Deb Olin Unferth on Electric Literature
• Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo in The Bookseller
• Valeria Luiselli in Brooklyn
• Aura Xilonen on Electric Literature
• Ana Marie Cox on Literary Hub
• Wioletta Greg and Eliza Marciniak on The Man Booker Prize
• Fay Weldon in The Guardian
• Brit Bennett on The Millions
• Marina Benjamin on Slate
• Maggie Nelson in The Cut
• Katie Kitamura in The LA Times
• Megan McDowell on Literary Hub
• Emma Richler on Maisonneuve
• Eve Ainsworth on Bookriot
• Anna Journey on Electric Literature
• Eileen Myles in The Irish Times
• Eula Bliss in The Los Angeles Review of Books
• Khadijah Queen on The Rumpus
• Emily Robbins on Hazlitt
• Helen McClory on Burning House Press
• Lidia Yuknavitch on Pen America
• Patty Yumi Cottrell on Literary Hub
• Nell Stevens in Vogue

The regular columnists:

• Ijeoma Oluo on The Establishment
• Lucy Mangan in Stylist
• Roxane Gay in The Guardian US
• Caitlin Moran in The Times
• 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
• Lizzy Kremer on Publishing for Humans
• Juno Dawson in Glamour
• Louise O’Neill in the Irish Examiner
• Jendella Benson on Media Diversified
• Lola Okolosie in The Guardian
• Sarah Gerard, ‘Mouthful‘ on Hazlitt
• Books by Women We’d Love to See in English on Literary Hub

In the Media, February 2017

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.

I’ve been a bit lax at compiling these while I’ve focused on my own work. It means this month’s is huge and I haven’t honed in on any topic in particular as the news moves so fast at that moment it feels like an impossible task. Back to fortnightly after this which hopefully will make it slightly easier to digest.

 

On or about books/writers/language:

• Helen Dunmore, ‘Facing mortality and what we leave behind‘ in The Guardian
• Rosalind Jana, ‘Making Space: A Brief History of Literary Salons, Past and Present‘ on Constellation
• George Saunders, ‘Grace Paley, the Saint of Seeing‘ in The New Yorker
• Peternelle van Arsdale, ‘How I Learned to Stop Worrying About the Market and Just Write‘ on Literary Hub
• Lauren Elkin, ‘Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London‘ on Longreads
• Varaidzo, ‘From school books to publishing, black girls deserve better representation‘ in the New Statesman
• Ruth Gilligan, ‘Write Like a Girl‘ on Read it Forward
• Francesca Simon, ‘Why I’m writing for World Book Day’ in The Guardian
• Lily Dunn and Zoe Gilbert, ‘We’re given only a handful of these kinds of friendships‘ on Something Rhymed
• Karolina Ramqvist, ‘Writer as Public Figure Vs. The Writer Who Actually Writes‘ on Literary Hub
• Catherine Mayer, ‘on Writing Attack of the Fifty Foot Women‘ on Waterstones Blog
• Yoojin Grace Wuertz, ‘Failure and Patience: Lessons from the Garden for Writers‘ on Literary Hub
• Claudia Roth Pierpoint, ‘Elizabeth Bishop’s Art of Losing‘ in The New Yorker
• Thomas Arnow, ‘Who was Harriette Arnow?‘ on the Penguin Blog
• Anjali Enjeti, ‘The Life and Legacy of Bharati Mukherjee‘ on Literary Hub
• Wei Ming Kam, ‘On the Carnegie, Bookshops and Melinda Lo’s Ash‘ on Gal-dem
• Kerry Clare, ‘Rereading Fear of Flying: On Not Being Pregnant in Mid-Air With Isadora Wing‘ in The Toronto Review of Books
• Susan Hill, ‘Can I be a serious writer, keeping such casual hours?’ in The Guardian
• Nell Zink, ‘Writing for Rejection, And reading Doris Lessing‘ on n+1
• Craig Hubert, ‘On the Many Film Adaptations of the “Unfilmable” Wuthering Heights‘ on Literary Hub
• Ilana Masad, ‘Queer children’s books have a long history that’s only now being told‘ in The Guardian
• Heather O’Neill, ‘Leaving It All on the Page‘ on The Walrus
• Cameron Glover, ‘A Soulful Novel and Me: On Zora Neale Hurston‘ on Catapult
• Maggie Harcourt, ‘Pages in Common‘ on Waterstones Blog
• Rebecca Traister, ‘Rereading The Handmaid’s Tale, One Month Into the Trump Era‘ in The Cut
• Julie Buntin, ‘On Making Things Up: Some True Stories About Writing My Novel‘ on Catapult
• Sarah Perry, ‘In praise of readability‘ in The TLS
• Joanna Cannon, ‘The Story Behind The Trouble with Goats and Sheep‘ on WHSmith Blog
• Lionel Shriver, ‘Dystopia in the next room‘ in The TLS
• Rafia Zakaria, ‘Carson McCullers at 100: a century of American suffering‘ in The Guardian
• Jo Hogan, ‘The Carnegie Medal: Time for a Review‘ on her blog
• Salamisha Tillet, ‘Free Is and Free Ain’t‘ on Public Books
• Morgan Jerkins, ‘The Forgotten Work of Jessie Redmond Fauset‘ in The New Yorker
• Emma Garman, ‘Trilby, the Novel That Gave Us ‘Svengali’‘ on Longreads
• Emily Cooke, ‘Pay to Play: A chronicle of wealth and class in the literary world‘ on Book Forum
• Aminatta Forna, ‘We must take back our stories and reverse the gaze‘ in The Guardian
• Sam Jones, ‘Retrieving an untold story: voices of Spanish female artists finally heard‘ in The Guardian
• Ulka Anjaria, ‘The Goddess of Loss‘ on Boston Review
• Dr. Florence Hazrat, ‘From The Taming of the Shrew to 10 Things I Hate About you: Taming Wild Women in European Culture‘ on Women Are Boring
• Laura Pritchett, ‘The Middle Ages‘ on Bloom
• Fiona Cummins, ‘How I went from Ms Showbiz reporting on celebrity parties to writing a chilling crime thriller‘ in the Daily Mirror
• Katy Waldman, ‘Is My Novel Offensive?‘ on Slate
• Tracy Chevalier, ‘There’s a febrile debate in Trump’s rustbelt. I want to be part of it‘ in The Guardian
• Sarah Ladipo Manyika, ‘What Virginia Woolf Forgot To Say‘ on Thrive Global
• Georgia Hunter, ‘We Were The Lucky Ones‘ on Waterstones Blog
• Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, ‘A Dyslexic’s Guide to Infinity‘ on The Rumpus
• Maria Russo, ‘Finding America, Both Red and Blue, in the ‘Little House’ Books‘ in The New York Times
• Miranda Emmerson, ‘Mixed-up thinking‘ on Bookanista
• Marta Bausells, ‘Warsan Shire and Beyoncé: Superheroes for Our Time‘ on Literary Hub
• Lisa Williamson, ‘Writing NON-romantic Love for Teens‘ on Foyles
• Alex Clark, ‘I’m no pussy when it comes to swearing‘ in The Guardian
• Rahawa Haile, ‘How Black Books Lit My Way Along The Appalachian Trail‘ on Buzzfeed
• Kate Mosse, ‘It’s never been more important to champion women’s voices‘ on The Pool
• Eva Dolan, ‘The Hierarchy of Victims in Crime Writing‘ on Foyles
• Roxane Gay, ‘The Full Text of ‘Bad Feminist’ Author Roxane Gay’s WI12 Speech‘ on Publishers Weekly
• Claire Fuller, ‘on the Isle of Purbeck, Dorset‘ on The Literary Sofa
• Scott Eposito, ‘Understanding America Through Marilynne Robinson‘ on Literary Hub
• Edwidge Danticat, ‘Poetry in a Time of Protest‘ in The New Yorker
• Laura Pritchett, ‘The Great West Has More Than One Story to Tell‘ on Literary Hub
• Sarah Churchwell, ‘‘It will be called Americanism’: the US writers who imagined a fascist future‘ in The Guardian
• Lucinda Rosenfeld, ‘What Was Chick Lit? A Brief History from the Inside‘ on Literary Hub
• Ela Bittencourt, ‘Poetry Thieves: Translating Hanna Krall and Ewa Lipska‘ on Words Without Borders

Personal essays/memoir:

• Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, ‘How Postcards from My Mother Helped Me Survive My Childhood‘ on Literary Hub
• Leah Carroll, ‘My Mother’s Murder‘ on The Cut
• Melissa Febos, ‘When Pursuing True Love Means Breaking Up With Your Best Friend‘ on Refinery29
• Catherine LaSota, ‘Changing Body, Changing Perceptions‘ on Catapult
• Anne Kniggendorf, ‘Gracie Allen and John Denver in Boot Camp‘ on Electric Literature
• Christine Hyung-Oak Lee, ‘Saving Chickens, Saving Myself‘ on Catapult
• Arianna Rebolini, ‘Learning to Cook After Relearning to Eat‘ on Catapult
• Gwen Werner, ‘Daddy Issues‘ on The Rumpus
• Clover Stroud, ‘Travelling alone as a woman was a way of owning my trauma‘ on The Pool
• Lynn Enright, ‘I don’t always know who I am – but that’s OK ‘ on The Pool
• Karen Brown, ‘From Imbibing Spirits to Spiritualist Mediums‘ on Literary Hub
• Erin Corber, ‘Vocabulary Lessons in Bucharest‘ on The Rumpus
• Elisa Gabbert ‘My Grandmother’s Little Room and the Unreality of Memory‘ on Pacific Standard
• Kaitlyn Greenidge, ‘Sacred Space: On visiting the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and facing the present‘ on Lenny
• Claire Handscombe, ‘Dance: On Ballet and Impossible Love‘ on Catapult
• Melissa Febos, ‘Reconciliation‘ on Lenny
• Sara Yasin, ‘Muslims Shouldn’t Have To Be “Good” To Be Granted Human Rights‘ on Buzzfeed
• Jowita Bydlowska, ‘Nobody Died‘ on Lenny
• Cass Cross, ‘The Men in My Office‘ on Catapult
• Sophie Warnes, ‘On the unbearableness of existence‘ on Medium
• Megan Margulis, ‘My Daughter’s Suburban Childhood Looks Nothing Like My Urban One‘ on The Cut
• Jessica Grose, ‘The Wait‘ on Lenny
• Marie Phillips, ‘One woman’s attempt to learn the language of love‘ on The Pool
• Allison Grimaldi-Donahue, ‘Translation Beyond Metaphor‘ on Electric Literature
• Sara Noviç, ‘When Good Christian Girls Need Planned Parenthood‘ on The Cut
• Rachel Klein, ‘Losing My Voice and Finding It‘ on Catapult
• Amna Saleem, ‘This Is What I Learned From My Father’s Depression‘ on Buzzfeed
• Lara Williams, ‘Talk to Me Baby‘ on Some Such Stories
• Eleanor Margolis, ‘From unnerving normality to toilet humour: the stages of my mum’s cancer diagnosis‘ in the New Statesman
• Rebecca Varkoe, ‘Let’s Talk About The Immense Privilege (And Struggle) Of Doing What You Love‘ on Junkee
• Patricia Lockwood, ‘A Childhood in the Pro-Life Movement‘ in The New Yorker
• Lorraine Berry, ‘Walking in Memphis‘ on Catapult
• Kathryn Schultz, ‘When Things Go Missing‘ in The New Yorker
• Irina Dumitrescu, ‘Swan, Late‘ on Longreads
• So Sad Today, ‘What if I Never Live My Best Life?‘ on Vice
• Lacy M. Johnson, ‘Trigger‘ in Guernica
• Candice Norwood, ‘When ‘Good Hair’ Hurts‘ in The Atlantic
• Lisa Mecham, ‘Under the Stars: Remaking a Family‘ on Catapult
• Christine Hyung-Oak Lee, ‘What It’s Like to Lose Your Short-Term Memory‘ on Longreads
• Andie Park, ‘Lessons‘ on Medium
• Laine Bruzek, ‘What Happens When Nothing Happens‘ on West Magazine
• Elle Nash, ‘Grief Lozenge‘ on The Fanzine
• Kim Schultz, ‘I fell in love with a refugee – here’s what I learned when the world didn’t love him too‘ on the New Statesman
• Rebecca Schuman, ‘Hello, Lenin? (Berlin, 1997)‘ on Longreads
• Alana Massey, ‘The Rotten, Precious Land‘ on Hazlitt
• Jonatha Kottler, ‘Fat in Every Language‘ in The Cut
• Alexandra Burt, ‘What Remains When Your First Language Fades Away‘ on Literary Hub
• Jen Gann, ‘I Love My Ugly Old Hands‘ on The Cut
• Melissa Febos, ‘Wunderkammer‘ in Vogue
• Bonnie Nadzam, ‘Experts in the Field‘ on Tin House
• Imbolo Mbue, ‘‘With every inch, the challenge multiplies’: me and my afro‘ in The Guardian
• Yemisi Aribisala, ‘People try to squeeze Nigerian food into an all-encompassing African label‘ in The Guardian
• Eileen Myles, ‘Aging Is Feminizing Me and I Hate It‘ in The Cut
• Stacey Dugid, ‘The skirt that gave me back my mojo‘ on The Pool
• Laurie Frankel, ‘When my son became my daughter, the transition was more routine than dramatic‘ in The Sydney Morning Herald
• Jaya Saxena, ‘Explaining My Multiracial Identity (So Others Don’t Do It For Me)‘ on Catapult
• Catherine LaSota, ‘Becoming an Artist and a Parent in NYC‘ on Catapult
• Cat Marnell, ‘How to Murder Your Life‘ on The Cut
• Kayla Rae Whitaker, ‘How I Learned To Date After Drinking‘ on Buzzfeed
• Jia Tolentino, ‘The Most American Thing‘ in The New Yorker
• Kuba Shand Baptiste, ‘It took me 17 years to fall in love with my black hair. Why?‘ on The Pool
• Eva Tenuto, ‘Feeling Unsafe at Every Size‘ on Longreads
• Lori Jakiela, ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Bingo Worker‘ on Electric Literature
• Patricia Bosworth, ‘The Men in My Life‘ on Literary Hub
• Meghan Tear Plummer, ‘Real Life: My Sister, My Brother‘ in Glamour
• Tracy O’Neill, ‘A Scar Is Not a Story‘ on Catapult
• Laila Lalami, ‘Love and Betrayal in America‘ in The New Yorker

Feminism:

• Dayna Tortorici, ‘While the Iron Is Hot‘ in n+1
• Michelle Darmody, ‘From the heart: One woman’s experience of abortion‘ in the Irish Examiner
• Riyan Fergins, ‘Follow the Oil Trail and You’ll Find the Girls‘ on Longreads
• Anita Bhagwandas, ‘The true meaning of beauty is to celebrate our imperfections‘ on The Pool
• Tobi Oredin, ‘As a black woman, I’ve had to unlearn what beauty means to me‘ on The Pool
• Jennilie Brewster, ‘Frozen Ground: On Reporting a Statutory Rape Twenty Years Later‘ on Catapult
• Zoe Samudsi, ‘Remy, Nicki, And The White Feminist Optics Of Black Women’s Beefs‘ on Equality for Her
• Katie Booth, ‘People Mountain, People Sea‘ on Vela
• Deborah Orr, ‘Helen Bailey and the lethal darkness behind this ‘middle-aged woman’ myth‘ in The Guardian
• Carmen Maria Machado, ‘The Trash Heap Has Spoken‘ on Guernica
• E.J. Dickson, ‘Why Did Everyone Act Like I Was Crazy When I Decided to Have a Baby in My 20s?‘ in The Cut
• Jendella Benson, ‘Feminist love will save men too‘ on Media Diversified
• Eve Ensler, ‘Female Fighters Series Re-examines Women’s Rage Around the World‘ on Guernica
• Abbie, ‘It’s Time to Trash Body Positivity‘ on Bullshitist
• Nimmi Gowrinathan, ‘Of Monsters & Women‘ on Guernica
• Yas Necati, ‘As a queer woman I will be marching against Donald Trump this weekend – but for my disabled friends it won’t be that easy‘ in The Independent
• Jessica Valenti, ‘Calling pregnant women ‘hosts’? We’re in an anti-choice Republican dystopia‘ in The Guardian
• Suzanne Moore, ‘Women in public life are now being openly bullied. How has this become normal?‘ in The Guardian
• Jessa Crispin, ‘The Failures of Mainstream Feminism‘ on New Republic
• Sara Ahmed, ‘Smile!‘ on Feminist Killjoys
• Shannon Keating, ‘Can Lesbian Identity Survive The Gender Revolution?‘ on Buzzfeed
• Melissa Denes, ‘‘It’s always high drama. It’s somebody’s life at stake’: inside British rape trials‘ in The Guardian
• Megan Nolan, ‘If British abortion providers turn away Irish women, it will be catastrophic‘ in The Pool
• Glosswitch, ‘What Would Happen if the World’s Women Went on Strike?‘ in the New Statesman
• Andrea Penman-Lomeli, ‘Consuming la Malinche, Destroying the Myth‘ on The New Inquiry
• Jia Tolentino, ‘The Case Against Contemporary Feminism‘ in The New Yorker
• Nadine Ajaka, ‘The Casualties of Women’s War on Body Hair‘ in The Atlantic
• Amanda Hess, ‘How a Fractious Women’s Movement Came to Lead the Left‘ in The New York Times
• Naomi Alderman, ‘Utopian thinking: how to build a truly feminist society‘ in The Guardian
• Rebecca Traister, ‘The Future of the Left Is Female‘ in The Cut
• Sadie Hassler, ‘Three abortions‘ on Standard Issue
• Caroline O’Donoghue, ‘I may never be ready to stop saying “dude”‘ on The Pool

Society and Politics:

• Dana Snitzky, ‘The Ban, The Wall, Bearing Witness‘ on Longreads
• Hannah Black, ‘New World Disorder‘ on Art Forum
• Gaby Hinsliff, ‘The government can’t pledge support for mental illness – and then backtrack‘ on The Pool
• Elizabeth Weil, ‘The Curse of the Bahia Emerald‘ on Wired
• Claire Heuchan, ‘The parallels between Scottish nationalism and racism are clear‘ in The Guardian
• Tasbeeh Herwees, ‘Resistance In The Time Of Protest Selfies‘ on Good
• Teow Lim Goh, ‘On Borders and Citizens‘ on Catapult
• Gaby Hinsliff, ‘Labour can’t keep returning to its roots empty handed‘ in The Guardian
• Mehreen Kasana, ‘The Meaning of Allahu Akbar‘ on Hazlitt
• Rumana Ahmed, ‘I Was a Muslim in Trump’s White House‘ on The Atlantic
• Gabrielle Bellot, ‘M*lo Might Be Done, But His Transphobia Lingers‘ on Literary Hub
• Sarah Larson, ‘The Librarian of Congress and the Greatness of Humility‘ in The New Yorker
• Rachel Cusk, ‘The Age of Rudeness‘ in The New York Times
• Gaby Hinsliff, ‘We are overdosing on empathy‘ in The Guardian
• Arifa Akbar, ‘The value we place on romantic love can feel tyrannical – especially if you’re a single woman‘ on The Pool
• Suzanne Moore, ‘It’s liking, not loving, that’s the true challenge in relationships‘ on The Pool
• Diane Abbott, ‘I fought racism and misogyny to become an MP. The fight is getting harder‘ in The Guardian
• Elizabeth Day, ‘What does true love really look like?‘ on The Pool
• Ruth Whippman, ‘Authentic? Try being polite instead‘ in The Guardian
• Deborah Cohen, ‘Before Straight and Gay‘ on The Atlantic
• Lizzie Presser, ‘Below Deck‘ in The California Sunday Magazine
• Tari Ngangura, ‘How Black History Month Reminds Me How Exhausting It Is To Be Black‘ on Vice
• Caitlin L. Chandler, ‘The Other World‘ on Guernica
• Helen Haft, ‘Telling Memories‘ on Aeon
• Andrea Pitzer, ‘Trump Revives a Shameful Tradition: Targeting a Minority Group with Crime Reports‘ on Longreads
• Ijeoma Oluo, ‘White People: I Don’t Want You To Understand Me Better, I Want You To Understand Yourselves‘ on The Establishment
• Lois Parshley, ‘Here Be Dragons: Finding the Blank Spaces in a Well-Mapped World‘ on VQR
• Hina Shamsi, ‘Flying Home From Abroad, a Border Agent Stopped and Questioned Me … About My Work for the ACLU‘ on ACLU
• Tina Nguyen, ‘Trump Grill Could Be the Worst Restaurant in America‘ in Vanity Fair
• Tamara Winfrey Harris, ‘The Real Work of Being an Ally‘ on The Cut
• Nesrine Malik, ‘Suddenly, Muslims are America’s pariahs‘ in The Guardian
• Margaret Simons, ‘The Karen road to Nhill‘ on SBS
• Fariah Roísín, ‘What Makes a Border Be?‘ on Hazlitt

Film, Television, Music, Art, Fashion and Sport:

• Anna Leszkiewicz, ‘From Hannah Horvath to Rory Gilmore: the problem with women writers on TV‘ in the New Statesman
• Eva Holland, ‘Bird Man‘ on Longreads
• Lynn Enright, ‘Twentysomething women often win Best Actress. Men in their twenties basically never win Best Actor‘ on The Pool
• Brittney Cooper, ‘Why It’s Important to Recognize That “Moonlight” Was Robbed Of Its Moment‘ in Cosmopolitan
• Jia Tolentino, ‘The Awkward Politics of the Oscars‘ in The New Yorker
• Megan Garber, ‘Why Are They ‘Stars’?‘ on The Atlantic
• Jess Goldschmidt, ‘Against La La Land‘ on Guernica
• Ann Powers, ‘The Problem With The Grammys Is Not A Problem We Can Fix‘ on NPR
• Helen O’Hara, ‘TV is better placed to tell love stories than cinema – and its writers have finally realised that‘ on The Pool
• Frances Ryan, ‘I, Daniel Blake is a realistic depiction of life on benefits. Isn’t it?‘ in The Guardian
• Emma Gray, ‘What White Women Can Learn From Adele’s Grammys Speech‘ on the Huffington Post
• Anindita Ghose, ‘What John Berger would say about Beyoncé‘ on Live Mint
• Hadley Freeman, ‘Oh, how I loved you, Johnny Depp. Now I see the purple-tinted truth‘ in The Guardian
• Laura Craik, ‘Why do we judge Victoria Beckham by her husband?‘ on The Pool
• Micha Frazer-Carroll, ‘Why We Should Celebrate Beyoncé’s Pregnancy in the Era of Trump‘ on Gal-Dem
• Danielle Dash, ‘Beyonce, Black Joy & White Women‘ on her website
• Jennifer Keshin Armstrong, ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’s Feminist Struggle‘ on Longreads
• Dayna Evans, ‘Why Would a Woman Want to Play Football?‘ on The Cut
• Véronique Hyland, ‘Why Won’t We Let Madonna Age the Way She Wants To?‘ on The Cut

The interviews/profiles:

• Susan Hill in The Guardian
• Cara Hoffman on Broadly
• Rowan Hisayo Buchanan on Literary Hub
• Kate Zambreno on The Creative Independent
• Yoojin Grace Wuertz on Electric Literature
• Melissa Febos on Guernica
• Masha Gessen on The Millions
• Zeba Talkhani and Laura Waddell on Minor Literature[s]
• Patty Yumi Cottrell in the Los Angeles Review of Books
• Ayòbámi Adébáyò in The Guardian
• Claudia Rankine in The Financial Times
• Claire Fuller in The Chicago Review of Books
• Ethel Rohan on The Millions and on Bustle
• Yiyun Li in The Guardian, on Five Books
• Jane Wong and Aditi Machado on Literary Hub
• Roxane Gay on Brooklyn
• Emily Ruskovich on Electric Literature
• Roshi Fernando on Short Story Award
• Jess Phillips on The Debrief
• Morgan Parker in The Cut
• Liane Moriarty in The Guardian
• Dreda Say Mitchell on Greenacre Writers
• Sara Baume in The Guardian
• Ola Nubi on Ankara Press
• Shappi Khorsandi in The Guardian
• Heather O’Neill on The Millions
• Rachel Cusk in BOMB
• Nina LaCour on The Booklist Reader
• Emma Donoghue on Literary Hub
• Ayelet Waldman in California
• Alice Broadway on Foyles, in The Guardian
• Amanda Owen in The Guardian
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in The Guardian
• Margaret Atwood in The Guardian
• Ali Smith in The New York Times
• Lara Pawson on Rhys Tranter
• Christine Hyung-Oak Lee on NPR
• Jade Sharma in The Rumpus
• Alana Massey on Hello Giggles, Hazlitt
• Khairani Barokka on Disability Arts
• Adrian Shirk on Catapult
• Katie Kitamura on Literary Hub
• Camille Pagán in the Huffington Post
• Adania Shiboli on Literary Hub
• Naomi Jackson on The Rumpus
• Katie Khan on In the Words of
• Kyo Maclear on Mcleans
• Kim Hyesoon on Guernica
• Jessica Valenti on The Rumpus
• Elif Shafak in The Guardian, on Foyles
• Erica Ferencik on Electric Literature
• Eimear McBride on Electric Literature
• Sandra Cisneros on Literary Hub
• Shanthi Sekaran on Bookanista
• Ottessa Moshfegh on Lenny

The regular columnists:

• Lucy Mangan in Stylist
• Roxane Gay in The Guardian US
• 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
• Lola Okolosie in The Guardian
• Sarah Gerard, ‘Mouthful‘ on Hazlitt
• Books by Women We’d Love to See in English on Literary Hub

In the Media, January 2017

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.

Image by Abigail Grey Swartz

Where is there to start other than with articles about the new American regime?

On the Women’s March:

• Paula Akpan, ‘Women’s March and the Selective Memory of Mainstream Feminism‘ on Galdem
• Ijeoma Oluo, ‘When You Brag That The Women’s Marches Were Nonviolent‘ on The Establishment
• Ashley Weatherford, ‘What Does It Take to Make You March?‘ on The Cut
• Kara Brown, ‘I Want to Trust the Women’s Marchers‘ on Jezebel
• Stephanie Boland, ‘What will happen to women’s rights now that Donald Trump is President?‘ in The New Statesman
• Zoë Beaty, ‘Why are we still so surprised when men stand up for women’s rights?‘ on The Pool
• Josephine Livingstone, ‘The Problem With “Pussy”‘ on New Republic
• Janet Mock’s Speech on The Cut
• Gaby Hinsliff, ‘How Susanna and Piers came to represent reason versus populism‘ on The Pool
• Sady Doyle, ‘The March Was Flawed and Messy and Glorious‘ in Elle
• Ann Friedman, ‘Was This Your First March? Don’t Stop Now.‘ on The Cut
• Rebecca Traister, ‘The Future of the Left Is Female‘ on The Cut
• Bim Adewunmi, ‘The Road Women Marched On This Weekend Was Paved By Black Resistance‘ on Buzzfeed
• Vonny Moyes, ‘Why do we still march, you ask? Because there’s still work to do‘ in The National
• Zoe Williams, ‘Memo to Piers Morgan: Why do we march? It’s not just protest, it’s about love‘ in The Guardian
• Jia Tolentino, ‘The Radical Possibility of The Women’s March‘ in The New Yorker
• Angela Davis’ Speech on Elle
• Megan Garber, ‘The Inauguration, and the Counter-Inauguration‘ on The Atlantic
• Eve Ensler, ‘The Women’s March heralds a renaissance of resistance‘ in The Guardian
• Rebecca Traister, ‘The Complicated, Controversial, Historic, Inspiring Women’s March‘ in The Cut
• Poorna Bell, ‘As A Woman Of Colour, This Is What Women’s March London Means To Me‘ on Huffington Post
• Lauren Elkin, ‘When women march, they are seen. And they are heard‘ on The Pool
• Heidi Mitchell, ‘I’m Anti-Trump, But I Refuse to March‘ in The Cut
• Ann Friedman, ‘A March Can Change Your Life‘ in The Cut
• Linda Sarsour, ‘#WhyIMarch‘ on Women’s Media Centre

On Melania:

• Megan Garber, ‘On Pitying Melania‘ on The Atlantic
• Jess Zimmerman, ‘Compassion for Melania Is Misguided — But It Isn’t Wrong‘ on The Cut
• Roxana Robinson, ‘Donald Trump: Making the Word ‘Pussy’ Great Again, Bigly‘ on Literary Hub
• Marisa Bate, ‘Should we feel sorry for Melania Trump?‘ on The Pool

On American society under Trump:

• Camille Dungy, ‘Unwelcome in My Country, Unwelcome in My Church‘ on Literary Hub
• Mehrsa Baradaran, ‘I Was a “Terrorist Country” Refugee Who’d Grown Up Shouting “Death to America.” America Trusted Me Anyway.‘ on Slate
• Andrea Pitzer, ‘What We Get Wrong About Hannah Arendt‘ on Longreads
• Lee Matalone, ‘R.I.P. #8: Inauguration Day‘ on The Rumpus
• Rebecca Traister, ‘Fake News, Fake Science and Why Doctors Lie About Abortion‘ on The Cut
• Tyrese Coleman, ‘How I Lost My Hometown‘ on Catapult
• Marilynne Robinson, ‘With President Trump, American democracy faces its greatest test‘ in The Guardian
• Yaa Gyasi, ‘Why the next four years will be a test for all of us‘ in The Guardian
• Katie MacBride, ‘Why Today Feels Like Grieving The Loss Of A Loved One‘ on The Establishment
• Lisa Ko, ‘20 Lessons on How to Be American‘ on The Offing
• June Eric-Udorie, ‘Nobody can inspire like Michelle Obama can inspire‘ on The Pool
• Ann Patchett, ‘Barack Obama, Our President of Love‘ in Time
• Alana Semuels, ‘Do Regulations Really Kill Jobs?‘ on The Atlantic
• Kathryn VanArendonk, ‘Why You Should Watch Donald Trump’s Inauguration‘ on Vulture
• Allison Robicelli, ‘I Work in the Restaurant Industry. Obamacare Saved My Family’s Life.‘ on Eater
• Sady Doyle, ‘It’s Time to Take Sexism Seriously as a Political Force‘ in Elle
• Emily Ladau, ‘I’m A Disabled Woman Who’s NOT Celebrating Meryl Streep’s Golden Globes Speech‘ on The Establishment
• Gaby Hinsliff, ‘Meryl Streep’s anti-Trump speech is brave and brilliant in the face of intimidation ‘ on The Pool
• Rebecca Traister, ‘WARNING: Abortion’s Deadly DIY Past Could Soon Become Its Future‘ in The Cut

On Trump:

• Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin, ‘Like any woman working with a misogynist, Theresa May should call out Donald Trump’s sexism‘ in The New Statesman
• Adrienne Lafrance, ‘Calling Out a Presidential Lie‘ in The Atlantic
• Laurie Penny, ‘Searching for Time-Travelers on the Eve of the Trump Inauguration‘ on Pacific Standard
• Olga Kazan, ‘How to Overcome Political Irrationality About Facts‘ on The Atlantic
• Ruby Lott-Lavigna, ‘What does it mean for a leader when their entire country’s music culture rejects them?‘ in The New Statesman
• Jill Abramson, ‘‘Alternative facts’ are just lies, whatever Kellyanne Conway claims‘ in The Guardian
• Robin Wright, ‘Trump’s Vainglorious Affront to the C.I.A.‘ in The New Yorker
• Molly Crabapple, ‘Trump’s here. We have four years to write a better story‘ in The Guardian
• Helen Lewis, ‘Stop saying identity politics caused Trump‘ in The New Statesman
• Sara Nović, ‘Rhyme & Reason: Sign Language’s Anti-Authoritarian Streak‘ in Blunderbuss
• Molly Ball, ‘Welcome to the Trump Presidency‘ on The Atlantic
• Mona Eltahawy, ‘Welcome to a new era of politically sanctioned patriarchy‘ in The Guardian
• Sabine Heinlein, ‘A Prisoner’s View of the Trump Administration‘ on Literary Hub
• Amanda Hess, ‘Trump, Twitter and the Art of His Deal‘ in The New York Times
• Rebecca Solnit, ‘From Lying to Leering‘ in The LRB
• Dani Garavelli, ‘May caught in Trump’s post-truth trap‘ in The Scotsman

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Roxane Gay, ‘On Empathy, Race, and the Work of Alice Childress‘ on Literary Hub
• Sarah Perry, ‘‘I was weak, despairing, confused’: did writing a novel make me ill?‘ in The Guardian
• Sheila Kohler, ‘After losing my sister to a violent death, I turned to the solace of writing‘ on The Pool
• Lyz Lenz, ‘Taking a Stand with Roxane‘ on The Rumpus
• Julie Scelfo, ‘How Clara Hale and Audre Lorde Helped to Make New York‘ on Literary Hub
• Mariah Stovall, ‘On Falling Out of Love with Punk (and in Love with Books)‘ on Literary Hub
• Manjula Martin, ‘Against Fame: On Publishing, Popularity, and Ambition‘ on Catapult
• Melissa Febos, ‘The Heart-Work: Writing About Trauma as a Subversive Act‘ on Poets & Writers
• Adelia Saunders, ‘The Power and Politics of Language, from Oppressor to Oppressed‘ on Literary Hub
• Ottessa Moshfegh, ‘Finding Meaning in Going Nowhere‘ on The Atlantic
• Amanda Coe, ‘The Body in the Frame‘ on Huffington Post
• Sarah Hughes, ‘People, the final frontier: how sci-fi is taking on the human condition‘ in The Guardian
• ‘Meet the new faces of fiction for 2017‘ in The Guardian
• Clare Thorp, ‘Why we still need bookshops – in 2017 and always‘ on The Pool
• Diana Athill,’on Molly Keane: ‘I admired many authors. But Molly, I loved’‘ in The Guardian
• Janine Mikosza, ‘How Not to Speak Polish: On Language, Pain and (Not) Writing Memoir‘ on Electric Literature
• Christina Sharpe, ‘The Weather‘ on The New Enquiry
• Teow Lim Goh, ‘Tenacity, the Key to the Writing Life‘ on Literary Hub
• Danuta Keen, ‘The Da Vinci Code code: what’s the formula for a bestselling book?‘ in The Guardian
• Samantha Ellis, ‘How sibling rivalry made Anne the ‘neglected’ Brontë‘ on Penguin
• Anna Mazzola, ‘Bad Women: Do We Still Demonise Female Offenders?‘ on The Platform
• Emma Flint, ‘What makes the ‘perfect’ murder?‘ on PanMacmillan
• Alana Massey, ‘The Unbearable Niceness of Being‘ on Literary Hub
• Elizabeth Day, ‘Reading about nature is pure comfort when the world is full of chaos‘ on The Pool
• Emily Temple, ‘A Brief Survey of the Great American Novel(s)‘ on Literary Hub
• Lucy Worsley, ‘Jane Austen at 200: still a friend and a stranger‘ in The Guardian
• Tessa Hadley, ‘Some of my best ideas come in the bath’ in The Guardian
• Joanne Harris, ‘On Ghostwriting, Celebrity and That Guardian Review.‘ on her blog
• Susanna Rustin, ‘Winifred Holtby: author, feminist, campaigner‘ in The Guardian
• Katherine Arden, ‘on the landscape that inspired The Bear and the Nightingale‘ on Penguin
• Cathy Rentzenbrink, ‘Reading Lives‘ on International Literature Showcase
• Ruth Graham, ‘Why This Norwegian Novelist Should Be the Next Elena Ferrante‘ on Slate
• Eimear McBride, ‘The problems with erotica‘ in The New Statesman
• Samantha Ellis, ‘The Brontës’ very real and raw Irish roots‘ in The Irish Times
• Samantha Ellis, ‘The Brontës and Hester Chapone‘ on Brontë Blog
• Min Jin Lee, ‘On Selling Your First Novel After 11 Years‘ on Literary Hub
• Fiona Macdonald, ‘The Racy Side of Jane Austen‘ on The BBC
• Katherine Cowdrey, ‘Khorsandi withdrew from Jhalak Prize for fear of ‘alienating’ audience‘ in The Bookseller
• Noo Saro-Wiwa, ‘Playboy cars and pentecostal stars‘ in The TLS
• Emma Geen, ‘The Unbearable Lightness of ‘Being an Author’‘ on her blog
• Samantha Ellis, ‘Where are all the heroine mothers in fiction?‘ on The Pool
• Emily Gould, ‘Most Women In Publishing Don’t Have The Luxury Of Being Unlikable‘ on Buzzfeed

Personal essays/memoir:

• Evelyn Hampton, ‘Weightlessness‘ on Catapult
• Susan C. Ryan, ‘A Disaster Not to Be Found: On Survival (and Ultrasounds)‘ on Catapult
• Linda Chavers, ‘Fluids‘ on The Rumpus
• Porochista Khakpour, ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Debut Novelist‘ on Literary Hub
• Caroline O’Donoghue, ‘The pros and cons of growing up in a Naked House‘ in The Pool
• Jennifer Maritza McCauley, ‘But There Is Also Rosa‘ on Passages North
• Enuma Okoro, ‘This is your morning‘ on Aeon
• D.M. Moehrle, ‘Womanly Arts‘ on The Rumpus
• Leia Menlove, ‘Drowning Little Things‘ on Catapult
• Zara Rahmen, ‘Close Calls‘ on Real Life
• Anjali Enjeti, ‘Drinking Chai to Savannah: Reflections on Identity, Inclusion and Power in the South‘ on Longreads
• Hermoine Holby, ‘rediscovering 60s ye-ye icon françoise hardy in the 90s‘ in i-D
• Noël Duan, ‘Beauty Shopping With My Mother, a Former Cultural Revolution Red Guard‘ on Racked
• Jody Allard, ‘Why I’ve Given Up On Being Healthy‘ on Buzzfeed
• Monica Uszerowicz, ‘Survivor Syndrome; or, Snacking While Jewish‘ on Avidly
• Angela Chen, ‘Why I No Longer Make Predictions‘ on Catapult
• Robyn Wilder, ‘My husband is the better parent – and it rankles‘ on The Pool
• Alice Jolly, ‘Donor siblings: do the ties of blood matter?‘ in The Guardian
• Lauren Alwan, ‘Arab Past, American Present: My Family’s Invisible History‘ on Catapult
• Laura Michele Diener, ‘Late Afternoon with Shadows Lengthening‘ on Numéro Cinq
• Laurie Frankel, ‘How do grandparents respond when their grandson becomes a granddaughter?‘ on The Pool
• Kathleen Alcott, ‘‘Restaurants have taught me who I am’‘ in The Guardian
• Charlotte Shane, ‘When Desire Goes Dark‘ on Hazlitt
• Nicky Loomis, ‘Pinecone Man‘ on Catapult
• D.S. ‘On Faith and Sexuality‘ on Dardishi
• Jamila Osman, ‘A Map of Lost Things: On Family, Grief, and the Meaning of Home‘ on Catapult
• Alexandra Heminsley, ‘The emotional challenges of IVF, and how one woman found solace in the sea‘ on The Pool
• Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, ‘The Woman Scared of Her Own Kimono‘ on Catapult
• Laura Goode, ‘Against Confession: On Intersectional Feminism, Radical Catholicism, and Redefining Remorse‘ on Longreads
• Isabel Hardman, ‘When my mind stopped working, I realised just how badly we treat mental health‘ in The Telegraph
• Anne Helen Peterson, ‘Living In The Beautiful Bubble Of The Not-Quite Internet‘ on Buzzfeed
• Alexandra Heminsley, ‘My swimming odyssey: ‘It felt like a last chance to prove what I was capable of’‘ in The Guardian

Feminism:

• Jessye McGarry, ‘Why I’m Waiting for The Right Man to Tell Me I Should Read ‘Infinite Jest’‘ on Reductress
• Diane Shipley, ‘The sexist reality of being a woman with M.E.‘ on The Pool
• Moira Weigel, ‘How Ultrasound Became Political‘ on The Atlantic
• J.C. Pan, ‘Love’s Labor Earned‘ on Dissent
• Gaby Hinsliff, ‘Older motherhood offers women the ultimate in having it all‘ in The Guardian
• Rachel Monroe, ‘Sexual Assault in the Amazon‘ in The Cut
• Jen Palmares Meadows, ‘We Be Bleeding‘ on The Rumpus
• Sophie Wilkinson, ‘These Women Were all Prescribed the Pill – None of Them Needed it for Contraception‘ on The Debrief
• Clare Vaye Watkins, ‘A Trip of One’s Own‘ in New Republic
• Daisy Buchanan, ‘Media mockery of sex workers creates dangerous conditions for women‘ on The Pool
• Daisy Buchanan, ‘Casey Affleck’s Golden Globes win shows Hollywood’s double standard in action‘ on The Pool
• Meena Kandasamy, ‘Bengaluru attacks: Misogyny by night and day‘ on Aljazeera
• Lucy Rycroft-Swift, ‘I wore men’s clothes for a month – and it changed my life‘ on The F Word
• Connie Kuhns, ‘Strange Women‘ on Geist

Society and Politics:

• Kathryn Hughes, ‘Embarrassing bodies: what did the Victorians have to hide?‘ in The Guardian
• Amelia Tait, ‘The myth of Generation Snowflake: how did “sensitive” become a dirty word?‘ in The New Statesman
• Michele Kirsch, ‘My life as a cleaner in London‘ in The Independent
• Julie Beck, ‘Does Corruption Happen Slowly, or All at Once?‘ on The Atlantic
• Tahmina Begum, ‘You Talk Like a White Girl‘ on gal-dem
• Amelia Tait, ‘The best days of the internet are over – now our privacy will suffer‘ in The New Statesman
• Deafinitely Girly, ‘Deaf Girly and the Gap advert‘ on her blog
• Ruby Tandoh, ‘Bad fad – on how clean eating turned toxic‘ in The Guardian
• Vanessa Hua, ‘You might be thinking of someone else?‘ in The San Francisco Chronicle
• Ijeoma Oluo, ‘The Exploitation Of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Legacy By White Supremacy‘ on The Establishment
• L.A. Kauffman, ‘In 1971, the People Didn’t Just March on Washington — They Shut It Down‘ on Longreads
• Brooke Jarvis, ‘Who Decides Who Counts as Native American?‘ in The New York Times
• Clare Chambers, ‘Time to abandon marriage?‘ in The TLS
• Jennifer Young, ‘Peetskill Blues‘ on Hazlitt
• Toni Jensen, ‘Women in the Fracklands: On Water, Land, Bodies, and Standing Rock‘ on Catapult
• Morgan Jerkins, ‘In Search of Black Atlantis‘ on Hazlitt
• Melinda Wenner Moyer, ‘A bug for Alzheimer’s?‘ on Aeon
• Carly Silver, ‘How Ancient Cure-Alls Paved the Way for Drug Regulation‘ on The Atlantic
• Laurie Shrage, ‘We need a contract for co-parenting, not just for marriage‘ on Aeon
• Rachel Aviv, ‘How Albert Woodfox Survived Solitary‘ in The New Yorker
• Jo Marchant, ‘This 3,500-Year-Old Greek Tomb Upended What We Thought We Knew About the Roots of Western Civilization‘ on Smithsonian
• Kathleen Hale, ‘Murder on Union Hill Road‘ on Hazlitt

Film, Television, Music, Art, Fashion and Sport:

• Emily Yahr, ‘From guilty pleasure to Emmy Awards: The delightfully weird history of Lifetime movies‘ in The Washington Post
• Victoria Coren Mitchell, ‘I’m so glad to spoil this film for you‘ in The Guardian
• Frances Katz, ‘Is Your TV Turned On? True Stories from the Cable Trenches‘ on Catapult
• Limara Salt, ‘Why are interracial relationships so rare in film?‘ on The Pool
• Helena Fitzgerald, ‘Bruce Springsteen: The Ultimate Dad‘ on The Catapult

The interviews/profiles:

• Alexandra Kleeman on Bookanista in The Guardian
• Janie Chang and Shilpi Gowda on Literary Hub
• Cat Marnell in The Cut
• Roxane Gay in The New York Times and Vogue 
• Sarah Pinborough in The Bookseller
• Joyce Carol Oates in The TLS
• Elizabeth Hand on Literary Hub
• Anne Applebaum on Spiegel
• Vic James on Reader Dad
• Yaa Gyasi in The Bookseller and The Guardian
• Claudia Rankine in The New Yorker
• Fiona Melrose on The Writes of Woman
• Kathleen Rooney on Literary Hub
• Mary Miller on Electric Literature
• Ayelet Waldman in The New York Times
• Bernadine Evaristo on the British Council
• Katherine Rooney on Electric Literature
• Erica Ferencik on Electric Literature
• Tara Betts on The Rumpus
• Ottessa Moshfegh on The Fanzine
• Elif Batuman in The New Yorker
• Xiaolu Guo in The Guardian
• Lucy Jane Bledsoe on The Rumpus
• Emma Flint on Foyles and in The Bookseller
• Deborah Lipstadt in The Guardian
• Mary Karr on Lenny
• Jo Mazelis on Alephi
• Jhumpa Lahiri on Medium
• Lindsey Lee Johnson on Electric Literature

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
• Lola Okolosie in The Guardian
• Sarah Gerard, ‘Mouthful‘ on Hazlitt
• Books by Women We’d Love to See in English on Literary Hub

In the Media: November 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.

What else can begin this fortnight’s coverage?

• Lindy West, ‘Blaming political correctness for Trump is like blaming the civil rights movement for Jim Crow‘ in The Guardian
• Rebecca Traister, ‘Shattered‘ in The Cut
• Various, ‘Waking Up in Trump’s America, Part 1‘ in The New Enquiry
• Dayna Tortorici, ‘What Can Feminists Do?‘ on n+1
• Elizabeth Drew, ‘How It Happened‘ in The New York Review of Books
• Mira Jacob, ‘Here’s What I’m Telling My Brown Son About Trump’s America‘ on Buzzfeed
• Sarah Churchwell, ‘Hillary Clinton didn’t fail us. We failed her‘ in The Guardian
• Various on the US election in The Guardian
• Michelle Dean, ‘Don’t Stop Believin’‘ in New Republic
• Linda Mannheim, ‘after the shock waves of the us elections, how do we locate ourselves?‘ on 3:am
• Heather Wells Peterson, ‘What Can Art Do After Trump?‘ on Literary Hub
• Masha Gessen, ‘Autocracy: Rules for Survival‘ in The New York Review of Books
• Garnette Cadogan, ‘Staying and Fighting, and Finding Strength in Poetry‘ on Literary Hub
• Leslie Jamison, ‘The Day After Trump Won‘ on Granta
• Nicole Chung, ‘The Day After The Election, I Told My Daughter The Truth‘ on Buzzfeed
• Bim Adewunmi, ‘What Is America So Afraid Of?‘ on Buzzfeed
• Laurie Penny, ‘On the Election of Donald J Trump‘ in The New Statesman
• Ashley Weatherford, ‘If Trump Scares You, You’re Getting a Glimpse of What It Feels Like to Be Black in America‘ in The Cut
• Ann Friedman, ‘Finish Your Ugly-Crying. Here’s What Comes Next.‘ in The Cut
• Gloria Steinem, ‘After the election of Donald Trump, we will not mourn. We will organize‘ in The Guardian
• Lindy West, ‘Her Loss‘ in The New York Times
• Lola Okolosie, ‘How to tell the children about Trump? After all, they deserve the truth‘ in The Guardian
• Maureen Langloss, ‘It’s A Man’s World‘ on her blog
• Ayahna Hamilton, ‘“Progress”, Black Women and the US Presidential Election‘ on gal-dem
• Hadley Freeman, ‘I’ve heard enough of the white male rage narrative‘ in The Guardian
• Sarah Ditum, ‘Donald Trump has grabbed America by the pussy, and it’s women who will suffer‘ in the New Statesman
• Amelia Tate, ‘Control, Alt-Right, Retweet: How social media paved the way for President Trump‘ in the New Statesman
• Anne Enright, ‘Never has male anatomy been so waved about in politics‘ in The Irish Times
• Allison Pearson, ‘Why misogyny was The Donald’s trump card‘ in The Telegraph
• Maya Goodfellow, ‘Make no mistake – Donald Trump’s victory represents a racist “whitelash”‘ in the New Statesman
• Caroline Crampton, ‘Voting for Trump and Brexit: what the working class revolt is really about‘ in the New Statesman
• Kelcey Parker Ervick, ‘How We Talk About Women’s Lives‘ on Literary Hub
• Joanna Walsh, ‘Time to reclaim language: words are more important than ever in the age of post-truth politics‘ in the New Statesman
• Bridget Minamore, ‘As a woman of colour I foresaw Trump was going to win‘ on The Pool
• Nicole Chung, ‘Parenting the Election‘ on Hazlitt
• Chloé Cooper Jones, ‘Miami Dispatch: Unmoored Realities on the Campaign Trail‘ on Medium
• Pamela Newkirk, ‘The Myth of a Post-Racial America‘ on Literary Hub
• Susan Straight, ‘I Drove 3,582 Miles to Vote for the President‘ on Literary Hub
• Nicole Dennis-Benn, ‘My First Visit to the Church of American Democracy‘ on Literary Hub
• Lauren Elkin, ‘Donald Trump, Anti-Flaneur‘ on Literary Hub
• Barbara Kingsolver, ‘End this misogynistic horror show. Put Hillary Clinton in the White House‘ in The Guardian
• Jill Filipovic, ‘The Men Feminists Left Behind‘ in The New York Times
• Jessa Crispin, ‘Madam Prescient‘ on The Baffler
• Nikole Hannah-Jones, ‘Trump’s Inconvenient Racial Truth‘ in The New York Times
• Olga Khazan, ‘The Lasting Harm of Trump-Style Sexism‘ on The Atlantic
• Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, ‘What Hillary Clinton’s Fans Love About Her‘ in The Atlantic
• Isabel Fonseca, ‘Voters, guns and hurricanes‘ in The TLS
• Rebecca Solnit, ‘New York City Is a Book Conservatives Should Read‘ on Literary Hub
• Emily Harnett, ‘On the Horror of Language, and the Horror of Trump‘ on Literary Hub
• Elaine Showalter, ‘Pilloried Clinton‘ in the TLS

Photograph by Nye’Lyn Tho

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Aminatta Forna, ‘The Many Ways in Which the Heart Can Break‘ on Literary Hub
• Martha Greengrass, ‘Running with the Wolves: An Introduction to The Bloody Chamber‘ on Waterstones
• Jenn Ashworth, ‘A moment that changed me: stealing the book that saved my life‘ in The Guardian
• Sabina Murphy, ‘What Can Historical Fiction Accomplish that History Does Not?‘ on Literary Hub
• Anna Wilson, ‘Full-body Reading’ on Aeon
• Saba Imtiaz, ‘Searching for a 14th-Century Scribe in Modern Jordan‘ on Literary Hub
• Sara Schaff, ‘When Your Characters Live Inside Your Childhood Home‘ on Literary Hub
• Kathy Gale, ‘Successful Women‘ in The Bookseller
• Naomi Frisby, ‘Coverage of Experimental Fiction Writing Is a Half-Formed Thing‘ on Tilted Axis
• Gabrielle Bellot, ‘A Young Woman Called Death…‘ on Literary Hub
• Gaby Wood, ‘Elena Ferrante: how to see an invisible author‘ in The Telegraph
• Elena Ferrante, ‘I believe that books, once written, have no need of their authors‘ in The Observer
• Miranda Carter, ‘Dining with death: crime fiction’s long affair with food‘ in The Guardian
• Linda Grant, ‘I can’t write after lunch, in a public place, or when anyone is in the house‘ in The Guardian
• Arisa White, ‘In Praise of Our Black Women Poets‘ on Literary Hub
• Natalie Jerome, ‘Dear next generation…‘ in The Bookseller
• Candice Carty-Williams, ‘I’m Temi? I’m Temi from The Glamma Kids, you know?‘ in The Bookseller
• Margaret Busby, ‘Is it still a case of plus ça change?‘ in The Bookseller
• Ama Josephine Budge, ‘We must constantly question what our own agenda might be‘ in The Bookseller
• Kelsey McKinney, ‘Out of Print: The Original Nancy Drew Novels‘ on Lenny
• Sara Nović, ‘What Does an Artist Look Like?‘ on The James Franco Review
• A.J. Ashworth, ‘Introducing Writers on Rejection: A new series‘ on her blog
• Sarah Domet, ‘The Search for Home in American Fiction‘ on Literary Hub
• Alexander Chee, ‘Elena Ferrante, Private Novelist‘ on New Republic
• Emma-Jane Kirby, ‘Open to Ghosts: Writing The Optician of Lampedusa‘ on Waterstones’ blog
• ‘Virago publishers share the books that made them feminist‘ in Stylist
• Carina del Valle Schorske, ‘On the Perilous Potential of Feminist Silence‘ on Literary Hub
• Elaine Blair, ‘Elena Ferrante: Hiding in Plain Sight‘ in The New York Times
• Tanya Landman, ‘The MPs’ expenses scandal breathed life into history‘ in The Guardian
• Elena Ferrante, ‘What An Ugly Child She Is‘ in The New Yorker
• Lennie Goodings, ‘Feminism, pornography and lots of crying in the loos: 43 years of Virago‘ in The Telegraph
• Lyz Lenz, ‘Why We Love to Be Haunted‘ on Literary Hub
• Evie Gaughan, ‘Gender Bias in the Literary World‘ on Women Writers, Women’s Books

Personal essays/memoir:

• Rachel Klein, ‘When the Body Breaks Its Silence‘ on Catapult
• Cari Luna, ‘Under Threat of the Really Big One‘ on Catapult
• Millissa Kingbird, ‘Woman Standing at Rock‘ on The Rumpus
• Nancy Matson, ‘My Low-Wage Job at the Circus‘ on Catapult
• Amy Zhang, ‘Lotus Pods and Jambalaya in Jianguomen: Memory and Change in a Beijing Neighborhood‘ on Catapult
• Salley Vickers, ‘I didn’t love my mum enough to kill her‘ in The Times (£)
• Holly Müller, ‘Fascism and Its Echoes, and the Othering of the Mentally Ill‘ on Literary Hub
• Deborah Jackson Taffa, ‘This American Paradise‘ on The Rumpus
• Jacqueline Doyle, ‘What Did You Say?‘ on Medium
• Deepti Kapoor, ‘All the Things I Thought About When We Were Naming My Nephew (aka A गुलाब by Any Other Name; aka Song for Kian)‘ on Catapult
• Emma Sloley, ‘Nudists Always Play Volleyball‘ on Catapult
• Kally Mays, ‘We, the Hunted: Dogs, Resistance, and Survival‘ on Catapult
• Merritt Tierce, ‘Carved in Wood‘ on The Paris Review
• Louise Penny, ‘The Last Promise‘ on AARP
• Susan Straight, ‘Every Month Is Black History Month‘ on Literary Hub
• Mariam, ‘So, What Generation Immigrant Are You?‘ on Femsplain
• Scaachi Koul, ‘There’s No Recipe For Growing Up‘ on Buzzfeed
• Emma Straub, ‘Teenage Dream‘ on Tin House
• Mikella Clements, ‘When Your Family Business Isn’t a Family‘ on Catapult
• Helena Fitzgerald, ‘The Accidental City‘ on Catapult

 

Feminism:

• Sharine Taylor, ‘Body Politics: Beyoncé, Teyana Taylor, and the Liberation of Black Women Through Dance‘ on Noisey
• Mila Kunis, ‘You’ll Never Work In This Town Again…‘ on A Plus
• Olga Khazan, ‘A Diary of Toxic Love‘ on The Atlantic
• ‘Stanford Sexual Assault Case Survivor Emily Doe Speaks Out‘ in Glamour
• Ashley Nelson Levy, ‘Of Course By Now You Know This Story‘ on Catapult
• Megan Garber, ‘How Rom-Coms Undermine Women‘ on The Atlantic
• Claire Heuchan, ‘For the White Woman Who Wants to Know How to be My Friend: A Black Feminist Guide to Interracial Solidarity‘ on Sister Outrider
• Caroline O’Donoghue, ‘There will always be a place in the world for witches‘ on The Pool

Society and Politics:

• Marian Bull, ‘California Dreaming‘ on Eater
• Antonia Juhasz, ‘Inside the Battle Over the Dakota Access Pipeline‘ in Pacific Standard
• Paris Lees, ‘Punching Bags‘ on Vice
• Amy Wollard, ‘Tent Revival‘ on VQR
• Marilynne Robinson, ‘Against Oligarchy‘ on Literary Hub

Film, Television, Music, Art, Fashion and Sport:

• Dafna Izenberg, ‘In The Air Again‘ on Hazlitt
• Alana Massey, ‘Your Brands and Lovers‘ on Real Life
• Amber Butchart, ‘Why our love affair with leopard print is never going to die‘ on The Pool
• Soraya Roberts, ‘Adrienne Shelly Will Take You There‘ on Hazlitt

The interviews/profiles:

• Jillian Tamaki on Room
• Jenn Ashworth on Wales Arts Review
• Zadie Smith in The Bookseller, Vanity Fair and The Telegraph
• Belle Boggs on The Rumpus
• Anakana Schofield in the New Statesman and on The Writes of Woman
• Malka Older on The Rumpus
• Helena Kelly in The Bookseller
• Sarah Ladipo Manyika in the New Statesman and on The Writes of Woman
• Eimear McBride in the New Statesman
• Rachel Cusk in the New Statesman
• Eleanor Hooker in The Irish Times
• Petina Gappah in The Guardian
• Dodie Bellamy in The White Review
• Alexandra Kleeman in Guernica
• Jade Chang on Electric Literature
• Esmé Weijun Wang on The Rumpus and Catapult
• Ann Patchett in Guernica
• Michelle Tea in BOMB Magazine
• Vi Khi Nao in Electric Literature
• Therese Oneill on The Millions
• Kelly Luce on Electric Literature and Tin House
• Fanny Howe on Literary Hub
• Jane Alison on The Rumpus
• Jasna Ani on Words Without Borders
• Wendy C. Ortiz on Electric Literature
• Cristina Sánchez-Andrade on Bookanista
• M.J. Carter on From First Page to Last
• Anne Carson in The Guardian

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
• Lola Okolosie in The Guardian
• Sarah Gerard, ‘Mouthful‘ on Hazlitt
• Books by Women We’d Love to See in English on Literary Hub

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

In the Media, June 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.

It’s impossible to begin with anything other than the Stanford rape case. The victim’s court statement was published on Buzzfeed and went viral. The piece, along with responses from Brock Turner’s father and friends, including a female friend who defended him, have prompted some impassioned and powerful pieces: Louise O’Neill wrote, ‘20 minutes is an awfully long time when you’re the one being raped‘ in the Irish Examiner; Estelle B. Freedman, ‘When Feminists Take On Judges Over Rape‘ in The New York Times; Sarah Lunnie, ‘Maybe the word “rapist” is a problem: The utility of nouns and verbs, or accepting who we are and what we do‘ on Salon; Adrienne LaFrance, ‘What Happens When People Stop Talking About the Stanford Rape Case?‘ on The Atlantic; Kim Saumell, ‘I was never raped but…‘ on Medium; Rebecca Makkai, ‘The Power and Limitations of Victim-Impact Statements‘ in The New Yorker; Roe McDermott, ‘He Said Nothing‘ on The Coven; Glosswitch, ‘Does the outrage over the Stanford rape case do anything to help victims?‘ in the New Statesman

The other big news this fortnight was Lisa McInerney’s debut novel, The Glorious Heresies, taking The Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2016. Justine Jordan wrote, ‘Sweary Lady’s riot of invention is a well-deserved winner of the Baileys prize‘ in The Guardian. While McInerney wrote about her working day for The Guardian and shared a secret in ‘Bad Behaviourism‘ on Scottish Book Trust

There’s a new series on Literary Hub about women writers in translation. Written by a group of translators, each fortnight they’re looking at a country and the women writers from there yet to be translated into English. So far they’ve covered Germany, China and Italy. I’ve added it to the regulars at the bottom of the page.

And finally, the excellent Jendella Benson has a new column on Media Diversified. This week’s is ‘How to Raise a Champion‘ and I’ve also added her to the list of regulars at the bottom of the page.

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Natasha Walter, ‘We’ve been expecting you, Ms Bond: why fiction needs more female spies‘ in The Guardian
• Barbara Donsky, ‘The Power of Nancy Drew‘ on Women Writers Women’s Books
• Kaulie Lewis, ‘Books I Wish I Wrote: On Writerly Jealousy‘ on The Millions
• Daisy Buchanan, ‘Sex, drugs and radical feminism. At 50, Valley Of The Dolls is as relevant as ever‘ on The Pool
• Tessa Hadley, ‘At Home in the Past‘ in The New Yorker
• Peggy Frew, ‘The closest Mum ever came to saying ‘I love you’ – Dad never even came close‘ in The Irish Times
• Joanna Walsh, ‘The N Word – Against the Novel‘ in The Irish Times
• M.J. Carter, ‘Who Were the Infidels‘ on For Winter Nights
• Lisa Dempster, ‘If you doubted there was gender bias in literature, this study proves you wrong‘ in The Guardian
• Rachael Acks, ‘An Open Letter to a Novel I Was Certain I’d Love (And Didn’t)‘ on BookRiot
• Teresa Preston, ‘Where Are All the Single Ladies in Fiction‘ on BookRiot
• Sarah Hepola, ‘What My Parents Really Think About My Memoir of Alcoholism‘ on Literary Hub
• Alix Hawley, ‘Angels of the North: On ‘Happy Valley’ and Anne Brontë‘ on The Millions
• Ainehi Edoro, ‘Beyoncé is not shining a light on African literature – it’s the other way round‘ in The Guardian
• Lionel Shriver’s ‘teenage diary: bad spelling and unreturned affections‘ in The Guardian
• Mo Moulton, ‘Dorothy L. Sayers, Marjorie Barber, and the Story of a Wartime Lemon‘ in The Toast
• Christina Patterson, ‘Memorising Poetry Is an Art of the Heart‘ in The Guardian
• Sarah Madison, ‘Dear Broke Reader: Your Sense of Entitlement is Killing Me‘ on her website
• Kelly Kanayama, ‘Even with “inclusive” Shakespeare, whiteness takes priority‘ on Media Diversified
• Rivka Galchen, ‘Where Is Luckily?‘ in The New Yorker
• Mylo Freeman, ‘Black girls can be princesses too, that’s why I wrote my books‘ in The Guardian
• Annie Liontas, ‘Inherit the Word‘ in The New York Times
• JoAnna Novak, ‘The Long Dash‘ on Catapult
• Lucie Whitehouse, ‘Why Strong Female Friendships Are So Important In Literature Today‘ in Bustle
• Kate Angus, ‘How to Tell the Future with Books‘ on Literary Hub
• Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, ‘Writers need new ways of talking about Africa’s past and present‘ in The Guardian
• Amber Sparks, ‘Let Us Now Praise Famous Short Story Writers (And Demand They Write a Novel)‘ on Electric Literature
• James Wallace Harris, ‘The Resurrection of Lady Dorothy Mills‘ on BookRiot
• Alison Flood, ‘Yale English students call for end of focus on white male writers‘ in The Guardian
• Anne Tyler, ‘Let’s face it, Shakespeare’s plots are terrible’ in The Guardian
• C.J. Flood, ‘Teen girls have a right to roam too‘ in The Guardian
• Michelle Dean, ‘In Between Daze‘ in The Awl
• Charlotte Eyre, ‘Crossan wins YA Book Prize 2016‘ in The Bookseller
• Tabitha Blankenbiller, ‘Girly Book Covers and Man Book Clubs‘ on Electric Literature
• Saengeeta Bandyopadhyay, ‘My God, so Much Sex?‘ on English Pen (translated by Arunava Sinha)
• Michelle Dean, ‘Read it and keep: is it time to reassess the ‘beach read’?‘ in The Guardian
• Sarra Manning, ‘I Love Books, Let Me Count The Ways…‘ in Red
• Katherine Wilson, ‘How Elena Ferrante made the neglected Naples a must-visit destination‘ on The Pool
• Jonathan Coe, ‘Enid Blyton? She gave me my sense of social justice‘ in The Guardian
• Sarah Hilary, ‘A Gift for Killing: Patricia Highsmith’s legacy for today’s crime writers‘ on Virago
• Esther Allen, ‘From the Translator: The Song Remains the Same?‘ on Words Without Borders
• Monica Tan, ‘Women and Melbourne writers dominate Miles Franklin 2016 shortlist‘ in The Guardian
• Amelia Gentleman, ‘The mystifying disappearance of children’s author Helen Bailey‘ in The Guardian
• Rachel Buchanan, ‘How Shakespeare shaped Greer’s feminist masterpiece‘ on ABC
• Ursula K. LeGuin, ‘Up the Amazon with the BS Machine‘ on Book View Cafe
• Emily Carr, ‘Finding Poems in My Own Labyrinth‘ on Literary Hub
• Gretchen Gerzina, ‘“True Love”: The Victorian (re)discovery that transformed our understanding of black women’s literature‘ on Salon

Personal essays/memoir:

• Melynda Fuller, ‘Rapture of the Deep‘ on The Rumpus
• Claire Hoffman, ‘Growing Up in Meditationland‘ in The Cut
• Tanwi Nandini Islam, ‘How Failure Became My New Beginning‘ in Elle
• Maya Binyam, ‘That Place Becomes a Wound‘ on The Hairpin
• Stephanie Danler, ‘On Losing Something Precious‘ on Literary Hub
• Marina Benjamin, ‘My Daughter, Myself‘ on Aeon
• Rebecca Worby, ‘Expanding the Story‘ in Guernica
• Cathy Day, ‘They Found a Meth Lab in Cole Porter’s Childhood Home‘ on Literary Hub
• Bryony Gordon, ‘How my relationships with men were affected by my mental illness‘ on The Pool
• Allison Moorer, ‘Below The Belt‘ on Guernica
• Rina Caballar, ‘How to Make Polvoron: Growing Up With a Mother Overseas‘ in The Toast
• Soniah Kamal, ‘The Reluctant Writer‘ on Catapult
• Stephanie Wittels Wachs, ‘How to Reinvent Yourself‘ on Medium
• Elisa Gabbert, ‘Time, Money, Happiness‘ on The Smart Set
• Gillian B. White, ‘Muhammad Ali and the Importance of Identity‘ on The Atlantic
• Erin Williams, ‘Before I Was A Mother, I Was A Drunk‘ on Buzzfeed
• Sarah Sweeney, ‘Some Girls‘ on Catapult
• Nicole Walker, ‘DNA‘ on The Rumpus
• Rufi Thorpe, ‘The Plus Side to Marrying a Total Stranger‘ on Female First
• Ulrika Campbell, ‘My Mother Told Me I Should Get Breast Implants When I Was 14‘ on XOJane
• Bridget Minamore, ‘The simple joy shared by two women on the road‘ on The Pool
• Marie Phillips, ‘Can you ever truly feel at home in a country you weren’t born in?‘ on The Pool
• Francine Prose, ‘Enthralled by Sicily, Again‘ in The New York Times
• Jane Demuth, ‘This Is to Mother You: On Caring for a Toxic Parent in Her Greatest Time of Need‘ on Longreads

Feminism:

• Marina Benjamin, ‘The ‘middlepause’: what no one tells you about turning 50‘ in The Telegraph
• Alexandra Heminsley, ‘Why BodyForm’s new ad is a game changer‘ on The Pool
• Megan Garber, ‘When Newsweek ‘Struck Terror in the Hearts of Single Women’‘ on The Atlantic
• Robyn Wilder, ‘Finding your place in the mummy-cliques‘ on The Pool
• Helen Phillips, ‘Escaping the Self-Critical Eye for the Sake of My Daughter‘ on Literary Hub
• Holly Brockwell, ‘“There’s not a shadow of regret”: one woman’s diary of her struggle to become voluntarily infertile aged 30‘ in Stylist
• Jessica Valenti, ‘My life as a ‘sex object’‘ in The Guardian
• Orbala, ‘On Conditional Love in Patriarchies and Death to Patriarchy‘ on Freedom from the Forbidden
• Claire Heuchan, ‘Your Silence Will Not Protect You: Racism in the Feminist Movement‘ on Sister Outrider
• Ann Friedman, ‘Pop Feminism Doesn’t Mean the End of the Movement‘ in The Cut
• Caroline Criado-Perez, ‘When it comes to online abuse, we need to see a fuller picture‘ on The Pool
• Dawn Foster, ‘If I ever see you in the street, I hope you get shot’ on The London Review of Books
• Una Mullally, ‘Shifting Ground‘ in Granta
• Hadley Hall Meares, ‘The invention of the paper bag was a triumph of feminism‘ on Aeon

Society and Politics:

• Alana Massey, ‘Your Parents’ Romantic Lives Don’t Have to Determine Your Own‘ in The Cut
• Sonia Smith, ‘Unfriendly Climate‘ in Texas Monthly
• Nikole Hannah-Jones, ‘Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City‘ in The New York Times Magazine
• Ijeoma Oluo, ‘The Brown, Queer, And Poor Are Not The Ones Holding The Left Back‘ in The Establishment
• Mary Milz, ‘Blindsided: A Dream Engagement Turned Nightmare‘ in Indianapolis Monthly
• Alex Mar, ‘What Ever Happened to “The Most Liberated Woman in America”?‘ on Longreads
• Andrea Nguyen, ‘The History of Pho‘ on Lucky Peach
• Ella Risbridger, ‘If I am your “carer”, can I also be your girlfriend, mother or daughter?‘on The Pool
• Kathleen McAuliffe, ‘Disgust Made Us Human‘ on Aeon
• Sarah Hughes, ‘Sexuality today: how we embarked on a new age of freedom and tolerance‘ in The Guardian
• Kathryn Schultz, ‘Citizen Khan‘ in The New Yorker
• Ashley Powers, ‘The Man in the Woods‘ in the California Sunday Magazine
• Lynn Enright, ‘Negotiating the etiquette of love in the airport‘ on The Pool
• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, ‘The disastrous message sexism in the Labour party is giving young women voters‘ on The Pool
• Jacinda Townsend, ‘Heteronormativity and the Single Mother‘ in The White Review
• Glosswitch, ‘To ignore someone’s educational background isn’t “fair play” – it perpetuates inequality‘ in the New Statesman
• Olga Khazan, ‘Not White, Not Rich, and Seeking Therapy‘ in The Atlantic
• Rebecca Traister, ‘Hillary Clinton vs. Herself‘ in New York Magazine

Film, Television, Music, Art, Fashion and Sport:

• Eleanor Margolis, ‘Why, after years of gay-free cartoons, I can’t get excited about Finding Dory’s lesbian couple‘ on the New Statesman
• Chitra Ramaswamy, ‘Why we need more gay characters on screen‘ on The Pool
• Kristen Lopez, ‘How the Weepy Fantasy ‘Me Before You’ Infantilizes the Disabled‘ on Flavorwire
• Harriet Hall, ‘Watch author Jojo Moyes respond to controversy over the portrayal of disability in Me Before You‘ in Stylist
• Clover Hope, ‘How White Are the Women’s Magazine Covers of 2016 so Far?‘ on Jezebel
• Kat George, ‘Why Missy Elliott’s feminist legacy is criminally underrated‘ on Dazed
• Désirée Wariaro, ‘Beyoncé and Resistance‘ on Media Diversified

The interviews/profiles:

• Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney in The New York Times
• Annie Proulx in The Telegraph, The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal
• Marilynne Robinson on BookRiot
• Nina Stibbe in Red
• Mary Roach in The New York Times
• Christina MacSweeney on Words Without Borders
• Sarah Hepola on Salon
• Rebecca Schiff on The Rumpus
• Stephanie Danler on Literary Hub
• Jessica Valenti on BookRiot and The Pool
• Lynne Kutsukake on Bloom
• Sarah Gerard on The Huffington Post
• Rita Mae Brown on Broadly
• Lydia Millet and Jenny Offill on Slate
• Nell Dunn on The F Word
• Sarah Perry on The History Girls and Five Books
• Yaa Gyasi on NPR
• Lynn Steger Strong on The Rumpus
• Eleanor Wasserberg on Waterstones
• Sylvia Patterson in The Guardian
• Laura Lippman on The Los Angeles Review of Books
• Patricia Engel on Electric Literature
• Hanya Yanagihara on Waterstones and The Bookseller
• Leila Aboulala (and Elnathan John) on Literary Hub
• Emma Jane Unsworth and Rachel B. Glaser on Granta
• Emma Straub on BookRiot and Electric Literature
• Kathleen Alcott in The Guardian
• Julie Myerson on Bookanista
• Emma Cline on The Bookseller
• Weina Dai Randel on History from a Woman’s Perspective
• Joanna Walsh in The Honest Ulsterman
• Helen MacKinven on Christina Banach’s website
• Charlotte Hobson in the Financial Times
• Rebecca Perry in The Honest Ulsterman
• Kimberle Crenshaw in The Guardian
• Alice Walker on Salon

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

In the Media, May 2016, Part Three

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.

Books in translation have been having a moment following Han Kang and translator Deborah Smith winning the Man Booker International Prize for The Vegetarian. They wrote, ‘It is fascinating to ponder the possibili­ties of language‘ for The Guardian; Charles Montgomery wrote, ‘The Triumph of Han Kang and the Rise of Women’s Writing in Korea‘ in The Los Angeles Review of Books; Sophie Hughes wrote, ‘On the Joyful Tears of a Translator‘ on Literary Hub. Judith Vonberg writes, ‘Translated fiction is not a genre. Why do bookshops tell us it is?‘ in The New Statesman and Anjali Enjeti asks, ‘Do Americans Hate Foreign Fiction‘ on Literary Hub

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Rose Tremain, ‘Forty Years as a Writer‘ on Waterstones’ Blog
• Francesca Simon, ‘I’m a mixture of both Horrid Henry and Perfect Peter‘ in The Telegraph
• Rebecca Solnit, ‘To Break the Story, You Must Break the Status Quo‘ on Literary Hub
• Rose Courteau, ‘Team Ladislaw: What Henry James (and Everyone Else) Gets Wrong About Middlemarch‘ on The Millions
• Claire Christian, ‘Self-publish and be sneered at?‘ in The Bookseller
• Hannah Engler, ‘Nora Ephron and Literary Moms‘ on Bookriot
• Sarah LeFanu, ‘on Women’s Writing: A Small Bit of Recent History‘ on Something Rhymed
• Sarah Boxer, ‘Reading Proust on My Cellphone‘ on The Atlantic
• Casey Rocheteau, ‘Literary Juneteenth (or Why I Left The Offing)‘ on The Offing
• Julie Feng, ‘The Weight of the World, The Weight of Words‘ on Winter Tangerine
• Amy Watkin, ‘Harper Lee Would Like a Word With You‘ on McSweeney’s
• Rufi Thorpe, ‘Actually, All Writers Steal‘ on Literary Hub
• Julia Rochester, ‘My fiction is preoccupied with belonging and exile‘ in The Guardian
• Nuzaifa, ‘Muslims Represented in YA Fiction‘ on Word Contessa
• Zara Raab, ‘These Molten Flowers: on Lola Ridge, radical poet and activist‘ on Critical Flame
• Soniah Kamal, ‘When My Authentic Is Your Exotic‘ on Literary Hub
• Glosswitch, ‘Re-reading Wide Sargasso Sea‘ on Glosswatch
• Paula Erizanu, ‘Sarah Crossan wins the Irish children’s book of the year‘ in The Guardian
• Elif Shafak, ‘Writing Fiction is an Act of Faith‘ on Waterstones’ Blog
• Bridget Read, ‘Jenny Diski, Down the Final Rabbit Hole‘ on Literary Hub
• Melissa Holbrook Pierson, ‘That’s Inspiration!: Rereading Annie Dillard‘ in The Los Angeles Review of Books
• Enrique Vila-Matas, ‘The Unstoppable Myth of Alejandra Pizarnik‘ on Literary Hub
• Judith Shulevitz, ‘The Brontës’ Secret‘ on The Atlantic
• Alex Clark, ‘‘No drugs on the bus’: Carol Ann Duffy takes a road trip‘ in The Guardian
• Anne Enright, ‘In search of the real Maeve Brennan‘ in The Guardian
• Milena Busquets, ‘Writing my way out of the loneliness of grief‘ on The Pool
• Laura Miller, ‘Introducing My Ántonia‘ on Slate
• Nina Stibbe, ‘Helena Bonham Carter was cast in a TV series about my life – and all I could do was blag a Harry Potter ticket from her,’ in The Telegraph
• Candace Opper, ‘The Suicide Memoir: True Crime, Mystery and Grief‘ on Literary Hub
• Rebecca Smart, ‘Pride not prejudice’ in The Bookseller
• Nicole Brinkley, ‘“Women built this castle”: An in-depth look at sexism in YA.‘ on YA Interrobang
• Samantha Shannon, ‘An abridged Da Vinci Code implies teens need simple books – they don’t‘ in The Guardian
• Lucy Caldwell, ‘On Why Short Stories Matter‘ on Faber & Faber Blog
• Lynn Steger Strong, ‘Topography of a Novel: Hold Still‘ on Blunderbuss
• Robin Wasserman, ‘What Does It Mean When We Call Women Girls‘ on Literary Hub
• Rebecca Wait, ‘Following the Leader‘ on Waterstones’ Blog
• Marianne Tatipo, ‘Young, BAME, and chasing the ‘alternative route into publishing’ dream‘ in The Bookseller
• Chris Power, ‘A brief survey of the short story: Lucia Berlin‘ in The Guardian
• Janice P. Nimura, ‘History Never Ends, It Just Gets Retold‘ on Literary Hub
• Helena Fitzgerald, ‘How Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love Saved Me‘ on Literary Hub
• Laura Smith, ‘House Hunting with Martha Gellhorn‘ on Hazlitt
• Mikita Brottman, ‘Jane Austen’s Ivory Cage‘ in The American Scholar
• Faye Bird, ‘Why I Wanted to Write About Selective Mutism‘ on Scottish Booktrust
• Chris Kraus, ‘I Love Dick happened in real life, but it’s not a memoir‘ in The Guardian

Personal essays/memoir:

• Jess Carroll, ‘Watch Me Bathe‘ on Hazlitt
• Amy Jones, ‘Stuck in the middle — between body positivity and clean eating‘ on Medium
• Carly Rose, ‘My Journey Into the Woods: What Stephen Sondheim Taught Me About Conceiving a Child‘ on Electric Literature
• Joanna Sing, ‘What I Have Learnt from Being (Occasionally) White-Passing‘ on Gal-Dem
• Nicole Cliffe, ‘How God Messed Up My Happy Atheist Life‘ on Christianity Today
• Eva Hagberg Fisher, ‘Vital Signs‘ on Guernica
• Maggie O’Farrell, ‘‘I have three seconds before she draws blood’: life with extreme eczema‘ in The Guardian
• Helena Fitzgerald, ‘The Fierce Triumph of Loneliness‘ on Catapult
• Vanessa Hua, ‘The Sandwich Generation‘ in the San Francisco Chronicle
• Anna March, ‘The Burn‘ on Midnight Breakfast
• Katrina Kenison, ‘Solitude: A Reprieve from the Noise of Doing‘ on On Being
• Sinéad Gleeson, ‘Blue Hills and Chalk Bones‘ on Granta
• Nina Stibbe’s letter to her younger self: ‘Try not to have a weave perm’ in The Guardian
• Rufi Thorpe, ‘Do the Deer‘ on Medium
• Rumaan Alam, ‘What Happened When I Tried to Have It All‘ on The Cut

Feminism:

• Katie J.M. Baker, ‘Ethics and the Eye of the Beholder‘ on Buzzfeed
• Alana Massey, ‘The Clique Imaginary‘ in The New Inquiry
• Lena Dunham, ‘Sorry, Not Sorry: My Apology Addiction‘ on Linkedin
• Emma Garman, ‘A Liberated Woman: The Story of Margaret King‘ on Longreads
• Joanna Walsh, ‘“She wore a USB cord instead of a necklace”: whatever happened to Cyberfeminism?‘ in The New Statesman
• Rebecca Reid, ‘GirLand, Habbo Hotel and me: how I learned to masturbate online‘ in The New Statesman
• Lola Okolosie, ‘“Misogynoir is a very real problem and feminism can no longer ignore it”‘ in Stylist
• Laura Maw, ‘Rhythms of Fear‘ on Hazlitt
• Afak Afgun, ‘Women carry a heavier coffin‘ on Sister-Hood
• Suzanne Moore, ‘Stop telling women they’re doing feminism wrong‘ in The Guardian
• Sarah Menkedick, ‘In Defense of Motherhood as Art‘ on Vela
• Sian Norris, ‘The value of women’s silence‘ on Sian and Crooked Rib
• Lasha, ‘bell hooks vs. Beyoncé: What this feminist scholarly critique gets wrong about “Lemonade” and liberation‘ on Salon
• Sari Botton, ‘Unchain My Heart: On the Emotional Effectiveness – and Lingering Sexism – of Jewish Divorce‘ on Longreads
• Lindy West, ‘Why women need to be bigger: on why we all should be loud and proud‘ in Stylist

Society and Politics:

• Charlotte Riley, ‘Working class girls don’t threaten our universities, they enrich them‘ in The New Statesman
• Jessica Contrera, ‘13, right now‘ in The Washington Post
• Daisy Hernández, ‘Kiss of Death‘ in Guernica
• Lindy West, ‘My husband isn’t fat, and that enrages people‘ on The Pool
• Holly Root-Gutteridge, ‘The songs of the wolves‘ on Aeon
• Mary Wang, ‘Seeing Through the Fog, Part Two‘ on Guernica
• Tracy O’Neill, ‘The Long Line to Tonight‘ on Catapult
• Ella Wilks-Harper, ‘There’s a Fine Line Between Tokenism and Diversity‘ on Gal-Dem
• Tracie White, ‘The Puzzle Solver‘ on Stanford Medicine
• Katherine Laidlaw, ‘Hold the Fort‘ on The Walrus
• Sonia Faliero, ‘The Long Rescue‘ in Harper’s
• Mallika Rao, ‘From Nina to Lemonade, Why We’re Still So Bad at Talking About Colorism‘ on Slate
• Deborah Halber, ‘192 Days as John Doe’ on Mosaic
• Bridget Minamore, ‘Racism and misogyny explains why there are so few black women in politics‘ on The Pool
• Christine Baumgarthuber, ‘Dinner with Caligula‘ on The New Inquiry
• Anna Furman, ‘Meeting Edward Said‘ on Guernica

Film, Television, Music, Art, Fashion and Sport:

• Louise Ridley, ‘Celebrity Injunctions Show ‘Moral Abuse’ Of Courts As They Are ‘Almost Entirely Taken Out By Unfaithful Men’ Say Lawyers‘ on The Huffington Post
• Arielle Bernstein, ‘Beyond the “girl power” anthem: Beyoncé, Lana Del Rey and pop’s radical embrace of female vulnerability‘ on Salon
• Elizabeth Daley, ‘Above and Beyoncé‘ on Guernica
• Joanna Sing, ‘Can We Excuse Azealia Banks on Account of Her Bipolar Disorder?‘ on Gal-Dem

The interviews/profiles:

• Miranda Beverly Whittemore on Literary Hub
• Emma Cline on The Bookseller
• Emma Straub in The New York Times
• Mary Gaitskill on Guernica
• Mona Awad on Hazlitt
• Lindy West on Buzzfeed
• Stephanie Danler on Electric Literature, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair and Guernica
• Kit de Waal in The Bookseller
• Rufi Thorpe on Electric Literature
• Fionnuala Kearney on Rebecca Mascull’s blog
• Rebecca Schiff on Electric Literature
• Svetlana Alexievich on The Millions
• Sarah Perry on Foyles
• MariNaomi on The Millions
• Margo Jefferson in The Observer
• Kelly Link on The Masters Review
• Anakana Schofield on The Gloss
• Teow Lim Goh on The Fem
• Elena Ferrante in The New Yorker
• Rivka Galchen on Electric Literature

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

In the Media, May 2016, Part Two

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.

It seems there’s been a return to traditional topics this fortnight. Having children (or not) and body image are back at the top of the agenda. On the former, Daisy Buchanan wrote, ‘I’m economically infertile, and I’ve made peace with that‘ on The Pool; Stephanie Merritt, ‘Sheryl Sandberg admits she did not get how hard it is to be a single mother‘ on The Pool; Ashley Patronyak, ‘A Slight Risk‘ in Guernica; Jordan Rosenfeld, ‘On Discovering Real Mothers on the Page‘ on Literary Hub; Diana Abu-Jaber, ‘Motherhood vs. Art: There Is No Wrong Choice‘ on Literary Hub; Rivka Galchin, ‘Why Does Literature Hate Babies‘ on Literary Hub; Willa Paskin, ‘Speak, Motherhood‘ on Slate; Jennifer Gilmore,’I’m Glad My Mother Worked‘ on The Cut, and Louise O’Neill, ‘I think I would be a good mother; I just don’t want to be one‘ in The Irish Examiner.

Discussions about body image seems to be around the publication of two new books: Shrill by Lindy West and Dietland by Sarai Walker. West wrote, ‘The ‘perfect body’ is a lie. I believed it for a long time and let it shrink my life‘ in The Guardian. Walker was interviewed in The Bookseller and The Pool. And Mallory Ortberg wrote, ‘“We would have paid her the same if she weighed 500 pounds”: Publishing, Weight, and Writers Who Are “Hard To Look At”‘ in The Toast

And then there was this: the men-only bookclub who only read books about men. LV Anderson at Slate decided to tell us all off for being outraged about it, ‘Feminists Shouldn’t Roll Our Eyes at Men-Only Books Clubs. We Should Applaud Them‘.

This fortnight saw the deaths of Sally Brampton and Geek Love author, Katherine Dunn. Kathryn Flett wrote, ‘Sally Brampton – the woman who made ‘Elle girls’ the new normal‘ in The Guardian and Daisy Buchanan wrote, ‘Depression is not a battle that can be won or lost‘ on The Pool.

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Bethanne Patrick, ‘I Am Jessa Crispin’s Problem with Publishing‘ on Literary Hub
• Kate Morton, ‘I wrote The House at Riverton during my baby’s nap times‘ in The Telegraph
• Micah Perks, ‘How My Best Friend Willa Cather Helped Me Beat Stage Fright‘ on Literary Hub
• Alison Flood, ‘Kate Mosse speaks up for European literature in face of Brexit‘ in The Guardian
• Anne Boyd Rioux, ‘The Diminution of Women Writers: An American Tradition‘ on Literary Hub
• Flora Willis, ‘Let Me Be Frank: I Love Dick, So Sad Today, The Argonauts and ‘confessional’ literature‘ on Serpent’s Tail
• Brooke Hauser, ‘Take It or Leave It: Guidebooks for Single Girls‘ on The Millions
• Louisa Treger, ‘From Violinist to Writer‘ on The Literary Sofa
• Andrew Dickson, ‘‘The strange thing is we howled with laughter’: Sarah Kane’s enigmatic last play‘ in The Guardian
• Jami Attenberg, ‘Appreciating the View‘ on Lenny
• Sian Cain, ‘Lionel Shriver: Donald Trump’s too far-fetched for fiction‘ in The Guardian
• Dana Schwartz, ‘Why Hasn’t ‘The Late Show’ Invited Any Female Novelists?‘ on Observer
• Eileen Pollack, ‘Why Fiction Needs More Women Scientists‘ on Literary Hub
• Ali Smith, ‘History of violence: on Alan Garner‘ in the New Statesman
• Alexandra Alter, ‘Masters of Prose Warm Up to Children’s Picture Books‘ in The New York Times
• Charlotte Geater, ‘When Romance Comics Hated Women‘ on Women Write About Comics
• Marni Graff, ‘Using Crime Fiction to Present Fully Formed Muslim Characters‘ on Literary Hub
• Edna O’Brien, ‘Is literature a dying animal?‘ in The Guardian
• Anne Enright, ‘On Writing‘ on the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction
• Martin Chilton, ‘Valley of the Dolls: from reject to 30-million best-seller‘ in The Telegraph
• Hannah Gersen, ‘No More Dead Mothers: Reading, Writing and Grieving‘ on Literary Hub
• Elina Penner, ‘‘Disney For Adults’: How Trashy Romance Novels Conquered the World‘ on Broadly
• Jennifer R. Bernstein, ‘Why Literature Needs Psychology‘ on Literary Hub
• Katherine Cowdry, ‘Sharlene Wen-Ning Teo wins inaugural Deborah Rogers Writers’ Award‘ in The Bookseller
• Linda Grey Sexton, ‘Diving Deep to Explore the Wreck: Linda Gray Sexton on the Path to Inspiration‘ on Read Her Like an Open Book
• Emma Donoghue, ‘“I’ve ended up having a family as well as being a lesbian. I thought it would be one or the other”’ in The Guardian
• Dorothy Koomson, ‘It breaks my heart to see library closures‘ in The Telegraph
• Jia Tolentino, ‘Sheesh, There’s a Reason Women Are ‘Totally Crushing It’ At the Confessional Essay‘ on Jezebel
• Joan Didion, ‘California Notes‘ in The New York Review of Books
• Katherine Cowdry, ‘McInerney, McCrea, Rochester shortlisted for Desmond Elliott Prize‘ in The Bookseller
• Lorraine Berry, ‘‘They’: the singular pronoun that could solve sexism in English‘ in The Guardian
• Anne Boyd Rioux, ‘Women Writers You Should Know: Alice Dunbar-Nelson‘ in The Toast
• Lionel Shriver’s guide to dystopia in The Telegraph
• Maaza Mengiste, ‘What Is the Writer’s Place in a Violent World?‘ on Literary Hub
• Lydia Millet, ‘Love Is Boring and Hard to Write About, And Yet…‘ on Literary Hub
• Hope Jahren, ‘Lab Girl‘ on Powell’s Books
• Casey N. Cep, ‘What Two Forgotten Pieces Tell Us About Harper Lee‘ in The New Yorker
• Michele Filgate, ‘Writers, The Loneliest Artists of All‘ on Literary Hub
• Elisa Gabbert, ‘The Point of Tangency‘ on The Smart Set
• Holly Smale, ‘Why children and teens need funny books‘ in The Guardian
• Elizabeth Hogg, ‘“Cool Girls” don’t like Hillary: What “Gone Girl” and “30 Rock” taught me about politics, feminism and smashing the dude-bro patriarchy‘ on Slate
• Pamela Erens, ‘Labored Prose‘ on Slate
• Lucy Delap, ‘Bookselling and the Feminist Past‘ on OUP
• Nicole Lee, ‘Roxane Gay on Lemonade: ‘by the power of Beyoncé, I’ll overcome my fear’‘ in The Guardian
• Yvette Edwards, ‘The Anti-Canon: Douglas Hall’s In Miserable Slavery: Thomas Thistlewood in Jamaica, 1750-86‘ on Influx Press

Personal essays/memoir:

• Melissa Broder, ‘Taking off the mask of OK-ness, and tweeting about my anxiety‘ on The Pool
• Ana Castillo, ‘When Two Feminists of Color Fall in Love‘ on Literary Hub
• Alana Massey, ‘What Happened When I Finally Made Money‘ in Elle
• Rachel Monroe, ‘The Cat Psychic‘ on Hazlitt
• M.K. Hall, ‘Go Boldly, Dear Dreamer‘ on The Rumpus
• Rebecca Schiff, ‘Why I Quit Online Dating‘ on The Cut
• Elizabeth Day, ‘What a year of living out of a suitcase taught me‘ on The Pool
• Natashia Deón, ‘My Son’s Lifelong Silence Has Taught Me To Listen‘ on Buzzfeed
• Rivka Galchen, ‘My Friends’ Moms‘ in The New Yorker
• Rebecca Worby, ‘The Desert Half‘ on Catapult
• Bernadette Murphy, ‘Evolve or Die‘ on The Rumpus
• Sara Pascoe, ‘I’ve started getting “hangover shame” – only for my entire adolescence‘ in the New Statesman
• Nina Stibbe, ‘A love letter to Leicester‘ in The Telegraph
• Juleyka Lantigua-Williams, ‘Optimus Prime and Me‘ in The Atlantic
• Kat Chow, ‘In My Mom’s Shoes‘ on Lenny
• Alyson Foster, ‘The View from the Fourth Floor‘ on Guernica
• Anna March, ‘You’re Just a Sinner I Am Told: Prince & the Sexual Revolution‘ on The Rumpus
• Sara Elizabeth Grossman, ‘Pastures‘ on Blunderbuss

Feminism:

• Dayna Evans, ‘Why Does the Media Keep Giving Abusive Men Platforms for Redemption?‘ in The Cut
• Laura June, ‘How Do I Avoid Giving My Daughter Body Issues?‘ in The Cut
• Jendella Benson, ‘Why are black girls killing each other – or trying to?‘ on Media Diversified
• Gaby Hinsliff, ‘The key to being a successful woman? Knowing what not to do‘ in The Guardian
• Anna Sillman, ‘Kelly Ripa, Sharon Osbourne, and the Power of the Personal Day‘ in The Cut
• Jamilah Lemieux, ‘bell hooks and the Sour ‘Lemonade’ Review‘ on Ebony
• Florina Rodov, ‘The Homemade Abortion: a Caged Bird, a Quinceaneara, and the American Dream‘ on Electric Literature
• Varaidzo, ‘Conversations About Consent: Why ‘No Means No’ Is Not Enough‘ on Gal-Dem
• Mona Eltahawy, ‘Sex Talk for Muslim Women‘ in The New York Times
• Dolly Alderton, ‘What women actually want‘ on The Pool
• Laura Maw, ‘Rhythms of Fear‘ on Hazlitt

Society and Politics:

• Erika Adams, ‘Remote Year Promised to Combine Work and Travel. Was It Too Good to Be True?‘ on Atlas Obscura
• Melanie Thernstrom, ‘When Do You Give Up On Treating a Child With Cancer?‘ in The New York Times Magazine
• Jenn Abelson, Bella English, Jonathan Saltzman, and Todd Wallack, ‘Private Schools, Painful Secrets‘ in The Boston Globe
• Ruby Tandoh, ‘The Unhealthy Truth Behind ‘Wellness’ and ‘Clean Eating’‘ in Vice
• Anna Merlan, ‘Inside Superstar Machine, Which Ex-Members Say Is a Cult Preying on New York’s Creative Women‘ on Jezebel
• Andrea Maurer, ‘Dear Sun, Please Shine On Us‘ in Guernica
• Nadia Shireen, ‘Waking up in Sadiq’s London‘ on The Pool
• Eleanor Margolis, ‘The revenge revival: how public displays of vengeance became an industry‘ in the New Statesman
• Patricia Engel, ‘Cuba Crónica‘ on Catapult
• Chimene Suleyman, ‘Sadiq Khan may not represent a win for all Muslims, nor should he‘ on Media Diversified
• Eva Holland, ‘Cruising Through the End of the World‘ on Pacific Standard
• Harriet Ryan, Lisa Girion and Scott Glover, ‘‘You Want a Description of Hell?’ Oxycontin’s 12-Hour Problem‘ in The LA Times
• Rebecca J. Rosen, ‘The Circles of American Financial Hell‘ in The Atlantic
• Rebecca Asher, ‘Boys face just as much social pressure as girls‘ on The Pool
• Syreeta McFadden, ‘We’re in an amazing black cultural moment. Cue predictable white backlash‘ in The Observer

Film, Television, Music, Art, Fashion and Sport:

• Olivia Laing, ‘David Wojnarowicz: still fighting prejudice 24 years after his death‘ in The Guardian
• Keah Brown, ‘Love, Disability, and Movies‘ on Catapult
• Anna Leszkiewicz, ‘“I’m done taking pictures”: Justin Bieber, fandom and mental health‘ in the New Statesman
• Carrie Brownstein, ‘Call Me Crazy‘ in The New Yorker
• Jamie Moore, ‘Beyoncé’s Lemonade Is Made for Readers‘ on BookRiot
• Chloe Cadwalladr, ‘Why working-class actors are a disappearing breed’ in The Observer
• Hannah Ewens, ‘How ‘The Craft’ Realized the Power of Teen Girls and Made Witchcraft Cool‘ on Vice
• Alexandra Molotkow, ‘Teen Music Is Wasted on the Teens‘ on The Cut
• Ira Boudway and Kate Smith, ‘The Braves Play Taxpayers Better Than They Play Baseball‘ on Bloomberg
• Brogan Driscoll, ‘Put It Away, Madonna: We Like Our Older Women Invisible And Devoid Of Sexuality‘ on the Huffington Post

The interviews/profiles:

• Veronica Roth in The Guardian
• Louise Erdrich in The New York Times and Publishers Weekly
• Paula Whyman on Bloom
• Sara Pascoe on Standard Issue
• Lionel Shriver in The Bookseller and The Guardian
• Sophie Kinsella in The Guardian
• Ally Hilfiger in The Cut
• Yi Shun Lai on Write by Night
• Andi Zeisler in The Guardian
• Jesse Crispin in The Guardian and on Vulture
• Leslie Jamison on Literary Hub
• Hayley Webster on All the Words
• Sarah Perry on All the Words
• Shelley Harris on All the Words
• Fiona Melrose on All the Words
• Keris Stainton on All the Words
• Helen McClory on All the Words
• Melissa Broder in The Guardian
• Abbey Clancy in The Telegraph
• Janine di Giovanni in The Paris Review
• Zadie Smith on Refinery 29
• Harriet Reuter Hapgood on Buzzed
• Lydia Millet on Electric Literature
• Brenda Miller on The Rumpus
• Sarah Mlynowski and Shannon Hale on Publishers Weekly
• Fiona Sampson on Literateur
• Robin Black on Electric Literature
• Lisa McInerney on The Desmond Elliott Prize
• Esmé Weijun Wang on Bookslut
• Pamela Erens on The Millions
• Geling Yan on China in WW2
• Margo Jefferson in Vogue
• Lydia Davis in The Los Angeles Review of Books

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

In the Media, May 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 last fortnight’s been dominated by death. On Thursday, Jenny Diski died less than two years after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. Literary Hub ran ‘Remembering Jenny Diski‘ including pieces from Hayley Mlotek, Michelle Dean, Joanna Walsh, Bridget Read, Laura Marsh, Marta Bausells and Charlotte Shane. The Guardian ran an extract from her cancer diary. Joanne Harris wrote a found poem ‘Opium Ice Cream‘ from Diski’s tweets, and The London Review of Books opened Jenny Diski’s entire archive to non-subscribers.

The previous week comedian Victoria Wood died. A.L. Kennedy declared her, ‘My Hero‘ in The Guardian; Helen Walmsley Johnson wrote, ‘Victoria Wood gave us the gift of being able to laugh at ourselves‘ in The New Statesman

Although he’s not a female writer, Prince also died just over a week ago and so much brilliant writing by women has come from that: Porochista Khakpour, ‘Prince’s Woman and Me: The Collaborators Who Inspired a Generation‘ in the Village Voice; Maya West, ‘A Hierarchy of Love and Loss and Prince‘ on Jezebel; Bim Adewunmi, ‘Celebrating Prince For 48 Hours In Minneapolis‘ on Buzzed; Heather Haverilsky, ‘Prince Showed Me a Whole New Way of Existing‘ on The Cut; Amanda Marcotte, ‘Sexy MFers, unite: The feminist power of Prince’s sex-positive songs‘ on Salon; K.T. Billey, ‘Prince and the queer body: Our dirty patron saint of pop gave me permission to think outside the gender binary‘ on Salon; Kaitlyn Greenidge, ‘Surviving a Long Alaskan Winter with Prince‘ on Literary Hub; Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, ‘Prince Spent His Life Elevating and Mentoring Women‘ on Jezebel; Lily Burano, ‘Why Prince Was a Hero to Strippers‘ on The Cut; Ashley Weatherford, ‘Understanding the Politics of Prince’s Hair‘ on The Cut; Mona Hayder, ‘Prince Was a Demigod Who Uplifted the Masses Through Music‘ on Literary Hub; Naomi Jackson, ‘Prince: Finding Joy Outside Conformity‘ on Literary Hub; Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, ‘Prince conjured the kind of sex you’d want to have – filthy and fun, and sometimes offensive‘ in The Independent; Tracy King, ‘We should celebrate Prince for championing female musicians‘ in The New Statesman; Laura Craik, ‘“I loved him because of how his music made me feel”‘ on The Pool; Michelle Garcia, ‘Prince gave black kids permission to be weirdos‘ on Vox; Ijeoma Oluo, ‘Prince Was The Patron Saint Of Black Weirdos‘ on The Establishment.

Other brilliant writing about music came from the launch of Beyoncé’s new album Lemonade. Brittany Spanos, ‘How Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’ Reclaims Rock’s Black Female Legacy‘ in Rolling Stone; Mandy Stadtmiller, ‘How Lemonade Helped Me Talk to My Husband About Cheating‘ on The Cut; Treva Lindsey, ‘Beyoncé’s Lemonade Isn’t Just About Cheating, It’s About Black Sisterhood‘ in Cosmopolitan; Caroline O’Donoghue, ‘Monica, Becky With The Good Hair, and the power of the Other Woman‘ in The Pool; Diamond Sharp, ‘Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’ Is an Anthem for the Retribution of Black Women‘ on Vice; Morgan Jerkins, ‘‘Lemonade’ Is About Black Women Healing Themselves and Each Other‘ in Elle; Daisy Buchanan, ‘What can Beyoncé’s Lemonade teach us about love?‘ on The Pool; Vanessa Kisuule, ‘Why Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’ Shows a Refinement of her Artistry‘ on Gal-Dem; Carrie Battan, ‘Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” Is a Revelation of Spirit‘ in The New Yorker; Priscilla Ward, ‘Beyoncé’s radical invitation: In “Lemonade,” a blueprint for black women working through pain‘ on Salon; Ezinne Ukoha, ‘I Will Do Better By My Sisters‘ on Medium; June Eric-Udorie, ‘Beyoncé’s Lemonade, and the power it bestows young black women‘ on The Pool; Rafia Zakaria, ‘Warsan Shire: the Somali-British poet quoted by Beyoncé in Lemonade‘ in The Guardian; Juliane Okot Bitek wrote, ‘On the Poet Warsaw Shire, Nobody’s Little Sister‘ on Literary Hub. While Jamila addressed Piers Morgan’s criticisms of the album with ‘Dear Piers…‘ on her blog.

And I wanted to include this story because it’s just lovey: Jessie Burton’s new novel The Muse includes a setting named after Waterstones’ bookseller Leila Skelton. Skelton does the most incredible window displays at the Doncaster shop which are often shared on Twitter.

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Catherine Bennett, ‘Modern tribes: the Elena Ferrante fan‘ in The Guardian
• Erika Janik, ‘Women Detectives in Fact and Fiction‘ on Literary Hub
• Amanda Fortini, ‘Why Can’t You Be Sweet?‘ in The Los Angeles Review of Books
• Jacqueline Wilson, ‘My Writing Day‘ in The Guardian
• Elizabeth Poliner, ‘How Mapping Alice Munro’s Stories Helped Me as a Writer‘ on Literary Hub
• Sarah Churchill, ‘Bring out the Great Gatsby gin and jazz: it’s time to breath new life into the literary lecture‘ in The Guardian
• Laura Barnett, ‘The Joys (and Perils) of Literary Tourism‘ on Literary Hub
• Nakul Krishna, ‘Enid Blyton, moral guide‘ on Aeon
• Summer Brennan, ‘On the Heartbreaking Difficulty of Getting Rid of Books‘ on Literary Hub
• Selin Gökcesu, ‘Jane and I: On Re-Reading Jane Eyre‘ on Electric Literature
• Idra Novey, ‘Learning to Be Embarrassed on the Page‘ on Catapult
• Sarah Moss, ‘Shakespeare for Children‘ on Granta
• Jillian Keenan, ‘Hamlet Was a Bro Who Didn’t Even Like Sex‘ on Literary Hub
• Julianne Ross, ‘You Want a Piece of Me: Elena Ferrante and the Myth that Female Artists Owe Us More than Their Work‘ on MTV
• Robert McCrum, ‘The 100 best nonfiction books: No 13 – The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (1970)‘ in The Guardian
• Carol Lovekin, ‘on being published in later life‘ on The Literary Sofa
• Nora Zelevansky, ‘How to Write Teen Girl Characters‘ on Literary Hub
• Kit de Waal, ‘Ideas are free, but writing is expensive: how can we ensure disadvantaged voices are heard?‘ in The New Statesman
• Joanna Walsh, ‘Are we sex-literate? Why we should all be writing more about pleasure‘ in The New Statesman
• Aysha Khan, ‘Face-Off‘ in Reorient
• Anne Enright, ‘My Writing Day‘ in The Guardian
• Curtis Sittenfeld, ‘The secret to work/life balance? There isn’t one‘ on The Pool
• Melissa Goodrich, ‘Diving Into the Faery Handbag: On Fabulism‘ on Electric Literature
• Emma Butcher, ‘The secret history of Jane Eyre: Charlotte Brontë’s private fantasy stories‘ in The Guardian

• Zeffie Gaines, ‘Falling Apart: A Meditation on Love and the Work of Baldwin, Winterson, and Morrison‘ on Electric Literature
• Bridget Read, ‘Charlotte Brontë May Have Started the Fire, But Jean Rhys Burned Down the House‘ on Literary Hub
• Varaidzo, ‘From school books to publishing, black girls deserve better representation‘ in The New Statesman
• Lyndsay Faye, ‘If Jane Eyre Came Out Today Would it Be Marketed as Genre?‘ on Literary Hub
• Sarah Berry, ‘My Pilgrimage to the House of Brontë‘ on The Millions
• Anna March, Jen Fitzgerald, Ashley Ford and Ashley Perez, ‘Most writers get screwed: We did the math, and it’s true — literary prizes exclude writers outside the campus gates‘ on Salon
• Stephanie Boland, ‘From Enid Blyton to Richard Hoggart: The use of literacy‘ in The New Statesman
• Alexandra Molotokow, ‘Maggie Nelson Refuses to Make Things Simple‘ on The Cut
• Elif Shafak, ‘On Women Writers Transcending Boundaries‘ on the Bailey’s Prize blog
• Ilana Massad, ‘Read Between the Racism: The Serious Lack of Diversity in Book Publishing‘ on Broadly
• Alison Flood, ‘Are most romance novels badly written?‘ in The Guardian
• Alison Flood, ‘Books by earliest women writers in English on display together for first time‘ in The Guardian
• Aya de Leon, ‘Portrait of the #WriterMom as a Member of the Working Class‘ on her blog
• Zoey Cole, ‘Remembering the Great C.D. Wright‘ on Literary Hub
• Virginia Baily, ‘Travels with my Aunt‘ on Virago
• Steph Harmon, ‘Charlotte Wood’s The Natural Way of Things wins $50,000 Stella prize‘ in The Guardian
• Bhavneet Kaur, ‘The Poetics of Resistance‘ in Kindle
• Sam Jordison, ‘Virginia Woolf in Brontë country: picking apart the genius in Jane Eyre‘ in The Guardian
• Georgette Mushier, ‘What literacy can do for children in institutions‘ in The New Statesman
• Sarah Ladipo Manyika, ‘Why I chose an African publisher over a western one‘ in The Guardian
• Curtis Sittenfeld, ‘Was Jane Austen a feminist? The answer is in her stories‘ in The Guardian

Personal essays/memoir:

• Terri White, ‘The story of me and my beehive‘ on The Pool
• Claire Woods, ‘‘As I woke up each morning, my pregnancy screamed at me’‘ in The Irish Times
• Eleanor Franzén, ‘Death Out of Season‘ on Litro
• Alana Massey, ‘My Boyfriend Isn’t My Best Friend — My Cat Is‘ on The Cut
• Lorena Piñeiro, ‘Penance‘ on Midnight Breakfast
• Linh Le, ‘How I learned to love my selfie‘ on Hello Giggles
• Lynn Murray, ‘The Carnival of Kid Baseball‘ on Tin House
• Susan Shapiro, ‘The Line Between Professor and Predator Isn’t Always So Clear‘ on The Cut
• Jung Yun, ‘My Fargo‘ on The Atlantic
• Kai Kalia Yang, ‘My Father the Song Poet‘ on Literary Hub
• Alexandra Reisner, ‘Small Bodies‘ on Electric Literature
• Jennifer Fliss, ‘The Day I told My Father to Shoot Himself‘ on Narratively
• Sara Lieberman, ‘Dating in New York Ruined Me for Paris‘ on The Cut
• Christina Crosby, ‘Your Puny, Vulnerable Self‘ on The Offing
• Anca Szilágyi, ‘Used to Be Schwartz‘ on The Rumpus
• Catherine Lloyd Burns, ‘Remembering John the Hotdog Man‘ on Guernica
• Rebecca Schiff, ‘On My Abnormally Quiet Jewish Family‘ on Literary Hub
• Mandy Stadtmiller, ‘I Love My Husband, But I Hate Working With Him‘ on The Cut
• Abigail Rasminsky, ‘I Had a Baby in Europe; Here’s What It Did to Me‘ in The Cut
• Chantal Braganza, ‘A Grief Like This‘ on Hazlitt
• Deborah A. Lott, ‘My Dream of Androgyny‘ on The Rumpus
• Rachel Charlene Lewis, ‘After Sandra Bland‘ on The Normal School
• Marisa Bate, ‘My mum was stalked when I was a child. The impact is lasting on us all‘ on The Pool
• Ella Dawson, ‘Good Girl‘ on Femsplain
• Laura Kasinof, ‘The Violence Was Once Mine‘ on Guernica
• Decca Aitkenhead, ‘The Loneliness of Losing Your Partner‘ on Well Doing

Feminism:

• Megan Garber, ‘Seeing Red: The Rise of Mensesplaining‘ on The Atlantic
• Alexandra Petri, ‘Play the ‘woman card’ and reap these ‘rewards’!‘ in The Washington Post
• Dayna Evans, ‘Here’s What Happens When Men Write About the Gender Pay Gap‘ on The Cut
• Glosswitch, ‘It harms women more than men when dads doing parenting are seen as “babysitters”‘ in The New Statesman
• Bridget Minamore, ‘Can you be a feminist and … ?‘ in The Guardian
• Tobi Oredein, ‘How YouTube became the best place to see black women’s stories‘ on The Pool
• Jennifer Tamyayo, ‘When You Handle Poison‘ in Mice Magazine
• Mona Eltahawy, ‘How to Fight the Patriarchy‘ on Literary Hub
• Ruth Whippman, ‘Sorry, but people need to stop telling women they shouldn’t apologise‘ on The Pool
• Maura Quint, ‘How to Negotiate a Raise (If You’re a Woman)‘ on McSweeney’s
• Eve Barlow, ‘Grimes: I’m not a victim of sexism, I’m a successful producer‘ on The Pool
• Tali Mendelberg and Christopher F. Karpowitz, ‘Are Women the Silent Sex?‘ in The Boston Review
• Jia Tolentino, ‘How ‘Empowerment’ Became Something for Women to Buy‘ in The New York Times
• Isabel Rogers, ‘Top Ten Totty Tips‘ on her blog

Society and Politics:

• Graciela Mochkofsky, ‘The Faithful‘ in The California Sunday Magazine
• Anna Wiener, ‘Uncanny Valley‘ in n+1
• Juleyka Lantigua-Williams, ‘‘Ban the Box’ Goes to College‘ on The Atlantic
• Jacqueline Rose, ‘Who Do You Think You Are?‘ in The London Review of Books
• Megha Majumdar, ‘Half-Truth and Reconciliation: After the Rwandan Genocide‘ on Literary Hub
• Eleanor Margolis, ‘When it comes to Labour and anti-Semitism, there’s only so much this left-wing Jew can suck it up‘ in The New Statesman
• Abby Rabinowitz, ‘The trouble with renting a womb‘ in The Guardian
• Laura Reiley, ‘From Farm to Fable‘ on Tampa Bay
• Aminatta Forna, ‘The Modern and the Medieval Collide: on Ebola‘ on Literary Hub
• Hope Jahren, ‘On Earth Day, Let Lab Girl Persuade You to Plant a Tree‘ on Slate
• Brigid Delaney, ‘The generation gap is dead. But is the result freedom or oppression?‘ in The Guardian
• Suzanne Moore, ‘A generation of artists were wiped out by Aids and we barely talk about it‘ in The Guardian
• Chimene Suleyman, ‘There’s an epidemic of missing people of colour who aren’t photogenic enough for us to find‘ in The Independent
• Kendra James, ‘A Black Girl’s Manual to Attending a New England Boarding School‘ in The Toast
• Rebecca Traister, ‘Could Hillary Clinton Ever Have Imagined This?‘ on The Cut
• Lisa Owens, ‘Is this the worst question you can ask someone?‘ on The Pool
• Laurie Goodstein, ‘Sex Abuse and the Catholic Church: Why Is It Still a Story?‘ in The New York Times

Film, Television, Music, Art, Fashion and Sport:

• Helen O’Hara, ‘25 years on from Thelma and Louise, its spirit of rebellion lives on‘ on The Pool
• Soleil Ho, ‘The Jungle Book’s Complicated Relationship with Imperialism‘ in Bitch
• Suzanne Moore, ‘The Hillsborough verdict shatters the fantasy that class war doesn’t exist‘ in The Guardian
• Anna Silman, ‘Damn, It’s a Good Time for Funny Women on TV‘ on The Cut
• Francine Prose, ‘The Ballad of Slippin’ Jimmy‘ in The New York Review of Books
• Kelly Kanayama, ‘Hollywood’s upcoming films prove it loves Asian culture – as long as it comes without Asians‘ on Media Diversified
• Ana Leszkiewicz, ‘The outrageous sexism on The Island with Bear Grylls might be what makes it a great show‘ in The New Statesman

The interviews/profiles:

• Rebecca Schiff on Electric Literature
• Emily Skillings on the Huffington Post
• Paula Hawkins in The Guardian
• Mylo Freeman on The Pool
• Joanna Walsh on The Literary Sofa
• Shirley Barrett on Electric Literature
• Maggie Mitchell on One Book Lane
• Louise Erdrich in The New York Times
• Susanna Donato on Okey Panky
• Sarai Walker in The Guardian
• Jillian Keenan on Longreads
• Angela Flournoy on Buzzfeed
• Camille Rankine on Grazing Grain Press
• Curtis Sittenfeld on The Millions
• Emma Cline on Publishers Weekly
• Laurie Penny on The Bailey’s Prize blog
• Lisa Owens on Bookanista and in The Bookseller
• Linda Legters on Bloom
• Mary Beard in The Guardian
• Deborah Levy on Foyles’ blog
• Tammy Cohen on The Prime Writers
• Ann Goldstein in Asymptote
• Sara Pascoe on Huffington Post
• Emily O’Neill on Vagabond City
• Joanne Harris on Waterstones
• Jenni Fagan on The Skinny
• Deborah Install on Rebecca Mascull’s blog

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

In the Media, April 2016, Part Two

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.

It’s the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth. Contributors including Sarah Waters, Margaret Drabble and Jeanette Winterson reflect on Jane Eyre in The Guardian; Samantha Ellis wrote about ‘The Greatest Heroines of All Time‘ on the BBC, and Sam Jordison asked, ‘Reading Jane Eyre: can we truly understand Charlotte Brontë or her heroine today?‘ in The Guardian. The Brontë Blog is doing an excellent job of curating everything and well worth having a look at.

The Guardian commissioned some research into the 70 million comments which have been left on its website since 2006. The results revealed that while the highest commenters are white men, the most abuse was left on articles by eight women writers and two male writers of colour. The only people who seemed surprised were white men. It’s great to have statistical evidence in support of this but listening to female writers and male writers of colour and acting on it might be a good idea too. Jessica Valenti, the most targeted writer wrote, ‘Insults and rape threats. Writers shouldn’t have to deal with this‘.

Andrew Piper and Richard Jean So decided to carry out some analysis regarding the words used in book reviews of books by male and female writers, ‘Women Write About Family, Men Write About War‘ in the New Republic details their findings.

The Baileys’ Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist was announced this week. Hanya Yanagihara has ‘A Little Life – A Photo Story‘ on the Picador Blog; Anne Enright, Elizabeth McKenzie, Hanya Yanagihara and Lisa McInerney are interviewed on the Baileys’ Prize blog, along with longlistees Shirley Barrett, Vesna Goldsworthy, Becky Chambers, Julia Rochester and Kate Atkinson. Some of us (myself included) were shocked that Kate Atkinson’s A God in Ruins failed to make the shortlist, Eleanor Franzen considers why on Litro.

And in Australia, the Miles Franklin literary award longlist was announced with books by women taking five of the nine slots.

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Gillian Flynn, ‘The book that inspired Gone Girl‘ in The Guardian
• Hilary Mantel, ‘My Writing Day‘ in The Guardian
• Curtis Sittenfeld, ‘Most romances are badly written‘ in The Telegraph
• Alison Flood, ‘Miss Peregrine author returns with illustrated collection of fairytales‘ in The Guardian
• Jonathon Sturgeon, ‘On a Strong 2016 Man Booker International Shortlist, Ferrante Still Looks Like a Sure Thing‘ on Flavorwire
• Harriet Brown, ‘Leave Peter Rabbit Alone‘ in The Guardian
• Robert Gottlieb, ‘Brilliant, Troubled Dorothy Parker‘ in The New York Review of Books
• Samantha Powell, ‘Fifteen Years Later, Bridget Jones Is Still Teaching Me to Embrace Imperfection‘ on The Cut
• Lynn Steger-Strong, ‘Reader-Based‘ on Catapult
• Tanya Gold, ‘Working as a diarist meant not caring about the people you hurt‘ in The New Statesman
• Alana Massey, ‘Climbing Mount Sontag‘ in Hazlitt
• Alexandra Alter, ‘Curtis Sittenfeld Is No Jane Austen, But She’s O.K. with That‘ in The New York Times
• Louisa Thomas, ‘The Conflicted Early Feminism of Louisa Catherine Adams‘  on Literary Hub
• Hilton Als, ‘Immediate Family: Maggie Nelson’s Life in Words‘ in The New Yorker
• Michelle Dean, ‘The Wreck: Adrienne Rich’s feminist awakening, glimpsed through her never-before-published letters.‘ in New Republic
• Kim Brooks, ‘A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Mom‘ in The Cut
• Anya Groner, ‘Space Tourism in Modern Storytelling‘ on Electric Literature
• Natasha Carthew, ‘I didn’t see working class identity in books when I was growing up, and I don’t see enough now‘ in The Guardian
• Rumaan Alam, ‘Why Wasn’t Great American Novelist Jane Smiley on the Cover of a Magazine?‘ in Literary Hub
• Elena Sheppard, ‘Why I’ve been reading and re-reading “Bridget Jones’s Diary” for 20 years‘ on Hello Giggles
• Daisy Buchanan, ‘How to buy the perfect book for someone else‘ on The Pool
• Esme Weijun Wang, ‘Why My Novel Uses Untranslated Chinese‘ on Literary Hub
• Diane McWhorter, ‘Harper Lee, the National Antidote‘ on Slate
• Bridget Read, ‘On Maggie Nelson’s The Red Parts, Ten Years Later’ on Literary Hub
• Anne K. Yoder, ‘Fiction Must Be Fed: On Margaret Cavendish, Frida Kahlo, and Marie Curie‘ on The Millions
• Lindsay Merbaum, ‘Not a Real Writer: How Self-Doubt Holds Me Back‘ on Electric Literature
• Laura Miller, ‘I’ll Be There for You: The difficult, dangerous task of writing about a friend‘ on Slate
• Melissa Chadburn, ‘The Girl in the Cabinet (I Read What You Wrote and I Hate You)‘ on Electric Literature
• Hannah Gersen, ‘Gluten-Free Proust‘ on The Millions
• Fatima Bhutto, ‘My Grandfather’s Library, Relic of a Freer Pakistan‘ on Literary Hub
• Ann Patchett, ‘The Bookstore Fights Back‘ on Literary Hub
• Anne Boyd Rioux, ‘Women Writers You Should Know: Constance Fenimore Woolson‘ in The Toast
• Ainehi Edoro, ‘How not to talk about African fiction‘ in The Guardian
• Jesse Crispin, ‘The Self-Hating Book Critic‘ on Copper Nickel
• Clare Warner, ‘‘Her nose was straight with a soft tip at the end’ — Writing Race at School‘ on Media Diversified
• Caroline Criado-Perez, ‘I realised I’d been sold a lie about women’ in The Guardian
• John William Walker Zeiser, ‘The Unsettling Gaze of Han Kang: Examining Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and Human Acts‘ on Electric Literature
• Lynnette Lounsbury, ‘I loved the beat generation. Then I realised it has no place for women‘ in The Guardian

Personal essays/memoir:

• Kat Lister, ‘Saying “No” doesn’t have to be negative‘ on The Pool
• Marina Lucic, ‘Lessons on Hate‘ in Litro
• Lauren Libbert, ‘Losing my mother, then losing the music that could soothe after she’d gone‘ on The Pool
• Maggie Thach Morshed, ‘Shooting in the Dark‘ on Catapult
• Meagan O’Connell, ‘How Did I Wind Up a Housewife in Paradise?‘ on The Cut
• Lydia Kiesling, ‘Throwing Away the Most Beautiful Dress I Ever Owned‘ on The Cut
• Lorena Piñeiro, ‘Penance‘ in Midnight Breakfast
• Faith Adiele, ‘All of the Above‘ on The Rumpus
• Mega Majumdar, ‘Laughter as Criticism‘ in Guernica
• Lily Gutierrez, ‘Peaches and Melisande‘ on Motherland
• Lynsey Hanley, ‘How I became middle-class‘ in The Guardian
• Kate Gavino, ‘A Band Named HotdogA Band Named HotdogA Band Named Hotdog‘ on Catapult
• Clare Archibald, ‘Congealed‘ on The Real Story
• Kate Bolick, ‘Afterlives: My Mother’s Breast Cancer, and My Own‘ in The New Yorker
• Kathryn Harrison, ‘On the Impossibility of Seeing Yourself‘ on Literary Hub
• Penny Anderson, ‘What it feels like to do your make-up when you’re blind‘ on The Pool
• Soraya Chemaly, ‘Listening to Old Women‘ in The Toast
• Melissa Broder, ‘How I Discovered the Power of a Hot-Pink Fake Penis‘ in The Cut
• Anissa Helou, ‘Before the War: The Lost Delicacies of Aleppo‘ on Literary Hub
• Heather Havrilesky, ‘My Wedding Was a Disaster, and Yours Will Be, Too‘ on The Cut

Feminism:

• Revati Upadhya, ‘I’m A Woman Who Doesn’t Have Or Want Kids, And I’m Happy‘ on Buzzfeed
• Fariah Roísín, ‘In My Image‘ on Maisonneuve
• Gaby Hinsliff, ‘Who would think any good could come from an MP calling a woman ‘totty’?‘ in The Guardian
• Marisa Bate, ‘The everyday bravery of being a woman‘ on The Pool
• Sara Pascoe, ‘Boob jobs are viewed as a decorative tweak, but these women are self-harming’ in The Guardian
• Jill Lepore, ‘The Sovereignty of Women‘ in The New Yorker
• Rachel Aviv, ‘The Cost of Caring‘ in The New Yorker
• Shohana Khan, ‘If Muslim women’s clothing makes them consenting slaves, who are their slave masters?‘ on Media Diversified
• Siobhan Fenton, ‘Today in the UK, a woman was sentenced for the crime of an abortion – yet we act outraged at Donald Trump‘ in The Independent
• Stephanie Boland, ‘Think Donald Trump’s comments are shocking? They’re the law for some UK women‘ in The New Statesman
• Jesse Singal, ‘Is Attachment Parenting a Plot to Force Women Back Into the Home?‘ in The Cut
• Melissa Gira Grant, ‘Heather‘ on Buzzed
• Bridget Minamore, ‘Being a dark-skinned woman and the prejudices we face ‘ on The Pool

Society and Politics:

• Erika Hayasaki, ‘In a Perpetual Present‘ on Wired
• Catherine Buni & Soraya Chemaly, ‘The Secret Rules of the Internet‘ on The Verge
• Laura Elizabeth Woollet, ‘In Search of the Darkest Cult in American History‘ on Literary Hub
• Ijeoma Oluo, ‘How Teju Cole Helped Me Make Peace with the Nigerian Scam Artist‘ on Literary Hub
• Elizabeth Kolbert, ‘Unnatural Selection‘ in The New Yorker
• Lynn Casteel Harper, ‘On Vanishing‘ in Catapult
• Elizabeth Senja Spackman, ‘Proximal Grief‘ in Guernica
• Pamela Rolloff, ‘The Reckoning‘ in Texas Monthly
• Rachel Vorona Cote, ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy of the Ugly Cry‘ in New Republic
• Suzanne Moore, ‘Making money is not a vice, but refusing to contribute tax is‘ in The Guardian
• Paris Lees, ‘Dear Ian McEwan, your ideas about penises are outdated‘ in The Telegraph

Film, Television, Music, Art, Fashion and Sport:

• Kate Aurthur, ‘How “Nina” Became A Disaster Movie‘ on Buzzfeed
• Sarah Lyall, ‘Swim. Bike. Cheat?‘ on Longreads
• Anna Leszkiewicz, ‘Lost and found: why are we obsessed with stories of young women escaping their kidnappers?‘ in The New Statesman
• Marie Phillips, ‘Kimmy Schmidt, and the unmitigated joy she will bring to your life‘ on The Pool

The interviews/profiles:

• Lisa Owens in The Bookseller
• Robin Black & Natalie Serber on Bloom
• Maggie Nelson in The Guardian
• Michelle de Kretser in Vol. 1 Brooklyn
• Brit Bennett on Jezebel
• Danielle Dutton in Brooklyn Magazine
• Idra Novey on The Rumpus
• Helen Garner in the Sydney Morning Herald
• Yvette Edwards on the Waterstones’ Blog
• Lynsey Hanley in The Guardian
• Elif Batuman on Literary Hub
• Rachel Traister on The Pool
• Sara Sheridan on From First Page to Last
• Janet Todd in Shiny New Books
• Sharon Guskin in Shiny New Books
• Karen Kovacik on Guernica
• Caitlin and Caz Moran on The Pool
• Maylis de Kerangal in BOMB
• Sophia Bennett in The Guardian
• Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney on Literary Hub
• Danielle McLaughlin on Short Fiction
• Jenny Downham on The Bookseller

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