Tales of Immigration by Levy and Ali

It seems pertinent this week to review two books which take immigration to the UK as one of their central themes. The first is a timely reminder of Britain’s appalling behaviour in the world and that Jamaicans fought alongside us in both wars and then were encouraged to come to the UK to make up labour shortages following World War II. The second is as much about gender as it is race and considers what it’s like to establish a life so far from home.

Six Stories and an Essay – Andrea Levy

In the essay which begins this slim volume, Levy recalls her childhood, using it to examine the disparity between her parents arrival in Britain and her feelings on the integration of the Caribbean community in the UK.

They believed in order to get on in this country they should live quietly and not make a fuss. They should assimilate and be as respectable as they possibly could. Clean the front step every week. Go to church on Sundays. Keep their children well dressed and scrubbed behind the ears.

Teenage Levy’s sense of being an outsider comes from her working class upbringing. It isn’t until she’s on a racism awareness course at work and joins ‘the white side of the room’ that she begins to explore her experience of being black in Britain. This coincided with her taking a writing course as a hobby.

I am now happy to be called a black British writer, and the fiction I have written has all been about my Caribbean heritage in some way or another.

She points out that the social mix created from the relationship Britain developed with the Caribbean – one of slavery and exploitation initially, followed by a whole range of people moving to the islands – has been erased from our history books.

Levy states her aim for this book (and, I assume, the rest of her work) at the end of the essay:

My heritage is Britain’s story too. It is time to put the Caribbean back where it belongs – in the main narrative of British history.

The stories that follow revolve around ideas of power, of fear and of erasure. The first two, The Diary and Deborah show the power of secrets and how they can be used to get what you want – through a diary belonging to a famous actor and extracting violent retribution on a friend in fear of what your father might do to you.

The Polite Way that English People Have introduces Hortense from Small Island on the boat on her way to England. Here she realises her status is going to be reduced in the UK and in The Empty Pram a character who could be Hortense discovers the suspicion she’ll be subjected to simply for being from another country.

Loose Change takes a refugee from Uzbekistan and puts her in conversation with a woman who has the power to help her, while February reveals the erasure of Levy’s mother’s experience by a white teacher and the collection ends with Uriah’s War where the experience of two Jamaican soldiers in the First World War is erased by a sergeant on their return.

Levy introduces the reader to a range of characters and situations. What they all have in common is a sense of erasure or othering by someone, largely due to race but with regards to class. It’s an interesting mix of subjects and one in which Levy begins to explore Caribbean narratives which are expanded upon in Small Island.

Thanks to Tinder Press for the review copy.

Brick Lane – Monica Ali

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2003 (yes, it has taken me this long to read this book), Brick Lane tells the story of Nazneen’s marriage to Chanu and their move from Bangladesh to Tower Hamlets, London in 1985.

When they arrive in London, eighteen-year-old Nazneen can say only two words in English, sorry and thank you. She is befriended by the rebellious Razia and by Mrs Islam who ‘knew everything about everybody’ but is largely confined to the flat.

Forty-year-old Chanu is pompous. Considering himself an intellectual, he invites the local doctor for dinner, assuming he can see his way to helping Chanu get a promotion at work. While he desires something better for himself and, therefore, his wife, he doesn’t understand why Nazneen would want to learn English. She spends her days looking forward to letters from her sister and seeing that Chanu’s needs are met.

‘Ish’, said Chanu, breathing sharply. ‘Did you draw blood?’ He looked closely at his little toe. He wore only his pyjama bottoms and sat on the bed. Nazneen knelt to the side with a razor blade in her hand. It was time to cut her husband’s corns again. She sliced through the semi-translucent skin, the build-up around the yellow core, and gathered the little dead bits in the palm of her hand.

The couple has two children and the novel follows Nazneen and Chanu as their children grow. Chanu is determined that they will know about their heritage and determinedly teaches them about Bangladesh, much to his daughter’s irritation. His plans to improve their situation in London lead to him becoming entangled with Mrs Islam and her business interests whilst Nazneen discovers what it’s like to be in love.

Ali explores identity and how it’s formed. She considers how relationships are formed far from home when you find yourself part of a community living closely with some you might not have socialised with in alternate circumstances. She portrays a marriage without love but with some affection and the conflict that children can bring as they grow. Brick Lane is an engrossing read and an interesting portrait of a young woman discovering who she is and what she wants from life.

 

 

My Plans for #ReadDiverse2016

I don’t do New Year resolutions. I learnt some years ago that those vague statements – I’m going to do more exercise/eat less/learn a language – don’t last beyond mid-January. But goals do, at least specific ones you can work towards and extend, if necessary, or not beat yourself up about if you don’t quite fulfil them do.

Last year, I set a goal to read more books by women of colour. I joined Eva Stalker’s #TBR20 project with the caveat that I’d continue to read review copies I was sent as well. I still haven’t completed all the reviews of those books yet but the main effect it had was I paid attention to what I was reading, specifically who the writer was. In 2014 10% of my reading was by writers of colour, in 2015, it was 32%. The unintended consequence of this, however, is that the number of books I read by writers from LGBTQIA communities plummeted from 6% to 0.5% and books in translation from 11% to 0.6%. (The latter was partly a consequence of me not really taking part in #WITMonth due to personal circumstances but still, it’s poor.)

The plan for this year then: more reviews of books by women of colour; more reviews of books by women who identify as LGBT; a proper focus on women in translation in August.

I’m aiming for 50% of my reviews to be of books by women of colour. I’ve changed the focus from the percentage I’m reading with the intention of even coverage on here. What I noticed last year was that although I was reading books from my #TBR20 stack, when I got back to reading and reviewing after my break in the summer, I was focusing on books by white women, the ‘big titles’. As a consequence, I have a stack of review copies by women of colour. These are now at the top of the pile.

I’ve also created a new #TBR20 pile focusing on writers from the LGBT communities. And here they are…

Half of the books (those on the left, except Anaïs Nin who appears to be in the wrong pile) are by women of colour. I used several sources to help me compile the list: More than 50 books by Queer People of Color by zarahwithaz; 10 Novels & Memoirs By and About Black Lesbian, Bisexual and Queer Women on Autostraddle;100+ LGBTQ Black Women You Should Know: The Epic Black History Month Megapost also on Autostraddle, and the Wikipedia list of LGBT Writers.

Elsewhere, you might have seen on social media that Media Diversified have created Bare Lit Festival (@BareLit). ‘A literary festival focused entirely on writers of colour’, which will run from the 26^th – 28^th February 2016.

We want to counteract the trend of equating literary merit with whiteness by highlighting the amazing variety of work currently being produced by BAME writers. That’s why we’ve put together an exciting programme of performances, panels and conversations — such as ‘Second-Generation Poets in Exile’, ‘What Does Liberation in Literature Look Like?, Sci Fi vs. Afrofuturism’ and much more.

I’ve already bought my weekend pass and you can support the festival by buying passes or single event tickets now and helping them to raise the cost of running the event. Find out more on their Indiegogo page.

Mention of Media Diversified brings me to this interesting piece, posted a couple of days ago: Decolonise, not Diversify by Kavita Bhanot. I agree with everything she says.

Speaking only for myself, I didn’t get involved with #diversedecember because I thought it would change the world but I did hope it might lead some people to question their world view or the view the white-dominated world imposes upon us.

During December, Salena Godden (@salenagodden) posted a video of her performing her new poem ‘I Count’. ‘I have become a woman that counts…’ she begins. Yep. I became a woman that counts when I started this blog. I don’t think it’s a solution and it’s certainly not going to bring about one on its own, but while ever white/male/hetero/cis domination exists, I’ll count. For me, #ReadDiverse2016 (@ReadDiverse2016) is about hoping you’ll join in that count too.

Small Island – Andrea Levy

Small Island tells the story of four people whose lives intersect in London following the end of the Second World War. Those people are Queenie and her husband Bernard, white Londoners, she working class and he middle class, and Hortense and Gilbert, Jamaicans who’ve come to London after Gilbert’s time in the RAF. The novel is narrated from the points of view of each of the four characters and both from the ‘now’ of 1948 and the past that each character has lived through.

The book begins with a prologue in which Levy makes clear the key theme of the novel. Queenie says, ‘I thought I’d been to Africa’. She tells her school class this until her teacher points out she’s been to the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. From the first line of the novel, Levy highlights the British ignorance of Africa and its people. At the exhibition, Africa’s represented by a jungle village and a woman and a man.

A monkey man sweating a smell of mothballs. Blacker than when you smudge your face with a sooty cork. The droplets of sweat on his forehead glistened and shone like jewels. His lips were brown, not pink like they should be, and they bulged with air like bicycle tyres. His hair was woolly as a black shorn sheep. His nose squasher flat, had two nostrils big as train tunnels. And he was looking down at me.

‘Would you like to kiss him?’ Graham said. He nudged me, teasing, and pushed me forward – closer to this black man.

…The inside of his mouth was pink and his face was coming closer and closer to mine. He could have swallowed me up this big nigger man. But instead he said, in clear English, ‘Perhaps we could shake hands instead?’

The first chapter has Hortense arriving at a house in London, straight from the docks where Gilbert’s forgotten to meet her. The house belongs to Queenie who’s taken in lodgers – most of them black, much to the vexation of her neighbours – since the war ended and her husband failed to return. The first chapter sets up Hortense’s expectations and shows how quickly they are disabused. The dialogue between Hortense and Queenie on the doorstep is particularly well done, showing a number of misunderstandings between the women based on accent and cultural knowledge.

The sections set in the present day – which are spaced throughout the novel, between the ‘before’ stories of each of the main characters – deal with relationships, both those between husband and wife and those between white and black people during this period. Both are often fractious with the parties lacking understanding of each other. Queenie and Bernard have dark secrets they know how to share with each other. Hortense doesn’t know how Gilbert can live as he does, Gilbert doesn’t know why he married her and why the UK’s so hostile after he played his part in the war effort.

For the teeth and glasses.

That was the reason so many coloured people were coming to this country, according to my next-door neighbour Mr Todd.

‘That National Health Service – it’s pulling them in, Mrs Bligh. Giving things away at our expense will keep them coming,’ he said. He might have a point except, according to him, they were all cross-eyed and goofy before they got here.

‘I don’t think so,’ I said.

‘Oh, yes,’ he assured me. ‘But now, of course, they’ve got spectacles and perfect grins.’

What’s particularly impressive about Small Island is that Levy allows each character to tell their story – and their side of the present day story – in their own voice. Each is distinct and convincing. Each story is equally interesting too. I sometimes wondered whether the structure of the novel, where each character tells their back-story in full (sometimes stretching to ninety pages), could have been divided into smaller sections. However, I can see how Levy uses each story to contribute to further understanding of the characters and how their stories come together in a surprising way.

Small Island is a good novel, exploring a country in the midst of great change, attempting to come to terms with the legacy of the war. Levy does this largely through the private – the individual stories – but very much shows how the private is political. It’s a perfect book for a long, indulgent read that will satisfy you in terms of character and plot but also lead you to consider current attitudes to race. I found it particularly poignant as the general election draws closer in the UK and anti-immigrant rhetoric is spouted from several parties. Like Levy, I’ll give Hortense and Gilbert the last words:

Gilbert sucked on his teeth to return this man’s scorn. ‘You know what your trouble is, man?’ he said. ‘Your white skin. You think it makes you better than me. You think it gives you the right to lord it over a black man. But you know what it make you? You wan’ know what your white skin make you, man? It make you white. That is all, man. White. No better, no worse than me – just white.’

In the Media: 23rd November 2014

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

It’s been Ursula K. Le Guin’s week. Awarded the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the National Book Awards, she gave a widely praised speech about the need for freedom. You can watch it here, or read the transcript here. She’s interviewed on Salon, in The Guardian by Hari Kunzru and there’s a piece on where she gets her ideas from on Brain Pickings

Arundhati Roy and Megham Daum are the women with the second most coverage this week. Roy’s in Prospect, talking about ‘India’s Shame‘ and the caste system and interviewed in The Observer, where there are plenty of unnecessary comments about her looks. While Daum is interviewed on FSG’s website, in The Guardian and on The Cut.

The best of the rest articles/essays:

• Lavinia Greenlaw on her hero, Chaucer in The Guardian
• Lionel Shriver, Deborah Moggach and Lisa Jewell on their parents’ marriages in The Telegraph
• How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse According to Margaret Atwood on Buzzfeed
• Mary O’Donnell, ‘How I Write Poetry‘ on her blog
• Clare O’Dea, ‘Husbands in Books, from Bad to Worse‘ on her blog
• Susanna Hislop and Hannah Waldron, ‘Look to the Stars…‘ on the Waterstones blog
• Christine Murray, ‘There will always be singing; an appreciation of Doris Lessing‘ on her blog
• Jennifer O’Connell, ‘The World has serious mammy issues‘ in The Irish Times
• Susan Lanigan, ‘On Restrained, Elegant Prose‘ on her blog
• Lucy Allen, ‘The Myth of the “Empowered Woman” in History‘ on her blog
• Linda Tirado, On poverty in the US and the UK in The Guardian
• Alan Hollinghurst, ‘The Victory of Penelope Fitzgerald‘ in The New York Review of Books
• James Wood, ‘The Trials of Penelope Fitzgerald‘ in The New Yorker
• Meytal ‘If Roxane Gay is a Bad Feminist what am I?‘ on her blog
• ‘Re-membering Audre Lorde and Celebrating Toni Cade Bambara‘ on The Feminist Wire
• Bryony Gordon, ‘Why Adele was right to ignore Bob Geldof and Band Aid‘ in The Telegraph
• Amy Mason, ‘Female alcoholics need help, not vilification‘ in The Guardian
• Anne Donovan, ‘Beautiful Scots Words You May Not Know‘ on Scottish Book Trust
• Valerie Mendes on Oxfordshire on One Book Lane
• Matthew Rosza, ‘The meme-ification of Ayn Rand‘ on Salon
• Anna Stothard, ‘Objects of Berlin‘ on her blog
• Valeria Luiselli’s introduction to ‘Ayotzinapa’ on Asymptote
• Sarah Larson, ‘Amy Poehler’s Confidence Lessons‘ in The New Yorker
• Mary Costello, ‘Where I Write‘ on Scottish Book Trust
• Cynthia Haven, ‘Poet Melissa Green: Virgil would still be proud‘ on The Book Haven
• Cassandra Neace, ‘Discovering the Women of SciFi: Nnedi Okorafor‘ on Book Riot
• Cecily Kane, ‘I Want to be the Time-Traveler, Not His Wife‘ on her blog
• Emily Gould, ‘Leave Jonathan Franzen Alone‘ in Vice
• Suzanne Moore on The Hunger Games and the familiarity of the dystopian scenes in The Guardian
• Lydia Millet, ‘Gather Your Acolytes About You‘ on The Millions
• Anna Nordberg, ‘Dressing Like My Mother‘ in The New York Times
• Elisabeth Cohen, ‘Sex and the Single Librarian‘ on The Millions
• Miriam Toews, ‘The Day I Stopped Believing in God‘ on Buzzfeed
• Anne Margaret Daniel, ‘The Art of Zelda Fitzgerald‘ on Huffington Post
• Megan Amran, ‘How John Stewart and Stephen Colbert shaped my Comedy‘ on Salon
• Claire Fallon, ‘The Shocking, Twisted Stories Behind Your Favorite Nursery Rhymes‘ on Huffington Post
• Roxane Gay, ‘Bill Cosby and the rape accusers‘ in The Guardian
• Sonya Chung, ‘Reflections on Julia Child‘ on Bloom
• Jennifer S. Deayton, ‘Ladies Night in Hong Kong‘ in the Stockholm Review of Literature
• Jonathan Gibbs, Friday Book Design Blog on May-Lan Tan’s Things to Make and Break in The Independent
• Melissa Febos, ‘Against Our Own Best Time: Competition Among Writers in the Margins‘ on VIDA
• ‘Notes to Self‘, Authors look back at their work on The Guardian
• Antonia Honeywell, ‘The View from Over the Hill‘ on the Faber Academy site
• Lionel Shriver on Lammily in The Guardian
• Frances Leviston reflects on Elizabeth Bishop in the Edinburgh Review

The interviews:

• Celeste Ng in The Guardian
• Amanda Coe in The Guardian
• Margaret Drabble in The Believer
• Emma Jane Unsworth in Flux
• Michelle Magorian in We Love This Book
• Jo Mazelis on Novel Kicks
• Megan Amran on the AV Club
• Elly Danica on The Butter
• Helle Helle on English Pen
• Claudia Rankine on Guernica
• Margaret Atwood, Twitter Q&A on Harper Voyager
• Andrea Levy in The Independent
• Emily St. John Mandel on the National Book Foundation
• Rachel Joyce in the Irish Times
• Cheryl Strayed and Gillian Flynn in The New York Times
• Alina Gregorian in BOMB Magazine
• Marilynne Robinson on Open Book (BBC Radio 4) and on the National Book Foundation
• Sarah Davis-Goff, co-founder of Tramp Press on Totally Dublin
• Non Pratt on Bookends and Pages Blog
• Louise Glück on Poets and Writers
• Toni Morrison on The Colbert Report

If you want some fiction/poetry to read:

• ‘Kitty and Pussy‘ by Anne Neumann on Liars’ League
• ‘Alight at the Next‘ by Eley Williams in 3:AM Magazine
• An excerpt from Significance by Jo Mazelis on Writers’ Hub
• ‘The Imaginary Road‘ by Jackie Kay on Manchester Literature Festival (click on the box on the right of the screen to download)
• An extract from The Night Falling by Katherine Webb
• ‘Where We Must Be‘ by Laura Van den Berg on Electric Literature
• Three Poems by E.C. Belli on Blunderbuss
• ‘Exes‘ by Joanna Walsh on Queen Mob’s Tea House

The lists:

• Eliza Mariah’s Sci-Fi Round-Up on her blog
• The 50 Best Independent Fiction and Poetry Books 2014 on Flavorwire
• The Best Young Adult Books of 2014 in The Telegraph
• Christmas Gift Books People Will Love to Find Under the Tree in Marie Claire
• 17 of the Most-Highlighted Quotes from the Best Fiction by Women of the Past Two Years on Bustle
• Books of the Week in Publishers Weekly
• Latinas for Latino Lit: ‘Remarkable’ Children’s Books of 2014 on NBC
• 10 More Books Set in Edinburgh on Scottish Book Trust
• Winter Reading List on Stylist
• 10 Women Writers of LGBT YA on For Books’ Sake
• 75 Reasons Why Margaret Atwood Is Awesome on Book Riot
• Top 5 Women Writers of the Beat Generation on For Books’ Sake (Waterstones adjust your display tables accordingly.)
• The Top 10 Crime Debuts of 2014 on Crime Fiction Lover
• The 25 Books Every Woman Should Read by Lisa Simpson in Stylist
• If you like this book by a man, you’ll love this book by a woman on Buzzfeed
• 50 Writers You Need to See Read Live on Flavorwire
• 11 Memoirs Every Woman Should Read in Her 20s on Bustle

And the best things I’ve read this week:

• Ali Hope, ‘Slamming the bedroom door‘ on The Tenant of Wildfell Hall on her blog
• Isabel Rogers, ‘Truth and Fiction‘ on her blog
• Claire Fuller, ‘Crab Wood‘ on Tin House
• ‘From Literary Protégée to Competition Rival‘, Ann Patchett and Madeline Miller’s friendship on Something Rhymed
• Emma Jane Unsworth, ‘Readers love a good anti-hero so why do they shun anti-heroines‘ in The Guardian
• Shauna Miller, ‘Why We Still Need Leslie Feinberg‘ on The Atlantic
• Valeria Luiselli, ‘Building a New World‘ on Worlds Without Borders
• Nicola Griffith, ‘Branding: It Burns‘ on The Weeklings

In the Media: 16th November 2014

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

Photo by Wayne Thomas

This week, there’s been lots of discussion on my Twitter timeline about an article by Joanna Walsh, writer and creator of #ReadWomen2014 on ‘Why must the “best new writers” always be under 40?‘ prompted by Buzzfeed’s ‘20 Under 40 Debut Writers You Need to Be Reading‘. Traditionally, these lists have disadvantaged women who, for a number of reasons, often publish their first novel later than many men. So, although it’s arbitrary/silly, this week’s top slot is going to pieces by or about those who published their first book at 40 or over.

We have Linda Grant (first novel published at 44) on why she’s hooked on the Serial podcast in The Guardian; Joan Chase (47) in her own words and Amy Weldon on her both on Bloom, a site dedicated to writers whose first major work was published at 40 or over; Ruth Graham tells the true story of Laura Ingalls Wilder (65) on Slate; Alexander Chee looks at Penelope Fitzgerald (59) via Hermione Lee’s biography of her on Slate; there are interviews with Lissa Evans (42) on the One More Page blog, Helen DeWitt (43) in BOMB magazine, Meg Rosoff (48) on Rebecca Mascull’s blog, Katherine Boo (48) on the theatre production of Behind the Beautiful Forevers in the Independent and Donna Douglas (40) on Female First; while Bobbie Ann Mason (42) has a new short story ‘Ready‘ on TNB Fiction and the first chapter of Summertime by Vanessa Lafaye (51) is up to read on One Book Lane; finally, you can find out why middle-aged women are dominated self-publishing according to The Guardian.

At the other end of the spectrum, writer Nikesh Shukla supports young writers in Bristol. They publish online magazine Rife. Here’s Sammy Jones’ ‘The Five Stages of Street Harassment‘ and Jess Connett on ‘Hidden WWI: Teenagers at War‘.

There’s also been more gender discussion. Time magazine added the word ‘feminism’ to a list their readers could vote on to ‘ban’. Roxane Gay responded in The Washington Post; Hannah McGill discussed gender depiction in Sci-Fi in The List; Jess Meacham critiqued Suzanne Moore’s column on selfie’s being anti-feminist and her use of Sylvia Plath’s poetry in ‘The Eyeing of my Scars‘ on her blog, while Non Pratt looked at gender representation in Young Adult books in We Love This Book.

And the woman with the most publicity this week is Amanda Palmer, whose book The Art of Asking was published on Tuesday. She’s in The Guardian following a live web chat; interviewed by Maria Popova of Brainpickings on YouTube; has written an article for The Independent and been interviewed in Billboard.

The best of the rest articles/essays:

• Gillian Bowditch on Muriel Spark’s sealed archive of papers in The Sunday Times (paywall)
• Shirley Clarke and Elaine Dundy profile in The New Yorker
• Sarah Churchwell, ‘Why the Humanities Matter‘ in the Times Higher Education supplement
• Emily Gould on literary liars and forgiveness in Salon
• Rose Tremain on ‘The short story and its difficulties‘ on the Waterstones blog
• Tobin Dalrymple on Carol Dunlop and Julio Cortázar’s love affair in Maisonneuve
• Nicholas Rombes on Joan Didion’s Play it as it Lays on Electric Literature
• Laura Miller in defence of true crime on Salon
• Dan Gunn on Marguerite Duras at 100 in the Times Literary Supplement
• Nadine Bachan ‘Ol’ Talk‘ on reawakening her Trinidad accent in Maisonneuve
• Zoe Heller, ‘The Hard Work of Marriage‘ on Gone Girl in The New York Review of Books
• Aja Romana on celebrated Sci-Fi novelist Benjanun Sriduangkaew being exposed as a notorious internet troll on the Daily Dot
• Jess Row, ‘The Genius of the Woman Warrier at 30‘ on Slate
• Laura Thompson on the rise and rise of women detectives in The Telegraph
• Margaret C. Sullivan on Pride and Prejudice book covers over time in The Huffington Post
• Nathan Heller, ‘Why Joan Didion Matters More Than Ever‘ in Vogue
• Catherine Bruton on violence in teen fiction in The Guardian
• Tom Gatti on judging the Goldsmith’s Prize (won by Ali Smith) in the New Statesman
• Katie Law, ‘Why the words “gone” and “girl” are the latest trend in publishing‘ in the Evening Standard
• Alison Flood on Ali Smith winning the Goldsmiths Prize in The Guardian
• Ali Smith’s lecture on Virginia Woolf for the National Portrait Gallery
• Sarah Jane Abbott, ‘How I Capture the Castle Captured Me’ on Huffington Post
• Tasha Golden on the lone genus myth in Ploughshares
• Sarah Kerr, ‘Wonder Woman: The Weird, True Story‘ in The New York Review of Books
• Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore on Male escorts and female sexuality in Aeon
• Rose Bretécher on sexism in publishing on For Books’ Sake
• Anne Lamott on how a day with a sick friend bought her back to her senses on Salon
• Stella Duffy, ‘reconstruction revelation‘ on how she feels about her breast reconstruction following cancer surgery on her blog
• Maureen O’Conner, ‘Ayn Rand, Gril-Power Icon‘ in The Cut
• Mary Mann, ‘Weiter‘ in Guernica
• Edan Lepucki, ‘Notes on Likeability in Fiction‘ on The Millions
• Miranda Kiek on Elizabeth Von Arnim in The Independent
• Madeline Watts on A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing and the necessity of a ‘girl canon’ for The Believer
• Roxane Gay on Lena Dunham on her blog
• Miriam Darlington’s ‘Nature Notebook‘ in the Times (paywalled)
• Erin Keane ‘Jane Austen Slept with all the Book Bloggers‘ on Salon
• ‘Was Jane Austen a Feminist Writer?‘ on Scottish Book Trust
• Liz Kessler on why her novel about a girl coming out has been in a drawer for 15 years in The Guardian
• Helen Lewis ‘who are women dressing for, anyway‘ in the New Statesman
• Brain Pickings on Anne Lamott and the true gift of friendship
• Helen McClory on monsters for the Queen’s Ferry Press blog
• Elisabeth Geier on male bodies and women trying to navigate them on The Catapult
• Essie Fox on the allure of the gothic on One Book Lane
• Judith Levine, ‘Lena Dunham Wasn’t a Paedophile, and Neither Were You‘ in the Boston Review
• Hisham Matar, ‘The Unsaid: The Silence of Virginia Woolf‘ in The New Yorker
• Max Cairnduff, ‘Girls get murdered all the fucking time‘ on Lauren Beukes’ The Shining Girls on his blog
• Amy Uyematsu, ‘Old Asian American Poets Never Die‘ on Huffington Post
• Hannah Richell ‘And then…‘ on her blog
• Sabah Haider ‘Reflections on Northern Spirit‘ on Minor Literature[s]
• Beluah Devaney ‘Where Have All the Red-Headed Heroines Gone?‘ on For Books’ Sake
• Kathleen Anderson, ‘Why Cornel West Loves Jane Austen‘ on Huffington Post
• Helen MacKiven on her preference for female writers on her blog
• Blue Telusma, ‘Kim Kardashian doesn’t realise she’s the butt of an old racial joke‘ on The Grio

The interviews:

• Meera Syal on staring in Behind the Beautiful Forevers at the National Theatre, London
• Megan Amran in The Guardian
• Fiona McCrae, Graywolf Press Director, interviews Barbara Epler, President of New Directions on the Graywolf Press blog
• Brecken Hancock in Maisonneuve
• Emma Hannigan in Stylist
• Hilary Mantel reported in The Independent
• Helen Macdonald on The Guardian Books’ podcast
• Emily St. John Mandel on The Millions
• Jenny Offill interviews Lydia Millet on Salon
• Suzannah Dunn on Word Wenches
• Lindsay Hunter in The Believer
• Lore Segal on the Meville House website
• Margaret Atwood on the Huffington Post, responding ‘to some common tweets about Canadians‘ on Buzzfeed and in The West Australian
• Darcey Steinke on Bustle
• Jennifer Holland, Workman Publishing’s #ReadWomen2014’s author of the month on their blog
• Jo Mazelis on For Books’ Sake
• Jenny Erpenbeck on NRP Books
• Cheryl Strayed in Vanity Fair
• Tania Hershman on her flash fiction ‘Think of Icebergs‘ in Litro
• Andrea Levy in the Independent
• 5 Minutes with Marian Keyes on Eason Edition

This week’s ‘Who is Elena Ferrante?’ piece is by Jane Shilling in the New Statesman

If you want some fiction to read:

• ‘The Golden Room (Lucy’s Lips)‘ by Elizabeth Crawford in BOMB magazine
• Dorothea Lasky, ‘Never Did Amount to Anything‘ in Granta
• Olivia Laing, ‘The Other Hotel‘ on Manchester Literature Festival’s blog (click the title to download)
• Jackie Kay’s ‘Afternoon Tea‘ on Manchester Literature Festival’s blog (click the title to download)
• An extract from Jenny Erpenbeck’s The Ends of Days (tr. Susan Bernofsky) on NRP Books
• Marie-Helene Bertino on The Catapult ‘It’s about exes who fall from the sky.’

Or some non-fiction:

• ‘Thea‘ on I Will Pay £1.00 For Your Story blog
• Joanna Bourke’s introduction to Wounding the World on Virago’s website

This week’s lists

• 8 Moving First World War Books in Good Housekeeping
• Best Books to Read this November in Red magazine
• Arched Eyebrow’s 7 Favourite Books published this year on her blog
• Lydia Millet’s 5 Writing Tips in Publishers Weekly
• NetGalley’s UK Books of the Year
• Books that have taught me about ignorance on Of Books
• The top 10 books about reading in The Guardian
• 50 Novels Featuring Famous Authors as Characters on Flavorwire
• Best Reads for Christmas 2014 on Gransnet
• If You Liked Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham, You will Love… on Huffington Post
• 6 Witty Quotes from Margaret Atwood on Buzzfeed
• When Polly Vernon met Lena Dunham: 6 Things We Learned on Grazia
• Favourite Books of 2014 on Read Her Like an Open Book
• The Bookbag’s Top Ten Women’s Fiction Books 2014
• Quotations from Dan by Joanna Ruocco on the baumer
• 10 New Thought-Provoking Non-Fiction Books in Time Out New York
• 9 Books That Got Me Through My Awkward Teen Years on Bustle
• 5 Festive Novellas from Novelicious
• Some fantastic books about friendship in Rookie
• The 40 Books Every Woman Should Read on Hello Giggles

In the Media: 9th November 2014

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

It’s awards time again this week. Congratulations to Helen Macdonald who won the Samuel Johnson Prize with her stunning memoir H is for Hawk. There’s an article about it and an interview, both in The Guardian. You can also listen to interviews with all the shortlisted writers on BBC Radio 4.

While in France, Lydie Salvayre won the Prix Goncourt with Pas Pleurer.

The Green Carnation shortlist was announced this week and there are four women on the shortlist of six – congratulations to Kerry Hudson, Kirsty Logan, Anneliese Mackintosh and Laurie Penny. Prior to the announcement, Antonia Honeywell wrote her thoughts on the longlist.

The National Book Awards (UK) shortlists were also announced this week. Lots of books by women worth a read on there too.

And the Saltaire Society shortlisted a self-published book for their First Book Award, The Last Pair of Ears by Mary F. McDonough. The first self-published book to be shortlisted for a Scottish Prize.

That might make you think about Paul Kingsnorth’s novel The Wake which was the first crowd funded novel to be longlisted for The Man Booker Prize earlier this year. Well, Unbound, Kingsnorth’s publishers have announced a Women in Print campaign to try to increase the number of female authors published.

This week has also seen The Bookseller’s report on diversity in publishing – still not good enough, is the overriding conclusion.

It wouldn’t be an average week these days without a Lena Dunham story. Accused by a right-wing journalist of sexually molesting her younger sister following a confessional passage in her book, discussion ensued from Emily Gould, Katie McDonough, Mary Elizabeth Williams and Carolyn Edgar on Salon; Sarah Seltzer on Flavorwire; Emma Gannon on The Debrief; Grace Dent in The Independent. To cheer you up after that, here are 37 Funny and Inspired Thoughts from her book tour on Buzzfeed.

In more cheering news about prominent females, Mallory Ortberg, founder of The Toast, had her book Texts for Jane Eyre published in America this week. In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Sarah Mesle wrote a stunning essay/review about the book’s feminist credentials. She’s interviewed on Entertainment Weekly, The Huffington Post and The Guardian. And you can read an extract, 7 Brutal Literary Breakup Texts on Buzzfeed.

And the Amy Poehler stories are still going. The woman herself answers the Proust Questionnaire in Vanity Fair. Here’s 5 Unexpected Things Marie Claire learned from Poehler’s book. Jessica Valenti has (mis?) read the book and declared ‘bitchiness’ the secret to Poehler’s success in The Guardian. Also in The Guardian, Hadley Freeman told us ‘Why Amy Poehler is the Ultimate Role Model for British Women‘.

The best of the rest articles/essays:

• Jeanette Winterson on the books that changed her life in The Telegraph
• Meg Wolitzer, ‘Why are teenage girls drawn to books about mental instability?‘ in The Guardian
• ‘Finish that Book!‘, Juliet Lapidos in The Atlantic
• Tracey Thorn on going through phases in the New Statesman
• Dreda Say Mitchell, ‘Heroes to Die For‘ on Grab This Book
• Kate Mayfield on shrouds on her blog
• Erica Wagner on Rebecca Solnit and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in the Financial Times
• Sarah Galo on the Jennifer Egan edited ‘The Best American Short Stories 2014’ in The Guardian
• ‘Writers on the Titling Process‘ in The Millions
• ‘The Unfashionable Genius‘ on Marilynne Robinson in Commonweal Magazine
• Lynn Shepherd, ‘Pushing Pamela: Book Hype, 18th Century Style‘ in The Spectator
• ‘Women Rise in Sci Fi (Again)‘ by Rose Eveleth in The Atlantic
• Isabel Wolff on ‘The Forgotten Women of the War in the East‘ on Women Writers, Women’s Books
• Ruth Margalit on rereading The Giving Tree in The New Yorker
• Anakana Schofield, ‘Sorry, Mrs O’Duffy‘ on the lack of pensions for women in the Irish armed forces on the London Review of Books blog
• Louisa Treger on The Page 69 Test blog, talking about how Virginia Woolf led her to Dorothy Richardson on Blog Her and discussing how it feels to be between her fictional and real worlds on Women Writers, Women’s Books
• Jenny Diski, ‘Some things are best met with silence’ on her blog
• Frances Ambler, ‘Punk Debunked‘ on the plagiarism claims against Vivienne Westwood
• Isabel Costello, ‘My First Year as an Agented Writer‘ on her blog
• Catherine Ostler on Agatha Christie’s disappearance in The Independent
• Darcey Steinke’s tribute to a former teacher in The Roanoke Times
• Adèle Geras on ‘finding your voices‘ on The Great British Bookshop
• Sally Gardner, ‘Dyslexia and Me‘ in The Guardian
• Sonal Champsee, ‘How I Started the Margaret Atwood Revolution‘ in Hippocampus
• ‘What to Read When You’re Not Expecting‘ on The Millions
• ‘What Would Jessica Fletcher Tweet?‘ on PopMatters
• Lionel Shriver, ‘I was poor but I was happy‘ in The Guardian

The interviews:

• Sarah Waters interviewed by Rachel Cooke about the play she’s written in The Guardian
• Lindsay Hunter on Electric Literature
• Jane Rawson on Annabel Smith’s blog
• Roxane Gay on Phillips Exeter Academy website
• Anne Fine on Gender-Biased Books on BBC Radio 4
• Amy Mason on Bristol 24/7 and Scottish Book Trust
• Kate Zambreno on Catherine Mavrikakis’ A Cannibal and Melancholy Mourning in The Believer
• Rose Chast on her inspiration at The New Yorker festival
• Jenny Offill on Book Forum
• Averill Curdy in AGNI online
• Laurie Penny on Flavorwire
• Jill Meyers and Callie Collins on running A Strange Object independent press on Bustle
• Caitlin Moran on Talking Writing
• Jo Mazelis on the Seren Books blog
• Mindy Kaling on ‘Writing the Michael Scott Character as a Woman’ at The New Yorker festival
• Zoe Pilger in Flux
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at the Washington Ideas Forum on The Atlantic (you might need to scroll through the videos)
• Mary Costello on The Works, RTÉ
• Margaret Atwood on Mr B’s Emporium blog
• Anne Lamott on Salon
• Christina James’ editor (who’s also her husband) on Strange Alliances
• Eliza Griswold in Guernica
• Rebecca Levene on Fantasy Faction
• Lynn Kanter on the PhD in Creative Writing Blog
• Lydia Millet interviewed by Jonathan Lethem in BOMB
• Annabel Smith on Seraglio
• Sali Hughes on Get the Gloss
• Anne Rice in The Independent

In translation:

• Jenny Erpenbeck (tr. Susan Bernofsky) ‘Homesick for Sadness’ on the fall of the Berlin Wall in The Paris Review
• Julie Winters Carpenter interviewed about translating Japanese poetry on the Asymptote Blog

If you want some fiction/poetry to read:

• Juliet Jacques, ‘Surveillance City‘ on Queen Mob’s Tea House
• Gillian Flynn, ‘Trouble at Osage Lake High‘ from Drivel: Deliciously Bad Writing By Your Favorite Authors on Buzzfeed
• An extract from Mary Costello’s Academy Street on Canongate Books
• ‘Stand Still‘ by Shelly Oria on Guernica
• Joanna Ruocco, ‘Gallup Poll’ and ‘The Face of Things’ in Threadcount
• An extract from Miranda Dickinson’s I’ll Take New York on Tishylou’s World
• Bethan Roberts’ ‘Like Rabbits‘ in The White Review
• ‘Luz‘ by Laura Bylenok
• ‘Plots from the Sopranos Re-Interpreted by Lydia Davis‘ (Not really, in case that wasn’t obvious) on Hobart
• Antonya Nelson, ‘Primum Non Noncere‘ in The New Yorker, which she discusses here.
• The first chapter of Amanda Coe’s Getting Colder on Virago’s site

The lists:

• My 5 favourite books to reread on Lonesome Reader
• 33 Books You Should Read Now, Based on Your Favourite Films on Buzzfeed
• 13 Successful First Novels by Female Writers on Popsugar
• 5 Stunning Debut Novels to Add to Your To-Read Pile in the Huffington Post
• 9 Cli-Fi Books for Teens on Scottish Book Trust
• The Best Debut Novels of 2014 according to Hannah Beckerman in the Huffington Post
• 10 Forgotten Children’s Books (8-11) on the Scottish Book Trust site
• Best Queer Characters in Fiction on For Books’ Sake
• The 8 Best Under the Radar Books to Read this Fall in Vogue
• 12 New Books all Twentysomething Women Will Be Obsessed with This Fall in Cosmopolitan
• 5 YA Books That Will Keep You on the Edge of Your Seat on Huffington Post
• 13 Best Books to Read in November in Good Housekeeping
• 6 Things We Learned from J.K. Rowling’s new Harry Potter stories on Mental Floss
• 10 Amazing Female Novelists Under 50 on Buzzfeed
• Five Challenging Memoirs by Remarkable Women Writers by Alice Jolly (who’s publishing her own memoir through Unbound – see top of the post) on For Books’ Sake

And the 13 (I tried to keep it to 10 but it’s been a very good week) best things I’ve seen this week:

• Meaghan O’Connell’s ‘A Birth Story‘ on Longreads
• The new Read Women bookmarks designed by Joanna Walsh, creator of #ReadWomen2014
• 100 Days of African Reads on Sister Killjoy’s Facebook page (runs from 10th October 2014 to 8th January 2015)
• Andrea Levy, ‘How I learned to stop hating my heritage‘ in The Guardian
• Ekphora, ‘A Liberating Rupture‘ on her blog
• ‘An Illustrated Guide to Writing People of Color‘ by MariNaomi on Buzzfeed
• ‘The War Is Over (If You Want It)‘ Rebecca Solnit on Tom Dispatch
• Olivia Lang’s profile of Hilary Mantel in Elle
• ‘Notes on the Exotic‘, Andrea Lee in The New Yorker
• Ann Patchett’s correction to the New York Times
• Lucy Ribchester’s Pinterest board for The Hourglass Factory
• Sarah Butler’s ‘Remaining Values Should Probably Be Left Alone‘ on her blog
• The book trailer (it’s more of a mini-film than a book trailer) for Tiffany Murray’s Sugar Hall

In the Media: 26th October 2014

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

 

This week there’s definitely a celebration of feminist role models happening. At the forefront (mostly because her book Yes, Please is out in the US on Tuesday and the UK the following week) is Amy Poehler. Bustle have 15 Quotes that Prove She’s Our Brilliant Fairy Godmother; Popsugar have 19 Times Amy Poehler Said What We Wish We’d Said, while People have her answering questions people posted on Twitter and Facebook. Amanda Hess, in Slate, wrote about Poehler joining the famous women’s comedy/memoir/advice-book club; Lydia Kiesling wrote in Salon about how Nora Ephron presides over Poehler, Dunham, Fey and Kaling’s books, while Sam Baker in Harpers Bazaar wrote about Fearless Feminist Reads and why they’re important for teenage girls as well as adults.

Someone else who’s been written about as a feminist role model this week is Jane Austen. Jane Austen: Feminist in Action by Sinéad Murphy ran on the Huffington Post blog; Alexander McCall Smith explained why he’s modernised Emma on the Waterstones’ Blog; Sarah Seltzer on Flavorwire wrote about ‘Why We Can’t Stop Reading – and Writing – Jane Austen Sequels‘, while on Something Rhymed, Emma Claire Sweeney wrote ‘In Praise of the Spinster‘ about playwright, Ann Sharpe, Austen’s family’s governess.

Another amazing woman, Joan Didion, is also being celebrated this week. Her nephew is making a documentary about her. You can watch the trailer here. He’s decided to raise funds via Kickstarter which led to Flavorwire publishing Some Other Joan Didion Kickstarter Rewards We’d Like to See and Vogue re-publishing her 1961 essay ‘On Self-Respect‘.

It would be wrong not to mention Hallowe’en this week, particularly as there’s been a group of pieces around that theme. Wired’s podcast, which features Lauren Beukes, is What’s Scarier, Haunted Houses or Haunted People?; Electric Literature have published ‘“Then, a Hellbeast Ate Them”: Notes on Horror Fiction and Expectations‘, looking at Diane Cook and Helen Oyeyemi amongst others; Sarah Perry has written on The Gothic for Aeon, and Kate Mayfield who wrote the memoir ‘The Undertaker’s Daughter’ is on For Books’ Sake talking about How Not to Write a Memoir and in The Guardian talking about ‘Growing Up in the Family Funeral Parlour‘.

Talking of scary, Gone Girl‘s still a hot topic this week. Tana Wojczuk wrote ‘Gone Girl, Bluebeard, and the Meaning of Marriage‘ in Guernica in response to Elif Bautman’s piece ‘Marriage Is an Abduction‘ from last week’s New Yorker. Amanda Ann Klein wrote about the ‘Unbearable Whiteness of Gone Girls‘ for Avidly, and Steph Cha wrote about ‘Laughing at “Gone Girl”‘ in the LA Review of Books.

This week’s other notable essays/articles:

• Maxine Frances Roper On Writing about Politics and Privilege for For Books’ Sake
• Jo Bloom on why she wrote her forthcoming novel Ridley Road
• Sonya Chung, Ruthless, Beautiful, Dangerous Comforting: How it is in the World of Tove Jansson on The Millions
• Emmanuella Kwenortey on The African Woman and her Conditional Place in the West on the Fourth Estate Blog
• Susan Elliot Wright on The Writing Life
• Jane Smiley on writing Some Luck on the Picador Blog
• Two pieces on ‘chick-lit’/the labelling of books by women – one by Deborah Batterman, ‘Is It Chick Lit? Is It Not Chick Lit? What Do We Call It?‘ on Women Writers, Women’s Books and another by India Knight, ‘Chick lit is in its death throes‘ on The Guardian
• The Literary Legacy of Women Expats in Paris on The Culture Trip
• Alina García-Lapuerta on La Belle Créole, Cuba’s first female author
• Cate Sampson, ‘“She” for “He” in Children’s Books‘ in The Guardian
• Katherine Grant on her book Sedition on the Waterstones’ Blog
• Holly Smale ‘Teem Teen‘ on celebrating YA books on The Bookseller Blog
• Cynthia Miller Coffel, ‘Fanny Trollope “Tested as Few Women Have Been“‘ on Bloom
• Erika T. Wurth, ‘Less Boring Art, More Diversity‘ in Publishers Weekly
• Lydia Kiesling in Salon on ‘“Friendship” and the new Brooklyn novel‘
• Louise Erdich on the first sentence of her piece ‘Domain’ in Granta
• Nicole Dieker on GeekGirlCon being an oasis of acceptance on Boing Boing
• Feminist Wednesday Womancrush on Cheryl Strayed
• Leslie Wilson ‘How to Remember Them?‘ on The History Girls
• Marian Keyes on Sali Hughes’ Pretty Honest and impostor syndrome
• Tracey Thorn on being asked to do the identity parade on Never Mind the Buzzcocks for the New Statesman
• Kate Merry ‘Why Is Talking About Miscarriage Still Taboo?‘ for Vice
• The Millions puts a group of writers, including Jane Smiley and Francine Prose, in a room to discuss writing in ‘The Art of Dialogue‘
• Electric Literature has a group of writers discuss their ‘lowbrow’ influences
• Alison Flood says Edith Blyton’s ‘Not as good as she used to be‘ in The Guardian
• Julie Mayhew ‘This Electric Love‘ for Standard Issue
• Annabel Smith ‘Is the Publishing Industry Ready for Truly Interactive Books‘ on The Wheeler Centre’s site
• Eve Fairbanks on ‘How personal essays conquered journalism – and why they can’t cut it‘ in The Washington Post
• Christine Hennessy on the inspiration for Ayelet Waldman’s novel Love and Treasure on Greenwich Time
• Caroline Crampton ‘Women Writers after Woolf: Still Fighting for a Room of One’s Own‘ in the New Statesman
• Joanne Harris wrote about the aftermath of last week’s Kathleen Hale piece in The Guardian in which she wrote about stalking a blogger
• Book Riot, ‘No Really, Read Ann Leckie‘ (I don’t usually include reviews but this is almost an ‘in praise of’.)
• Kate Mosse on living with a name similar to another famous person’s in The Times (paywalled)
• Malala Yousafzai, ‘Girls continue to be killed and schools blown up‘ on Waterstones’ Blog

And the interviews:

• Lisa Williamson interviews designer Alice Todd on creating the amazing cover for Williamson’s forthcoming book The Art of Being Normal in We Love This Book
• Amanda Coe on Open Book
• Sandra Newman and Roopa Farooki also on Open Book
• Elizabeth Harrower on The Monthly Book
• Nina Stibbe on Bookanista
• Luci Tapahonso, the first Navajo Poet Laureate
• Hilary Mantel in conversation with Harriet Walter for The Royal Society of Literature
• Janice Galloway on Off the Page
• Joyce Carol Oates in Nightmare magazine
• Rowan Coleman talks to Richard and Judy. (There are links to all the other R&J Book Club choice podcasts on that link too.)
• Theresa Breslin on Scottish Book Trust’s website
• Rachel Joyce on Writing.ie and on the BBC
• Kate Tempest in The Guardian
• Sarah Thornton on The Economist
• Dorothea Lasky in Granta
• Emily St. John Mandel on Broadcast Exchange
• Detective Sergeant Marnie Rome, protagonist of Sarah Hilary’s Someone Else’s Skin, on the Richard and Judy Book Club site
• Anne Rice did the Guardian Q&A
• Bell Hooks and Laverne Cox in The New Yorker
• Alice Furse on The Workshy Fop

In translation news, I’ve seen no articles this week about the identity of Elena Ferrante – hurrah! But I have seen that there’s a new imprint called Periscope devoted to translating poetry by women – hurrah!

If you’d like some fiction to read/listen to:

• Rachel Joyce’s The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy is being adapted for BBC Radio 4. Here’s the first episode.
• ‘Technical Support‘ by Adele Geras in the Sunday Express
• The first chapter of Some Luck by Jane Smiley on the Picador blog
• Jane Flett, ‘The Things They Don’t Tell You About Fire‘ in Litro
• ‘Room to Write Short Story Prize Anthology‘ including a story by Isabel Costello
• ‘The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis‘ by Karen Russell on Electric Literature
• The all-female Stockholm Review of Literature, Volume 4
• The first chapter of The Good Children by Roopa Farooki
• Andrea Levy reading from Six Stories and an Essay on Waterstones’ Blog
• Julie Mayhew’s play The Electrical Venus on BBC Radio 4
• ‘Letter to an Optician‘ by Judy Brown on Seren Books’ blog
• Kathleen Hale ‘The Tub Is Just the Safest Place‘ in Hazllitt
• The first chapter of Head for the Edge by Kate Tough in The Scotsman

Or some non-fiction:

• An extract from Vivienne Westwood’s autobiography on the Picador Blog

This week’s lists:

• 15 Crime Books Perfect for a Winter’s Day on Dead Good Books
• Fourth Estate’s Very Best Short Stories by women
• 10 Historical Superstitions we carry on today by Karen Maitland on History Extra
• 10 Reasons to Love Ursula K. Le Guin on For Books’ Sake
• Book Loving Celebrities Name Their Favourite Fictional Reads in Stylist
• Apocalypse Now! Top 10 Novels about the End of Days by Annabel Smith
• Charlie Jane Anders on The 10 Types of Fictional Apocalypses (And What They Mean) on io9
• Sarah Hilary’s 7 Best Crime Reads of 2014 in Red magazine
• Sarah Hilary (again) with her Fictional Heroines for the Richard and Judy Book Club
• 10 Books by Women that Everyone Should Read by Julia Bell on Writers’ Hub
• 9 Reasons to read Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood on Books Speak Volumes
• The five defining moments in Arsenal’s ‘Invincible’ season by Amy Lawrence in GQ

And the best things I’ve read this week:

• Stella Duffy on cancer and The Language Battleground