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, 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

The Baileys’ Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist 2016

The judges have made their decision! The absence of Kate Atkinson’s A God in Ruins is a complete shock. Many of us on the shadow panel thought it was by far one of the best books on the list. The shadow panel shortlist shares three titles with the official shortlist. I’m also pleased to see The Portable Veblen and A Little Life on the list, both of which I rated highly.

Here’s the six shortlisted books. If you click on the cover, it will take you to my review.

 

In the Media, April 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.

There’s been a strong narrative about the abuse of women over the last fortnight. Jessica Knoll wrote a personal and powerful essay about the gang rape which informed the writing of her novel Luckiest Girl Alive. ‘What I Know‘ was published on Lena Dunham’s site Lenny. Daisy Buchanan interviewed Knoll for The Pool. Jia Tolentino looked at the reporting of abuse in ‘Is this the End of the Era of the Important, Inappropriate Literary Man‘ on Jezebel. Helen Walmsley-Johnson wrote ‘The shame of abuse has held me hostage for years‘ on The Pool; Kathryn Joyce wrote ‘Out Here, No One Can Hear You Scream‘ on The Huffington Post; Jade Blair wrote, ‘Women Do What They Need To Do To Survive‘ on Hazlitt, and Louise O’Neill wrote ‘Nothing could prepare me for what happened when I published my book‘ on The Pool and ‘What a privilege it is to think that I might have touched other peoples lives in some small way‘ in The Irish Examiner. (The later is O’Neill’s weekly column which I’ve now added to the regulars section at the bottom of the post.)

The 2015 VIDA count for the number of bylines and reviews for female writers in literary magazines was announced. There’s some good news in some areas but, overall, there’s still a long way to go. Rachel McCarthy James followed this with, ‘Women in Publishing 100 Years Ago: A Historical VIDA Count: Representation and Gender (Im)Balance in 1916‘ on Literary Hub

The longlist for the Desmond Elliott Prize was announced with seven books by female writers in the running.

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Sara Barrett, ‘I have autism and the lack of authentic autistic voices in books angers me‘ in The Guardian
• Narwali Serpell, ‘Africa Has Always Been Sci-Fi‘ on Literary Hub
• Boris Kachka, ‘Claudia Rankine Challenges White Teachers, Pities White Racists in AWP Keynote‘ on Vulture
• Jane Mendlesohn, ‘Why I Wrote a Novel About Sex Trafficking‘ on Literary Hub
• Kate Tempest, ‘It’s difficult to look at words as pegs to hang a plot from’ in The Guardian
• Joanna Walsh, ‘On Self-Writing‘ in the Irish Times
• Harriet Reuter-Hapgood, ‘“I wake up panicked at 2am every night”: an author reveals what it’s (really) like to write a debut novel‘ in Stylist
• Mallory Ortberg, ‘Every Meal In Wuthering Heights Ranked In Order Of Sadness‘ in The Toast
• Ros Barber, ‘For me, traditional publishing means poverty. But self-publish? No way‘ in The Guardian
• Rachel Abbott, ‘14 hour days, marketing and dealing with snobbery: my life as a self-published bestseller‘ on The Guardian
• Brigid Delaney, ‘What we write about when we write about running‘ in The Guardian
• Kelly Kerney, ‘The Impossible Task of Writing Historical Fiction‘ on Publishers Weekly
• Sofia Samatar, ‘On the 13 Words that Made Me a Writer‘ on Literary Hub
• Gaby Wood, ‘Harper Lee’s letters: priceless literary artifacts or tasteless celebrity memorabilia?‘ in The Telegraph
• Viv Groskop, ‘Celebrating Eat, Pray, Love 10 years on‘ on The Pool
• Mairi Kidd, ‘Access to books and reading should be a right‘ on The Bookseller
• Rachel Kondo, ‘Write How You Like Write: Representing Hawai’i Creole English as a Literary Participant‘ on Electric Literature
• Katie Roiphe, ‘Remembering Susan Sontag’s Final Days‘ on Literary Hub
• Rowan Whiteside, ‘Why I ❤️ Georgette Heyer‘ in Standard Issue
• Leigh Stein, ‘Millennial Days‘ in The New York Times
• David Featherstone, ‘Doreen Massey obituary‘ in The Guardian
• Sarah Hughes, ‘Why those subversive Brontë sisters still hypnotise us‘ in The Guardian
• Hanya Yanagihara, ‘Writing can be lonely‘ in The Telegraph
• Kate Elliott, ‘Writing Women Characters into Epic Fantasy Without Quotas‘ on Tor.Com
• Sara Nović, ‘on how she wrote Girl at War‘ in The Guardian
• Sarah Bakewell, ‘At the Existentialist Café‘ on Literary Hub
• Mira Ptacin, ‘Hard Truth and Deep Trauma Behind Bars‘ on Literary Hub
• Shirley Barrett, ‘How to Be a Whaler’s Wife in 1908: Boil Everything, Wash the Clothes in Gin‘ on Literary Hub
• Lucy Mangan, ‘The forgotten genius: why Anne wins the battle of the Brontës‘ in The Guardian
• Danielle Dutton, ‘On Dressing Margaret Cavendish‘ in The Believer
• Vespa Goldsworthy, ‘I started from Gatsby as a Greek dramatist starts from Antigone‘ in The Guardian
• Rachel Cooke, ‘Anita Brookner’s wry, elegant world of disappointed women‘ in The Guardian

Personal essays/memoir:

• Madison Griffiths, ‘An Open Letter to My Vagina: Sex, Pain, and Vaginismus‘ on Vice
• Lynn Steger Strong, ‘Running Still‘ in Guernica
• Lynn Steger Strong, ‘To Be a Mother, To Be a Writer‘ on Literary Hub
• Sara Black-McCulloch, ‘Catching the Light‘ on Maisonneuve
• Liz Jackson, ‘Four Years Ago Today, I Fell Out of Bed.‘ on Medium
• Susan Ito, ‘Names‘ on Catapult
• Molly Prentiss, ‘From a California Commune to New York City or, How to Be an Adult Woman in NYC‘ on Literary Hub
• Nandini Balial, ‘Agemus‘ on Midnight Breakfast
• Vivian Huyun, ‘I thought assimilation was the key to happiness, but I ended up trapped in a cultural prison‘ in The Guardian
• Abby Higgs, ‘A Conversation with Brandon‘ on Catapult
• Clare Vaye Watkins, ‘How to Escape Your Hometown‘ on Literary Hub
• Patricia Smith, ‘Bazooka Smackdown‘ in Guernica
• Marissa Korbel, ‘No, Lolita‘ on The Rumpus

Feminism:

• Katie Daubs, ‘The woman who was trans before her time‘ in The Toronto Star
• Glosswitch, ‘Cristiano Ronaldo’s approach to fatherhood is a victory for male supremacy‘ in the New Statesman
• Chimene Suleyman, ‘There is an epidemic of missing women and girls of colour in the UK‘ on Media Diversified
• Elisa Albert, ‘Confessions of a Radical Doula‘ in The Cut
• Tabitha Blankenbiller, ‘The Slow Fall of the Hot Heroine‘ on The Rumpus
• Jendella Benson, ‘Is It Worth it?: Black Women’s Voices and the Permission to Speak‘ on the Huffington Post
• Laura Bates, ‘Why is travelling alone still considered a risky, frivolous pursuit for women?‘ in The Guardian
• Rosie Fletcher, ‘It’s great that Emma Watson is standing up for feminism – but #HeforShe is the wrong approach‘ in The New Statesman

Society and Politics:

• Bettina Judd, ‘On or about July 10, 2015‘ on The Offing
• Jo Scott-Coe, ‘Listening to Kathy‘ on Catapult
• Ellen Cantarow and Alison Rose Levy, ‘A Fukushima on the Hudson?‘ in Guernica
• Christina Cauterucci, ‘We Expect Women to Have Impostor Syndrome. That’s Why We Can’t Handle Hillary Clinton.‘ on Slate
• Erica Schweigershausen, ‘How Biased Policies Push Black Girls Out of School‘ on The Cut
• Angie Maxwell, ‘Donald Trump and the Lost Cause‘ in VQR
• Miranda Trimmier, ‘Dark Pools‘ on The New Inquiry
• Patricia Lockwood, ‘Lost in Trumplandia‘ in the New Republic
• Zoe Williams, ‘These Tory messages show us why faith has no place in politics‘ in The Guardian
• Elaine Brown, ‘‘A Taste of Power’: The Woman who Led the Black Panther Party‘ on Longreads
• Rebecca Solnit, ‘Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco‘ in The Guardian
• Amanda Chicago Lewis, ‘How Black People Are Being Shut Out of America’s Weed Boom‘ on Buzzfeed
• Emma Green, ‘Black Activism, Unchurched‘ in The Atlantic
• Eleanor Margolis, ‘“Faithful amanuensis”: how the guise of friendship is used to erase lesbian relationships‘ in The New Statesman

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

• Taffy Brodesser-Akner, ‘Water’s Edge‘ on ESPN
• Bronwen Dickey, ‘Dogs of Character: Pride, Prejudice, and the American Pit Bull Terrier‘ in VQR
• Hanna Yusuf, ‘Why the fashion elite needs to stop undermining Muslim women’s choice of clothing‘ in The Pool
• Helen Garner, ‘‘A certain sort of maleness’: on a week spent watching Russell Crowe films‘ in The Guardian
• Ali Smith, ‘The enigma of Giorgione‘ on The Royal Academy of Arts blog
• Anne Helen Peterson, ‘The Unbearable Sadness Of Ben Affleck‘ on Buzzfeed
• Anne Helen Petersen, ‘How Jennifer Garner Went Full “Minivan Majority”‘ on Buzzfeed
• Megha Majumdar, ‘Privileged Nostalgia: On Hollywood, Perception, and the Quest for Authenticity‘ on Electric Literature
• Jean Hannah Edelstein, ‘Unpicking the fascination with the Queen of Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow‘ on The Pool
• Zadie Smith, ‘Windows on the Will‘ in The New York Review of Books
• Ella Risbridger, ‘You walk differently in boots – and that’s their power‘ on The Pool

The interviews:

• Maggie Nelson in The Observer
• Ursula Le Guin on Literary Hub
• Mona Awad on Electric Literature and Tin House
• Jennifer Barber on The Rumpus
• Anne-Marie Slaughter in The Cut
• Attica Locke on the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction blog
• Phoebe Fox on Women Writers, Women’s Books
• Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney on Electric Literature
• Danielle Dutton on Literary Hub
• Marilynne Robinson in The Washington Post
• Donna Leon on the Waterstones blog
• Idra Novey in 3:AM Magazine
• Jackie Copleton on the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction blog
• Shelley Harris on Rebecca Mascull’s blog
• Dawn Tripp on Salon
• Lynn Steger Strong on Electric Literature
• Clio Gray on the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction Blog
• Edna O’Brien in The New York Times
• Helen Oyeyemi on Vice
• Camille Rankine in Interview Magazine
• Tracy Chevalier in The Independent
• Angela Flournoy and Kaitlyn Greenidge on Literary Hub
• Antonia Honeywell on Jo Hogan Writes
• Susan Orlean on Broadly
• Sinéad Gleeson on Minnie Melange

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

The Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlist 2016

8th March 2016: The Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction announces its 2016 longlist, comprised of 20 books that celebrate the best of fiction written by women

Here they are, the 20 books longlisted for this year’s Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. In alphabetical order (of author’s surname):

A God In Ruins – Kate Atkinson

Rush Oh! – Shirley Barrett

Ruby – Cynthia Bond

The Secret Chord – Geraldine Brooks

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet – Becky Chambers

A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding – Jackie Copleton

Whispers Through a Megaphone – Rachel Elliott

The Green Road – Anne Enright

The Book of Memory – Petina Gappah

Gorsky – Vesna Goldsworthy

The Anatomist’s Dream – Clio Gray

At Hawthorn Time – Melissa Harrison

Pleasantville – Attica Locke

The Glorious Heresies – Lisa McInerney

The Portable Veblen – Elizabeth McKenzie

Girl at War – Sara Nović

The House at the Edge of the World – Julia Rochester

The Improbability of Love – Hannah Rothschild

My Name Is Lucy Barton – Elizabeth Strout

A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara

My initial reaction is that the three books I thought were certs are all on there – A God in Ruins, My Name Is Lucy Barton and A Little Life. Very pleased to see all three.

I predicted six of the titles, which is my highest success rate ever! Very pleased to see Girl at War on the list as well as The Portable Veblen. I’ve enjoyed all those I’ve already read, which includes The Green Road which I haven’t posted my review for yet.

As for the rest of the list, I’m delighted to see Pleasantville – I loved Black Water Rising and have had the latest on my TBR pile for ages. I’ve also heard good things from people I trust about The Book of Memory, At Hawthorn Time and The Glorious Heresies.

As always with The Bailey’s Prize there are some books I hadn’t heard of before I saw the list. My absolute favourite part of this is reading those titles, there’s always one in there that surprises me with its brilliance. On looking through the blurbs, I can’t believe I hadn’t come across Ruby, it’s had so many fantastic reviews, and The Anatomist’s Dream is perfect for my PhD thesis so I’m very pleased it’s come to my attention.

I’m looking forward to getting stuck into the reading and debating the books with the rest of the shadow panel. I’m hoping you’ll join in the discussion on our blogs and Twitter too. Can’t wait to hear what everyone thinks of the chosen titles.

 

 

In the Media, March 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 traditional media are likely and the categories used are a guide, not definitives.

It’s Mothers’ Day in the UK today, so inevitably there’s been lots of writing about mothers – being one, having one, not having one – this week. Contributors including Jackie Kay, Jeanette Winterson and Helen Simpson wrote about ‘… my mother before I knew her‘ inspired by Carol Ann Duffy’s poem ‘Before You Were Mine’ in The Guardian; Liz Dashwood asks, ‘What do I *really* want for Mother’s Day?‘ on The Pool; Rivka Galchen talked about ‘The Only Thing I Envy Men‘ in The New Yorker; Robyn Wilder wrote, ‘Maternity leave: the reality versus the expectations‘, Emily Eades wrote, ‘Becoming a mother without your own mother to rely on‘ and Sinéad Gleeson wrote, ‘Mothers, and the pram-in-the-hall problem‘ all on The Pool (Do follow the link to the Anne Enright clip on that last piece. Spot on and very funny); Susan Briante wrote, ‘Mother Is Marxist‘ on Guernica; Kate Townshend asked, ‘Is it possible for a mother and daughter to be *too* close?‘, Samira Shackle said, ‘Returning to my mother’s homeland helped me to make sense of my place in the world‘, Cathy Rentzenbrink said, ‘There is no such thing as a smug mother, we’re all terrified and struggling‘ and Rosalind Powell wrote, ‘I didn’t give birth, but I became a mother‘ all on The Pool; Sarah Turner wrote, ‘Mother’s Day Without Mum‘ on The Unmumsy Mum

Sadly, Louise Rennison died this week. Philip Ardagh wrote, ‘My Hero: Louise Rennison‘ in The Guardian. Shannon Maughan wrote her obituary for Publishers Weekly.

The woman with the most coverage this fortnight is Sanjida Kay with ‘Where’s the Diversity in Grip-Lit?‘ on The Asian Writer; ‘on Switching Genres‘ on The Literary Sofa, and ‘Fairytales‘ on Women Writers, Women’s Books

Exciting news as forthcoming novels from Jilly Cooper, Zadie Smith and Ali Smith were announced this fortnight.

And I’ve added Kaushana Cauley’s new Intersections column for Catapult to the regulars list at the bottom of the links. It’s well worth a read.

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Eve Ainsworth, ‘Toxic love: YA’s bad boys need to stay between the covers‘ in The Guardian
• Hanya Yanagihara: ‘Don’t we read fiction exactly to be upset?’ in The Guardian
• Jessie Burton, ‘Success, Creativity and the Anxious Space‘ on her blog
• Claire Fuller, ‘Some things I’ve learned in my year of being published‘ on her blog
• Bree Crowder, ‘Four Young Adult Authors Share Why They Write Funny Books‘ on Bustle
• Karen Swallow Prior, ‘Jane Eyre and the Invention of the Self‘ on The Atlantic
• Deborah Moggagh, ‘Man Booker Prize has an unhealthy effect on the market, says author Deborah Moggagh‘ in The Independent
• Claire Fallon, ‘Our Favourite Children’s Books Are Super Problematic‘ on the Huffington Post
• Alison Flood, ‘Tessa Hadley among nine winners of surprise $150,000 literary awards‘ in The Guardian
• Sian Cain, ‘Toni Morrison wins PEN/Saul Bellow award for contribution to American fiction‘ in The Guardian
• Jo Hall, ‘If We Can Imagine Dragons: On Writing Non-Heterosexual Relationships in Fantasy‘ on Holdfast
• Alison Stine, ‘On Poverty‘ on Kenyon Review
• Joan Schenkar, ‘What Patricia Highsmith did for love: ‘The Price of Salt’ and the secrets behind ‘Carol’‘ in the Los Angeles Times
• Louise Walters, ‘I didn’t want to resort to self-publishing, but it’s an exhilarating change‘ in The Guardian
• Gaby Wood, ‘How Karl Ove Knausgaard and Elena Ferrante won us over‘ in The Telegraph
• Moira Redmond, ‘Leap year fear: a literary history of women proposing marriage‘ in The Guardian
• Katy Derbyshire, ‘Women in Translation: Why Does It Matter?‘ on Free Word
• Eva Jurczyk, ‘No More Books by Men‘ on The Awl
• Elizabeth Strassner, ‘How To Tell If You’re In a Flannery O’Connor Story‘ in The Toast
• Anne Boyd Rioux, ‘How to Make Sure Your Writing Is Forgotten‘ on The Rumpus
• Holly Williams, ‘From The Roaring Queen to Downton Abbey: the afterlives of Virginia Woolf‘ in the New Statesman
• Anna North, ‘What Publishing a Novel Taught Me About Life‘ on Waterstones’ Blog

• Kate Jenkins, ‘Harper Lee and the Myth of a Post-Racial America‘ on Literary Hub
• Sian Cain, ‘Fear of Flying still soars above tabloid outrage‘ in The Guardian
• Brigit Katz, ‘These forgotten female crime writers had no time for femme fatales or dowdy housewives‘ on Women in the World
• Idra Novey, ‘Writing While Translating‘ on Literary Hub
• Elizabeth Minkel, ‘Teen readers aren’t in crisis, they’re just making their own rules‘ in The Guardian
• Jaya Saxena, ‘I Know I Should Like Reading More But There Are Things About The Act Of Reading That Make It Very Difficult‘ in The Toast
• Deirdre Sullivan, ‘The seed of Needlework was anger, and I wanted it to feel raw’ in The Irish Times
• Jesmyn Ward remembers Harper Lee: ‘She saw and responded to the humanity of each and every one of us’ on Entertainment Weekly
• Vipash Bansal, ‘Remembering Octavia Butler: 1947-2006‘ on Media Diversified
• Chris Power, ‘A brief survey of the short story: Elizabeth Taylor‘ in The Guardian
• Brooke Magnanti, ‘Where are the normal women in fiction?‘ on One Book Lane
• Robin Stevens, ‘Boys could enjoy stories about girls, and vice versa – if only we’d let them‘ in The Guardian
• Chelsea G. Summers, ‘A History of Horny‘ on Hazlitt
• Brit Mandello, ‘Dear Joanna Russ: A Letter for an Inimitable Writer‘ on Tor.Com
• Sunny Singh, ‘Why set up a prize for writers of colour?‘ in The Bookseller
• Rory Samantha Green, ‘Born Lucky: my mum Jackie Collins and her wild child alter ego‘ in The Guardian
• Laura Barnett, ‘Finding ideas isn’t usually a problem‘ in The Guardian
• Joanna Cannon, ‘Mental illness is always a problem, so we will always need books about it‘ in The Guardian
• Jonathan Sturgeon, ‘The Paradoxical Legacy of Harper Lee‘ on Flavorwire
• Tricia Tongco, ‘Meet Faith, The Body-Positive Superhero Of Our Dreams‘ on the Huffington Post
• Melissa Harrison, ‘How cars ruined our love of the countryside‘ in The Guardian
• Shelley Harris, ‘The Secret Life of Mothers‘ on the WHSmith Blog
• Morgan Jerkins, ‘Black Women Writers and the Secret Space of Diaries‘ in The New Yorker

 

Personal essays/memoir:

• Esther Wang, ‘Watching And Reading About White People Having Sex Is My Escape‘ on Buzzfeed
• Megan Galbraith, ‘Sin Will Find You Out‘ on Catapult
• Georgina Kleege, ‘On Being Who I Am: My Life as a Tall Blind Woman‘ in The Toast
• Briallen Hopper, ‘Relying on Friendship in a World Made for Couples‘ in The Cut
• Sarah Resnick, ‘H‘ on n+1
• Rosalind Jana, ‘The One Piece Of Clothing That Makes Me Feel Extraordinarily Sexy‘ on Refinery 29
• Alana Massey, ‘Why I’m Buying a House Without a Family to Put in It‘ on The Cut
• Anna Holmes, ‘I Feel Destined to Be Single, and That’s Okay‘ on The Cut
• Kade Walker, ‘Veronica Dies in Jamaica‘ on The Rumpus
• Ellen Urbani, ‘There Is No Such Thing as a True Story‘ on The Rumpus

Feminism:

• Rebecca Traister, ‘The Single American Woman‘ in The Cut
• Aria Dean, ‘Closing the Loop‘ on The New Inquiry
• Eleanor Ross, ‘Why estate agent sexism could be costing you‘ on The Pool
• Gaby Hinsliff, ‘It’s the £30bn cut you’ve never heard of. And women are bearing the brunt‘ in The Guardian
• Ann Friedman, ‘So You’re a Celebrity Who Calls Yourself a Feminist. Now What?‘ in The Cut
• Linda Chavers, ‘To Black Girls Everywhere‘ on The Offing
• Caroline Paul, ‘Why Do We Teach Girls That It’s Cute to Be Scared?‘ in The New York Times

Society and Politics:

• Caitlin Moran, ‘How to start – and win – an argument online‘ in The Guardian
• Hadley Freeman, ‘So the privately educated are the new underclass? Spare me the sob story‘ in The Guardian
• Chimene Suleyman, ‘Trump has succeeded in an America that is already pre-disposed to racial suspicion‘ on Media Diversified
• Sarah Churchwell, ‘Hillary Clinton’s haters and the glass ceiling of American politics‘ in the New Statesman
• Molly Crabapple, ‘What Life Is Like Inside the Besieged, War-Torn Syrian City of Aleppo‘ on Vice
• Julia Lee, ‘When People of Color Are Discouraged From Going Into the Arts‘ in The Atlantic
• Dorothy Cummings McLean, ‘Marriage Is an Accomplishment‘ on Quadrapheme
• Kate Spicer, ‘Does where you go to school affect your ability to succeed?‘ on The Pool
• Jamilah King, ‘How Black Women Like Me Reckon With America’s Political Process‘ on Mic

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

• Rachel Syme, ‘The Return to Predictability‘ on Complex
• Anna Leszkiewicz ‘The Ghostbusters trailer shows the new film is categorically not aimed at men‘ in the New Statesman
• Emma Brockes,  ‘Whether it’s Ali G or Tina Fey, ironic racism just isn’t funny any more‘ in The Guardian
• Venus Williams, ‘Why I’m Going Back to Indiana Wells‘ on The Players’ Tribune
• Joan Smith, ‘Now we know – the BBC’s macho culture protected predatory men for decades‘ in The Guardian
• Allison P. Davis, ‘Why Are White People Trying to Ruin ‘Formation’?‘ on The Cut
• Anohni, ‘Why I Am Not Attending the Academy Awards‘ on Pitchfork
• Gwynne Watkins, ‘Before #OscarsSoWhite: The Forgotten Story of Queer Nation’s 1992 Academy Awards Protest‘ on Yahoo
• Elisabeth Donnelly, ‘Boston Rules‘ on Hazlitt
• Caroline O’Donoghue, ‘Kesha: the musical equivalent of the drunk girl in the short dress‘ on The Pool
• Kiva Reardon, ‘Mainstream Creep: Keeping Feminist Film Criticism Subversive‘ on Hazlitt

The interviews:

• Han Kang in The White Review (translated by Deborah Smith)
• Louise O’Neill in Elle
• Helen Stephenson on The Pool
• Chinelo Okparanta on For Books’ Sake
• Tracy Chevalier in The Bookseller and The Telegraph
• Rachel B. Glaser on For Books’ Sake
• Molly Crabapple on Literary Hub
• Shelley Harris on The Writes of Woman and One Book Lane
• Kathleen Spivak on The Rumpus
• Rebecca Traister on Jezebel and Elle (with Roxane Gay)
• Mona Awad on Electric Literature
• Virginia Reeves on Literary Hub
• Jennifer Clement on Pen America
• Monica Wendel on Vida
• Sara Taylor in The Big Issue
• bell hooks (with Emma Watson) in Paper
• Ottessa Moshfegh in The Observer
• Emma Donoghue on Public Books
• Meg Rosoff on Bookanista
• Sarah Ruhl in The New York Times
• Sarah Bakewell on The Bookseller
• Marian Keyes in the Bath Chronicle
• Laura van den Berg and Emily St. John Mandel on the FSG blog
• Joyce Maynard on Literary Hub
• G. Willow Wilson on Black Nerd Problems
• Sharon Horgan on Creative Review
• Elizabeth Kadetsky on The Rumpus
• Lucy Kalanithi in Stylist
• Jacky Fleming on The Pool
• Petina Gappah on NPR
• Carol Tulloch in The Observer
• Caitlin Moran on The Debrief
• Deborah Smith on The Quietus

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

My Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction 2016 Wishlist

It’s almost time! The Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist will be announced next Tuesday, 8th March. Once again, I’ll be shadowing the prize and for the second year running, I’ll be doing so with a panel. I’ll introduce you to the members of that panel on Friday.

For now though, here are the books I’d like to see appear on Tuesday’s list. They’re a combination of books I’ve loved and those I’m keen to read based on what I’ve heard about them so far. I’ve had to cull this list significantly to keep it to 20 books so, as usual, anything’s possible with the real one!

To be eligible, books have to be written in English and first published in the UK between 1st April 2015 and 31st March 2016. Publishers can enter three full length novels per imprint plus anything eligible by writers who have previously won the prize.

I’ve reviewed the first eleven titles – click on the covers to go to my reviews – and read the next three as well (reviews coming soon).

 

In the Media: January 2016

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 traditional media are likely and the categories used are a guide, not definitives.

January’s been living up to it’s reputation as the most miserable month in the calendar. There’s been the misogynistic and racist response to Sarah Howe’s Young Writer of the Year Award and TS Eliot Award wins. Poet, Katy Evans-Bush responded with ‘TS Eliot prize row: is winner too young, beautiful – and Chinese?‘ in The Guardian.

The deaths of David Bowie and Alan Rickman at least inspired some great writing: Stacey May Fowles, ‘Reconciling David Bowie‘ on Hazlitt and Sali Hughes, ‘I’ve had it up to here with the grief police‘ on The Pool. Gwendolyn Smith, ‘Forget Snape – in concentrating on him, we leave out one of the greatest roles Alan Rickman ever performed‘ in The Independent and Daisy Buchanan, ‘Alan Rickman’s Colonel Brandon taught me an important lesson about love‘ on The Pool

In happier news, there were a number of other prize wins for female writers: Kate Atkinson won the Costa Novel Prize; Anuradha Roy won the 2016 DSC prize for south Asian literature; A.S. Byatt won the Erasmus Prize, and the writers shortlisted for the Costa Short Story Award were revealed, including Annalisa Crawford, Peggy Riley and Erin Soros.

Glamour welcomed a transgender columnist: Juno Dawson will chart her journey in the magazine. I’ll add Juno’s column to the regular columnists list once it has a permanent URL.

The Observer revealed their New Faces of Fiction for 2016 and Joanna Cannon wrote this great piece – The Monster Under the Bed – about her inclusion.

And the woman with the most publicity of late is Amy Liptrot with ‘I swam in the cold ocean and dyed my hair a furious blue… I was moving upwards slowly‘ in The Guardian; interviews in The Independent and The Pool.

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Morgan Jerkins, ‘Writing While Black: On Cliche, Stereotype and the Struggle to Describe Blackness‘ on Literary Hub
• E.V. de Cleyre, ‘On “the Terrible Efficiency of Gaslighting”‘ on Brevity
• Sarah Weinmann, ‘True-crime stories: a centuries-old craze from Ben Franklin to Making a Murderer‘ in The Guardian
• Zetta Elliott, ‘Nobody’s Cheerleader‘ on her blog
• Lauren Groff, ‘on Writing with Lightness‘ on The Atlantic
• Sian Cain, ‘Why a non-white Nancy Drew could be amazing‘ in The Guardian
• Lenika Cruz, ‘The Promising Case of a Non-White Nancy Drew‘ on The Atlantic
• Catherine Lacey ‘on the Inspiration Behind Nobody is Ever Missing‘ on the WHSMITH blog
• Brigid Delaney, ‘A Little Life: why everyone should read this modern-day classic‘ in The Guardian
• Zoe Heller and Francine Prose, ‘Is the Writer’s Only Responsibility to His Art?‘ in The New York Times
• Gideon Lewis-Kraus, ‘The Trials of Alice Goffman‘ in The New York Times Magazine
• Claire Fuller, ‘The Huge, Unwieldy Beast versus Flash Fiction‘ on Women Writers, Women’s Books
• Adelle Waldman, ‘The Ideal Marriage, According to Novels‘ in The New Yorker
• Ali Smith ‘on Trumpet by Jackie Kay‘ in The Guardian
• Sarah Crompton, ‘Sexism on the stage – meet the women tearing up the script‘ in The Guardian
• Maria Turtschaninoff, ‘Why is feminist fantasy important?‘ in The Bookseller
• Catherine Hokin, ‘The Challenges of Writing Historical Fiction‘ on Helen MacKinven’s blog
• Deborah Smith, ‘On Translating Human Acts by Han Kang‘ on Asymptote
• Alison Glock Cooper and T Cooper, ‘Transgender: identity is never one single thing so tick the box that says ‘other’‘ in The Guardian
• Ann Mah, ‘Elena Ferrante’s Naples, Then and Now‘ in The New York Times
• Chloe Angyal, ‘I Decided Not To Read Books By White Authors For A Year. Conservatives Lost Their Damn Minds‘ on The Huffington Post
• Carmiel Banasky, ‘Topography of a Novel: The Suicide of Claire Bishop‘ on Blunderbuss
• Laura Miller, ‘Ladies of Leisure: The resurgence of the housewife novel‘ on Slate
• Martha Tennent and Maruxa Relaño, ‘How a Mother-Daughter Translation Team Makes it Work‘ on Literary Hub
• Peter Bebegal, ‘Cracking the Codes of Leena Krohn‘ in The New Yorker
• Sarah Lyall, ‘The Author Elizabeth Strout on ‘Lucy Barton’ and How Her Characters Come Into Being‘ in The New York Times
• Isabel Rogers, ‘on What a Poet can teach a Novelist‘ on Isabel Costello’s Literary Sofa
• Vidhu Aggarwal, ‘“I’m nothing, if not”: An Anecdote of a Jar‘ on VIDA
• Dawn Finch, ‘Why are we still talking about diversity and inclusion?‘ on An Awfully Big Blog Adventure
• Samantha Hunt’s Literary Mixtape: how to be a deranged cult leader in The Guardian
• Emma Claire Sweeney, ‘on the power of poetry and fiction‘ on Legend Press
• Joanna Biggs, ‘Work is where we make friends, exert power, fall in love‘ in The Guardian
• Non Pratt, ‘No taboo should be off limits when writing for teenagers‘ in The Guardian
• Brittany K. Allen, ‘I Wrote the Accent: A Black Writer Considers “Urban Romance”‘ in The Toast
• Laura Miller, ‘Why Fates and Furies was this year’s most talked-about novel‘ in The Guardian
• Cynthia Ozick, ‘The Novel’s Evil Tongue‘ in The New York Times

Personal essays/memoir:

• Alana Massey, ‘Marriage and Two Kids: A Most Scandalous Fantasy‘ in The Cut
• Lydia Kiesling, ‘Death and Heirs: A View from the San Francisco Housing Market‘ on The Millions
• Saigowri Kuruvada, ‘How I Learned To Accept My Self-Harm Scars‘ on Buzzfeed
• Isabel Murray, ‘I’m a Disgusting Sleeper‘ on The Awl
• Rowan Whiteside, ‘Uninvited‘ in Standard Issue
• Jane Campbell, ‘The Long Run‘ on Hazlitt
• Yurina Ko, ‘Little Big Eater Girl‘ on The New Inquiry
• Fleur Smithwick, ‘A response from my mother to the weird kid blog‘ on her blog
• Jen Gann, ‘Why Am I So Sad About Having a Boy?‘ in The Cut
• Monica Sok, ‘On Fear, Fearlessness, and Intergenerational Trauma‘ on VIDA
• Jenny Diski, ‘The Island of lost words‘ on her blog
• Lyz Lenz, ‘Growing Up With White Paranoia: Persecution vs. Privilege‘ on Pacific Standard
• Ellabel Risbridger, ‘#BREAKFREE From Likes: ‘I’ve Grown Up On The Internet’‘ in Marie Claire
• Cris Mazza, ‘A Finished Brain‘ on The Rumpus
• Julianne Smolinski, ‘The Funny Thing About Abusive Relationships‘ on The Cut
• Jean Hannah Edelstein, ‘I’m a Previvor‘ on Catapult
• Nicole Chung, ‘What Goes Through Your Mind: On Nice Parties and Casual Racism‘ in The Toast
• Lauren McKeon, ‘As Women Scorned‘ on Hazlitt
• Kim Brooks, ‘I’m Having a Friendship Affair‘ in The Cut
• Claire Jimenez, ‘Spanish Lessons: On Language Loss and Recovery‘ in The Toast

Feminism:

• Amy Swales, ‘A Story of a Fuck Off Fund‘ on Medium
• Cade Lebron, ‘Liar, Liar: On Writing About Rape Online‘ on Electric Literature
• Jane Marie, ‘On Going Off My Depression Medication During Pregnancy‘ in Cosmopolitan
• Rosamund Urwin, ‘Why do crimes against women always have the same, sad ending?‘ on The Pool
• Kathy Dobie, ‘To Catch a Rapist‘ in The New York Times
• Ann Friedman, ‘The 2015 renaissance of the agony aunt‘ on The Pool
• Nadia Atia, ‘Your fascination with Muslim women’s bodies has a long misogynistic history‘ on Media Diversified

Society and Politics:

• Chimene Suleyman, ‘‘Integration’ or ‘Assimilation’ is a Two-sided Negotiation‘ on Media Diversified
• Afroze Zaidi-Jivraj, ‘What It’s Like Being Muslim In 2016‘ on Media Diversified
• Leena Habiballa, ‘Too Black to be Arab, too Arab to be Black‘ on Media Diversified
• Alicia Eler and Eve Peyser, ‘Tinderization of Feeling‘ on The New Inquiry
• Harriet Alida Lye, ‘The Myth of the Myth of the City of Love‘ on Hazlitt
• Emer O’Toole, ‘How to be a moderately successful person‘ in The Guardian
• Kavita Bhanot, ‘Decolonise, not Diversify‘ on Media Diversified
• Stacia L. Brown, ‘The ugly history of comparing black athletes and animals‘ in The Washington Post

Film, Television, Music, Art and Fashion:

• Lynn Enright, ‘The brilliant feminism of Transparent and Jill Soloway‘ on The Pool
• Jude Rogers, ‘Why we’re wired to love pop music‘ on The Pool
• Hannah McGill, ‘Nora Ephron: queen of hearts‘ on the BFI website
• Michelle Smith, ‘Suffragette reminds us why it’s a lie that feminists need men’s approval‘ in The Guardian
• Sarah Maria Griffin, ‘Girls Explain Star Wars to You‘ on Scannain
• Robin James, ‘Hello From the Same Side‘ in The New Inquiry

The interviews:

• Joyce Carol Oates on Electric Literature and in The Guardian
• Lisa Williamson in The Guardian and on Scottish Book Trust
• Amy Gustine on Electric Literature
• Helen Ellis in The New York Times
• Mira Ptacin on Flavorwire
• Chelsea Hodson in Hobart
• Tara Guha on Chouett
• Elizabeth Evans on Guernica
• Diane Williams in The Los Angeles Review of Books
• Ann Goldstein (Elena Ferrante’s translator) on Guernica
• Chaitali Sen on The Rumpus
• Valerie Martin in The Guardian
• Eileen Myles in The New York Times
• Liz Lochhead in The Guardian
• Margaret Atwood on Electric Literature
• Emma Donoghue on The Pool
• Sandra Cisneros on The Rumpus
• Lidia Yuknavitch and Anakana Schofield on Electric Literature
• Marlene Van Niekerk in The White Review
• Helen McClory on The Skinny
• Caitlin Moran in Stylist
• Roxane Gay on Sky Blue Window
• Tessa Hadley in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times
• Ayisha Malik in The New Statesman
• Samantha Hunt on The Millions
• Claire Fuller on Sarah Jasmon’s blog
• Claudia Rankine in The Guardian
• Amy Poehler 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

Books of the Year, Part Two: 2015 Publications

Here we are then, the books from this year I’ve read and rated most highly. I’m basing my choices on the very unscientific, I thought it was brilliant at the time and I’m still thinking about it. I was concerned this would skew the list towards the end of the year but it hasn’t at all – two thirds of the books are from the first half of 2015. Publication dates are UK (where applicable) and if you click on the cover it will take you to my review.

Citizen – Claudia Rankine 

A superb book. An examination of race and the treatment of black people in present day America. Rankine uses flash fiction, essays and poetry to explore the way people of colour ‘…feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background’ and, by implication, how often, as a white person, you are complicit in creating and maintaining that background. Short, sharp and powerful, I’d like to see a copy of Citizen distributed to every household, taught in schools and university, and added to the canon. If you believe art can change the world, this is a book that should be able to do so.

A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara

It’s divided readers and critics but I make no apologies for including this book for several reasons: it’s utterly absorbing, I felt as though I’d been entombed in Yanagihara’s world; it focuses on male friendship which I think is unusual; the friendship group consists of four men of different ethnicities and different sexualities, one of whom is disabled and Yanagihara has written about their lives as though they are, well, people. They are not defined by their ethnicity or sexuality and this feels like a break through. It’s huge and harrowing and clearly not for everyone but I’m still thinking about it six months on.

 

The House in Smyrna – Tatiana Salem Levy (translated by Alison Entrekin)

A short, sharp tale told in fragments. At the centre of the book is the story of the key given to the unnamed narrator by her grandfather: the key to his old house in Turkey, in Smyrna. There are four threads to the book: the narrator’s journey to her grandfather’s house; the grandfather’s journey from the house to the woman who became the narrator’s grandmother; the narrator’s relationship with her dead mother, and the narrator’s passionate affair with an unnamed man. A shocking and beautiful novella about exile in many different forms.

The Private Life of Mrs Sharma – Ratika
Kapur 

Mrs Sharma’s thirty-seven-years-old and married with a fifteen-year-old son, Bobby. They live in a flat in Dehli with her parents-in-law. Her husband, Dheeraj, a physiotherapist, has been working in Dubai for over a year in a bid to raise enough money to cover his parents’ medical bills and send his son to college to do an MBA in business. She works as a receptionist in a gynaecological clinic and dreams of starting her own business. Mrs Sharma’s veneer begins to crack when she meets Vineet Seghal on a station platform. Tightly plotted with precise, often repetitive, language, this is a brilliant book about an unfulfilled woman.

Vigilante – Shelley Harris

Jenny Pepper, 42, manager of a charity bookshop, married to Elliot, graphic designer, with a 14-year-old daughter, Martha, is fed-up of her life. She’s particularly annoyed and frustrated by the way men objectify women and the consequences of this behaviour. Donning a superhero costume for a fancy dress party, she stops a mugging and gets a taste for the vigilante lifestyle. Before long, she’s on the tale of someone who’s attacking teenage girls. A gripping and believable look at the concerns of a middle-aged woman and her life.

 

The Last Act of Love – Cathy Rentzenbrink

When Cathy Rentzenbrink was seventeen, her sixteen-year-old brother, Matty, was hit by a car and left in a persistent vegetative state for eight years. The book is Rentzenbrink’s story of the effect of Matty’s accident on her and her family. Told in an unflinching first person account with a huge amount of love and dollops of humour, Rentzenbrink brings the Matty she loved back to life and pays tribute to her parents without descending into mawkishness. Heartbreaking and heartwarming. Buy tissues before reading, I’m welling up just thinking about it.

 

A God in Ruins – Kate Atkinson

A companion piece to Life After Life, A God in Ruins focuses on Ursula’s younger brother, Teddy and those who’ve shared his life – his wife, Nancy; daughter, Viola; grandchildren, Bertie and Sunny, and the men he served alongside in the RAF. The structure’s non-chronological, creating a jigsaw puzzle of Teddy’s life and the lives of his family members for the reader to reconstruct; every chapter capable of standing alone as a story in its own right. The chapters set in the war are some of Atkinson’s best writing but this is more than a character study, it’s a book that explores what fiction is. Superb.

 

The Vegetarian – Han Kang (Translated by Deborah Smith)

Mr Cheong chose his wife, Yeong-Ho, because she’s passive. But then, due to a set of reoccurring dreams, she turns vegetarian; a highly unorthodox act in South Korea. The reactions of Mr Cheong and Yeong-Ho’s family turn dark and sometimes violent quite quickly. But Yeong-Ho’s brother-in-law is fascinated with her and her mongolian mark which leads to him creating a physical work of art with her. A disconcerting story that explores society’s treatment of a woman who defies expectations and how her internalisation of those expectations affects her psyche.

 

The Ship – Antonia Honeywell 

In the not so distant future where banks have collapsed, the homeless population is out of control, food is scarce and the military rule, Lalage is protected by her father, Michael Paul, and his creation, the ship. The ship is a version of paradise, stocked with everything you might need and more. As it sets sail with Michael Paul’s chosen people on it, Lalage begins to question her father’s motives and what she really wants from life. The Ship raises questions of wealth and poverty; of governments who fail to protect all their citizens; of the value of art and artefacts. It’s futuristic setting is misleading, this is really a novel about what’s happening to society now.

The First Bad Man – Miranda July 

Cheryl Glickman, early forties, lives alone and works for a company who make self-defence, fitness DVDs. She has two fascinations: Phillip Bettelheim and babies who might be Kubelko Bondy, the son of her parents’ friends. Cheryl’s bosses ask if their daughter, Clee, can move in with her until she finds a job. First Clee trashes Cheryl’s system for keeping the house clean and tidy, then she’s physically fighting Cheryl for extended periods before Cheryl begins imagining herself as Phillip having sex with Clee. It sounds absurd but it’s a sharp exploration of loneliness which transforms into something emotionally fulfilling.

The Wolf Border – Sarah Hall

Rachel has spent almost a decade in Idaho, monitoring wolves on a reservation but an unplanned pregnancy, the death of her mother and the offer of a job supporting the reintroduction of the Grey Wolf to Great Britain sees her returning to the Lake District. The Wolf Border considers a variety of different intersections that humans come up against – birth, death, addiction, love, political change and, of course, nature. The precision of the language, particularly in the descriptions of the Lake District and the wolves, is superb as is the characterisation of Rachel. One of our best novelists, probably her best book.

Grow a Pair: 9 1/2 Fairytales About Sex 
 – Joanna Walsh

From the very opening sentences of the first story to the end of the afterword of Grow a Pair transformations occur: characters adopt and change their genitalia; a man becomes a woman; a queen becomes a witch; a woman fragments into multiple vaginas. Walsh mixes retellings of traditional fairytales like ‘The Princess and the Penis’ with new pieces. Filled with as many moments of humour as it is ones of magical realism, the collection allows its women to take control of their own sexuality and fulfilment. Entertaining, smart and thoughtful.

The Gracekeepers – Kirsty Logan

A dual narrative following two young women – North, who lives with Circus Excalibur, travelling the sea but performing most nights on land with her bear, and Callanish, the gracekeeper, living on a tiny island by the graveyard and performing Restings for the dead. North has a number of issues to deal with – she’s engaged to Ainsel and his father wants them to live on land, but she doesn’t want either of these things; Ainsel’s mother is jealous, and North is pregnant to someone else. She’s also tied to Callanish in ways that only begin to reveal themselves when the two meet. A beautifully rendered world.

 

An Untamed State – Roxane Gay 

Mirelle is kidnapped in front of her husband, Michael, and their baby, Christophe, directly outside the heavy steel gates at the bottom of the drive to her parents’ house in Haiti. She’s been taken because her father’s rich and the kidnappers believe he will pay a lot of money for her, his youngest and favourite daughter in U.S. dollars. He refuses, assuming they will return her unharmed. She’s repeatedly raped and tortured. The majority of the book deals with the aftermath, looking at whether it’s possible to rebuild a life, a marriage, a familial relationship after such horror. An interesting examination of power and privilege.

Talk of the Toun – Helen MacKinven

Angela’s short-term ambition is for her and her best friend, Lorraine, to lose their virginity over the summer holidays. Long-term, she wants to move away from the council scheme she’s grown up on and attend Glasgow School of Art. Her parents are determined she’s getting a job. Over one summer in the 1980s, Angela and Lorraine’s friendship will deteriorate thanks to Pamela aka Little Miss Brown Nose and Stevie Duffy, just out of borstal and ‘a total ride’. Class, religion, family and friendships are all explored but it’s the perceptive look at women’s sexuality and the use of Scots dialect that really make this a stand out read.

 

Honourable mentions also go to The Hourglass Factory by Lucy Ribchester; The Table of Less Valued Knights by Marie Phillips; Dear Thief by Samantha Harvey; Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum, The Chimes by Anna Smaill and Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller.

Hanya Yanagihara in Conversation with Cathy Rentzenbrink at Foyles

It’s a warm Wednesday evening in central London when Hanya Yanagihara and Cathy Rentzenbrink take the stage in Foyles’ flagship shop on Charing Cross Road. They’re here to discuss Yanagihara’s second novel A Little Life, recently longlisted for The Man Booker Prize.

The event begins with Yanagihara reading from the fourth section of the novel, ‘The Axiom of Equality’. Before she starts to read, Yanagihara comments on the number of people in the room. ‘I feel like Donald Trump,’ she says, ‘Which would make you all Donald Trump supporters.’

Following the reading, Rentzenbrink conducts a straw poll to see how many of the audience have already read the novel. The poll will determine whether the event needs to be spoiler free or not. As over half of the audience have read the book, they decide to proceed with a full discussion. As a result, THIS POST WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS. You have been warned!

Photograph by Nina Pottell

Rentzenbrink begins by asking Yanagihara about the inspiration for the novel. Yanagihara says that the first section of the book is a fairly typical post-college, New York novel based on the idea that everyone at that stage, living in New York, thinks they’re interesting! But then the book changes. She compares it to boiling a lobster. The change happens at the point the lobster realises he’s fucked but then it’s too late. She says the first turn happens at the end of part one and she hopes by that point the reader has realised they’re not reading the type of book they thought they were.

Yanagihara says she wanted to write a novel that if it were ombre cloth would run from a shade of light blue to dark indigo. She tells us that Jude was pretty fully formed when she began writing. She wanted to write a character who can’t get better or change or survive his own life. It’s very American to think that life is something to win, she says. Jude is oppressed by hope.

What about the lack of women in the novel? Yanagihara states that she wanted to marry fairytale with a contemporary naturalistic novel. She wanted it to lack parents, to be timeless. She wanted Jude’s redemption to be hollow.

Why male friendship? Rentzenbrink says she doesn’t think it’s been written about this way in literature before. Yanagihara says that she thinks men are allowed to have a more limited emotional toolkit: shame, fear and vulnerability are not there. They’re not encouraged to express these emotions. She says society asks men to change as they grow up and relates an anecdote about two male friends of hers who would wrestle with each other. She says they were wrestling the inexpressible: their love for each other.

Rentzenbrink asks about the reader and how much thought Yanagihara gave to them when she was writing. She mentions Jude and wonders how much a reader can take. Yanagihara says you can never guess accurately what the reader can take but they can tell if you’re withholding. She says readers want to be taken somewhere they haven’t been before. She mentions her two editors – it was edited in the USA and the UK simultaneously – and said they talked to each other which was like having annoying parents! She said they had very different reactions to what they thought were the problem areas in the book: her UK editor thought Jude and Willem’s relationship was a problem, while the US editor thought the length of the novel and the violence were the biggest issues. Yanagihara says that if you believe strongly in something and can answer why it’s in the book, you shouldn’t have to change it.

She goes on to talk about the structure of the book which was the trickiest part to get right. Initially it was two novellas and a coda. The first novella looked at Jude as a success and the second at Jude with a marginal life, the characters from the first novella becoming his counsellors. The coda was his childhood. She wanted to explore different reactions to damage.

Retzenbrink asks about New York City as a setting. The book’s about the sorts of characters and kinds of people who come to NYC, says Yanagihara. There’s a shared sense of collective ambition and whilst that ambition takes wildly different forms, these people are united by being on the run and running to something.

What about the absence of time in the book? Initially every chapter was in present tense, she says, but that was too artificial. She hates readers having to fill in how characters react to big events. Mentioning 9/11 or even that a character is wearing a Prada suit is lazy shorthand, it also dates quickly and the references are never quite right. She says she wanted the reader to have no tethers. The reader is surrendering to the emotional lives of the characters with nothing to ground them. She wanted the reader to feel like they were on one of those wobbly balls.

Yanagihara goes on to talk about social media. She’s not on it, apart from Instagram and she doesn’t read reviews. She says she thinks Twitter’s a great boon for fiction writers now there’s no central cultural authority. She’s too fragile and insecure to read her reviews. She says if you only believe the good ones, you’re a douchebag and if you only believe the bad you become a walking mess.

The discussion turns to the difference between the UK and US covers. The latter is a photograph by Peter Hujar (a contemporary of Robert Mapplethorpe) called Orgasmic Man. It dares you to look then dares you not to look, says Yanagihara. You don’t know whether the expression on his face is pleasure or pain. Yanagihara tells us that she fought with the US publisher for months over using the photograph for the cover: ‘It’s so obvious he’s coming,’ she says was the comment from the US publisher.

Rentzenbrink says that the book is gruelling to read, what was it like to write? Yanagihara says that when you’re in the groove you have to stay in it so there were long jags of writing, several hours each day. She found it physically hard, working on it at night. She had one reader whom she burdened with questions while she wrote in a sprint. ‘I think it was a singular writing experience.’

The final question from Retzenbrink is whether there’s any redemption for Jude in a parallel universe. ‘I don’t even know what redemption would look like here,’ says Yanagihara. ‘His life concludes in the only way it could possibly conclude.’

With that, the discussion opens up to questions from the audience.

Did she think about the moral responsibility of considering anew the horrors of child abuse?

She didn’t think about it at all. She didn’t think of the book as cathartic or as a book with a moral. She’s interested in sexual abuse because of the impact on someone’s life. She describes it as the ‘ultimate abuse of power of the most vulnerable in our society’.

Why is the end of the novel narrated by Harold?

Jude is meant to be a reliable and trustworthy narrator but Harold stands in for the reader and provides another perspective. He’s a Greek Chorus appearing after traumatic moments in Jude’s life, providing a pause. She says she knew what the last line was going to be and wrote towards it.

How long was she living with the characters before she began writing?

Five years but she didn’t realise that until she sat down to write.

Which questions was she pondering whilst writing?

She was thinking about friendship, what it can do for us and what we can expect from it and about love, how it can never save or redeem you. Is there a moment when life becomes unbearable? Do we owe it to the people we love to help them find a way out of it?

How do you feel about redemption?

She doesn’t believe in it but thinks that as humans in society we have to pursue it.

Photograph by Nina Pottell

How do you get into the minds of your male characters?

She says it helps if your characters aren’t meant to stand in for anything larger, including men in general. How do you write something other than you and do it convincingly? You don’t make them stand in for or represent a group. They just need to be compelling, distinctive, interesting characters.

Was A Little Life the first title?

Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days was the alternative title. She says she wanted to show that all of our lives are equally meaningful and meaningless at the same time. She says the title has proved difficult to translate into some languages.

Would she consider writing any extra scenes for A Little Life?

There are things she wishes she’d done to make the book a little longer, particularly with Jude and Willem’s relationship, which she describes as defying what a relationship is allowed to be. It’s a more lineal relationship – it borrows from love and friendship but takes a third path.

Why did she decide to give all of the characters a level of privilege that meant they’re all successful? Does it allow her to go to dark places with them?

She made them successful because groups like this are a phenomenon in New York City. Also Jude’s life is easier with money to cope with his disabilities and constant care. Money prevents people from seeing Jude clearly, he’s reduced to being successful.

Which books move you/do you enjoy/appreciate?

 The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro is the best book this year. Ishiguro has a single theme – the oppression of memory – but does it differently in each book.

Hilary Mantel had a complete change of style mid-career with The Giant O’Brien and she’d love to know how she pulled that off.

John Banville writes beautiful prose. She tells us she hid from meeting him in Dublin when he came to her event there.

Rentzenbrink ends the evening by asking Yanagihara if there’s anything next. She’s interested in ships and books set on ships because they’re a microcosm of people thrown together. She’s interested in the change the shipping trade brought to Asia in the 1840s but knows that this will take a lot of research so she might write something else in between.

With that, Yanagihara takes her place behind the signing desk as the queue to meet her stretches the length of the room.