In the Media, February 2017

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

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

 

On or about books/writers/language:

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

Personal essays/memoir:

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

Feminism:

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

Society and Politics:

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

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

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

The interviews/profiles:

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

The regular columnists:

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

In the Media: October 2016, Part One

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

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

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

Photograph by Kate Neil

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

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

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

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

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

Personal essays/memoir:

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

Feminism:

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

Society and Politics:

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

The interviews/profiles:

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

The regular columnists:

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

In the Media, December 2015

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.

This fortnight’s mostly been about end of year lists. Last year I linked to those that were gender balanced but this year I gave up counting after the first two, deciding it was a futile endeavour. Having said that, Sarah Seltzer says , ‘White Men Are the Minority on This Year’s Biggest Book Lists‘ on Flavorwire and there was some excitement around a new ‘Best UK novels’ list commissioned by the BBC. On The Pool, Lynn Enright said ‘Women writers dominate the top spots in list of best British novels‘. Which they do but the list as a whole isn’t balanced and it’s dominated by Nineteenth Century novels.

A fortnight ago I was going to begin this piece by mentioning The Good Immigrant an essay collection being published by Unbounders which means it needed crowdfunding. It includes essays by Chimene Suleyman, Bim Adewumni, Salena Godden, Sabrina Mahfouz, Coco Khan, Sarah Sahim and Reni Eddo Lodge and was fully funded in three days, partly thanks to JK Rowling. You can read about what an excellent person she is and what a great collection it sounds in The Guardian. And you can still contribute to the funding.

Clare Vaye Watkins essay ‘On Pandering’ is still being discussed. She talks about it further (with Marlon James) on NPR. Anne Boyd Rioux responded with ‘A Brief History of Pandering‘ on The Rumpus. Aya de Leon responded initially with ‘“On Pandering” and Subversive Revelations of Female Insecurity‘ and then to Marlon James’ Guardian conversation with ‘On Pandering, White Women as Scapegoats, and the Literary Industry as a Hand-Me-Down‘ on her blog, while Dreda Say Mitchell replied with ‘Black authors don’t write only for white women‘ in the Guardian.

In prize news, Sarah Howe won the resurrected Young Writer of the Year Award for her poetry collection Loop of Jade. She’s profiled in The Sunday Times (£) and interviewed on Bookanista and The Workshy Fop. And the Saltire Society Literary Award was announced with wins for Helen McClory, Patricia Andrew and Tanja Bueltmann.

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Harper Lee, ‘My Christmas in New York‘ in The Guardian
• Blake Butler, ‘The Hallucinatory Terror of Unica Zürn‘ on Vice
• Patti Marxsen, ‘A Taste of Immortality: The Post-Earthquake Haitian Novel‘ in The Critical Flame
• Svetlana Alexievich, ‘On the Battle Lost‘ on Nobel Prize
• Alison Flood, ‘How Amazon came to dominate fiction in translation‘ in The Guardian
• Jane Hu, ‘Between Us: A Queer Theorist’s Devoted Husband and Enduring Legacy‘ in The New Yorker
• David Griffith, ‘The Displaced Person: Reading Flannery O’Connor in the age of Islamophobia.‘ on The Paris Review
• Amy Watkin, ‘Women Who Should Be Pretty Pissed Off: Jane Austen Is Probably Mad at Us‘ on McSweeney’s
• Siri Hustvedt, ‘Knausgaard Writes Like a Woman: On Gendered Literature and the Feminization of Feelings‘ on Literary Hub
• Sandeep Parmar, ‘Not a British Subject: Race and Poetry in the UK‘ in The Los Angeles Review of Books
• Anne Enright, ‘Antigone in Galway: on the dishonoured dead‘ in the London Review of Books
• Melissa Benn, ‘Vivian Gornick: one of the most significant writers you have probably never heard of‘ in The New Statesman
• Zanib Mian, ‘‘We need books that just happen to feature a Muslim protagonist’‘ in THe Bookseller
• Theresa Shim, ‘I Read Because We’re All Storytellers — It’s Human Nature, After All.‘ on Medium
• Susie Day, ‘Why we have to create more disabled characters in children’s fiction‘ in The Guardian
• Ginger Strand, ‘How Jane Vonnegut Made Kurt Vonnegut a Writer‘ in The New Yorker
• Stephanie LaCava, ‘Slow Days, Fast Company:Eve Babitz’s singular take on Los Angeles.‘ on The Paris Review
• John Mullan, ‘How Jane Austen’s Emma changed the face of fiction‘ in The Guardian
• Lorraine Berry, ‘How the Literary Class System Is Impoverishing Literature‘ on Literary Hub
• Margaret Atwood, ‘My journey with a young writer‘ on Medium
• Alana Massey, ‘Molly Crabapple Is The Writer Who Made Me A Writer‘ on Buzzfeed
• Morgan Parker, ‘I Don’t Need Diverse Books: On Re-defining ‘We’ and Making Black Art‘ on The Poetry Foundation
• Alison Flood, ‘Earliest known biography of an African woman translated to English for the first time‘ in The Guardian
• Sarah Farooqui, ‘Why Ismat Chugtai’s stories should not be dropped from Rajasthan’s school textbooks‘ in Business Standard
• Shami Chakrabarti, ‘How do we keep up the fight for democratic values? With solidarity and storytelling’ in The Guardian
• Ester Bloom, ‘When Women’s Literary Tastes Are Deemed Less Worthy‘ on The Atlantic
• Sarah Franklin, ‘“Short stories lift you out of your own world for 10 minutes”‘ on The Pool
• Professor Sharon Rustin, ‘The Science of Life and Death in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein‘ in The Public Domain Review
• Anne de Courcy, ‘The prime minister fell in love with his daughter’s best friend‘ in The Guardian

Personal essays/memoir:

• Terri White, ‘Fairytale of New York?‘ on The Pool
• Leslie Kendall Dye, ‘Contrast Study‘ on Vela
• Anne Thériault, ‘Being a Girl: A Brief History of Personal Violence‘ on The Belle Jar
• Andrea Yu, ‘Going Back Home: Life as a Reverse Immigrant‘ in The Wilson Quarterly
• Sulagna Misra, ‘Learning Body Positivity From a 700-Year-Old Hindu Statue‘ on Racked
• Karissa Chen, ‘The Audacity to Dream: On Asian Women, Feminism, and My Grandmother‘ on Vida
• Jess Zimmerman, ‘The Year in Luck‘ on Hazlitt
• Alexandra Kimball, ‘Unpregnant: The silent, secret grief of miscarriage‘ in The Globe and The Mail
• Katie Klabusich, ‘When The Poor Get Taken Advantage Of By Friends And Family‘ on The Establishment
• Alana Massey, ‘An Ode to the Hometown Friends Who Got Away‘ on The Cut
• Samantha, ‘Do Black Girls Even Get to Be Depressed?‘ on Bitches Gotta Eat
• Katy Waldman, ‘There Once Was a Girl: Against the false narratives of anorexia.‘ on Slate
• Jennifer Tseng, ‘How to Leave an Island: on Life, Libraries, and Commuting by Canoe‘ on Literary Hub
• Kelly Thompson, ‘The Story of My Fear Over Time‘ on The Rumpus
• Rachel Wilkinson, ‘Valuation Methods‘ on The Rumpus
• Caroline Crampton, ‘Travelling alone as a woman is incredibly empowering‘ on The Pool
• Ashley Ford, ‘How I Got Depressed, Forgave Myself, and Grew Up in the Process‘ in Elle
• Marisa Bate, ‘A letter to my friend: you are experiencing emotional abuse‘ in The Pool
• Laura Lampton Scott, ‘The Person Next to You on a Plane‘ on Electric Literature
• Collette Arrand, ‘Chrysalis: Transitioning and My Trans Identity‘ in The Toast
• Porochista Khakpour, ‘My Life in the New Age‘ in VQR
• Jhumpa Lahiri, ‘Teach Yourself Italian‘ in The New Yorker
• Molly Crabapple, ‘My Life in a Parisian Bookstore‘ on Literary Hub
• Alisson Wood, ‘‘Get Home Safe,’ My Rapist Said‘ in The New York Times

Feminism:

• Hermione Hoby, ‘The problem with being ‘badass’‘ in The Guardian
• Anonymous, ‘No, Mrs Mugabe, I am not responsible for my rape.‘ on Media Diversified
• Arabelle Sicardi, ‘Beauty Is Broken‘ on Medium
• Cass Geller, ‘I Am Woman, Hear Me Curse: Confessions Of A Potty Mouth‘ on Femsplain
• Jessica Woodbury, ‘“In Good Conscience”: Mormon Feminists on the Brink‘ in The Toast
• Gaby Hinsliff, ‘Why we should talk about menopause in the workplace‘ on The Pool
• Professor Heidi Safia Mirza, ‘Shame and Sexual Harassment‘ on Sexual Harassment in Higher Education
• Ratika Kapur, ‘Delhi’s same-sex carriages: The ladies’ compartment is a public space where women can assert their independence‘ in The Independent
• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, ‘Do some men *still* find working women a problem?‘ on The Pool
• Ina Goel, ‘Menstrual Chronicles from Delhi‘ on The Fem

Society and Politics:

• Maya Goodfellow, ‘America may be ‘Trumped’, but Britain has its demons too‘ on Media Diversified
• Sandra Newman, ‘Possessed by a mask‘ on Aeon
• Olga Khazan, ‘The Hardest Job‘ on The Atlantic
• Deanna Othman, ‘Where was Donald Trump radicalized?: The hate-spewing candidate proves any ideology can lead to radicalization‘ on Salon
• April White, ‘The Divorce Colony‘ in The Atavist Magazine
• Priya Rane, ‘“The Silent Majority of Muslims”: Islamophobia and Counter Extremism in the UK‘ on Media Diversified
• Sarah Schweitzer, ‘The life and times of Strider Wolf‘ in The Boston Globe
• Eula Biss, ‘White Debt: Reckoning with what is owed — and what can never be repaid — for racial privilege.‘ in The New York Times
• Rachel Shabi, ‘Were you carried away by Hilary Benn’s ‘electrifying’ speech? This is political theatre, not democracy‘ in The Independent
• Jennifer Mascia, ‘What It Feels Like to Cover Gun Violence in America‘ in Vogue
• Kiona Smith-Strickland, ‘Princesses, Slaves, and Explosives: The Scandalous Origin of Vaccines‘ on Gizmodo
• Maya Goodfellow, ‘If only Diane Abbott had a job! Then we wouldn’t all have to describe her as “Corbyn’s former lover”‘ in The Independent
• Paris Lees, ‘“Being transgender is not a trend” Paris Lees on why being trans shouldn’t be headline news‘ in Stylist

Film, Television, Music, Art and Fashion:

• Ariel Levy, ‘Dolls and Feelings: Jill Soloway’s Post-Patriarchal Television‘ in The New Yorker
• Marisa Crawford, ‘Bloodlines: No Wave Performance Task Force’s PERIOD PIECE Traces the Lineage of Menstrual Art‘ on Weird Sister
• Shaadi Devereaux, ‘Netflix, Uncovering Cycles of Abuse and Chill: Jessica Jones and Domestic Violence‘ on Model View Culture
• Megan Koester, ‘Why It Sucks to Be a Woman in Comedy‘ on Vice
• Katherine Schwab, ‘Highbrow Ink‘ in The Atlantic
• Adriana Tobin, ‘Why Women’s Pockets Are Useless: A History‘ on Marketplace
• Gabrielle Jackson, ‘Please Sia, don’t show us your face‘ in The Guardian

The interviews:

• Jennifer Baker on The Rumpus
• Molly Crabapple on NPR, in The Guardian
• Diane Lefer on Awst Press
• Lauren Groff on Vulture
• Elaine Sciolino on Literary Hub
• Elena Ferrante in the Financial Times
• bel hooks in The New York Times
• Jane Ciabattari on The Rumpus
• Kate Gavino on Electric Literature
• Nell Zink in Tank Magazine
• Debra Monroe on The Rumpus
• Miranda July in The Believer
• Ratika Kapur in The Hindu
• Bette Adriaanse in Structo Magazine
• Sloane Crosley on Bookanista
• Louisa Hall on The Rumpus
• Dawn Lundy Martin on Literary Hub
• Isabel Allende in The Guardian
• Diana Athill in The Independent
• Naja Marie Aidt in BOMB Magazine
• Catherynne M. Valente on Electric Literature
• Alex Mar on Electric Literature

The regular columnists:

• Laurie Penny in The New Statesman
• Lucy Mangan in Stylist
• Roxane Gay in The Guardian US
• Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in The Independent
• Caitlin Moran in The Times
• Lauren Laverne in The Pool
• Ella Risbridger in The Pool
• Sali Hughes in The Pool
• Bim Adewunmi in The Guardian
• Sophie Heawood in The Guardian
• Eva Wiseman in The Observer
• Tracey Thorn in The New Statesman
• Chimene Suleyman and Maya Goodfellow on Media Diversified
• Josie Pickens on Ebony
• Bridget Christie in The Guardian
• Lizzy Kremer on Publishing for Humans

TBR Book Tag

I don’t often take part in memes but I’m doing this one for three reasons: the first is I was tagged by Leslie at Folklore & Literacy whose blog I highly recommend, so it’s a good reason for me to send you over there for a look if you don’t read it already. The second is by confessing all about my TBR, I might do something about it! The third is so I can tag some of my favourite bloggers and see their terrible habits too!

How do you keep track of your TBR pile?

Pile? Hahahaha. Book case(s). I don’t. I do keep track of the review copies I’m sent by publishers; I have a spreadsheet in which I log publication dates but I’ve been useless with it the second half of this year. I do actually have two priority piles at the moment though – the books that are on my women of colour #TBR20 pile, which I’ll be finishing reading at the end of the month (yes, it’s taken me this long) and the 2016 publications I’ve been sent which I’m reading in anticipation of my preview post around Christmas.

Is your TBR mostly print or e-book?

It’s probably 75% print. I’ve bought fewer ebooks this year but that’s mostly because it was getting out of hand – it’s easy to pretend you haven’t got a huge stack of unread ebooks when they aren’t physically in front of you!

How do you determine which books from your TBR to read next?

It varies. Sometimes it’s an upcoming publication date, sometimes it’s because a book’s been nominated for a prize, sometimes I just fancy a particular type of read. What’s changed this year though is I’m consciously reading widely so I’m looking at the authors of the books I’m reading and making sure I’m reading more by women of colour and LGBT authors.A book that has been on my TBR the longest?

There are books on my TBR still that I bought in Sixth Form which is 20 years ago now. They’re mostly classics – Middlemarch (which I attempted last year but stalled on) and The Woman in White spring to mind although I’m sure there’s more.

A book you recently added to your TBR?

I bought a copy of Loop of Jade by Sarah Howe which has just been shortlisted for the Young Writer of the Year Award.

A book on your TBR strictly because of its beautiful cover?

The 4^th Estate boxset of Nell Zink’s The Wallcreeper and Mislaid. I already had a copy of The Wallcreeper from the Dorothy Project but the boxset is so beautiful I couldn’t resist.

A book on your TBR that you never plan on reading?

Haha! I think I got rid of all these in the summer. I culled 300 books before moving house and I was very strict about ones I’d held on to that I was never going to read. They were mostly by middle-aged British and American white men!

An unpublished book on your TBR that you’re excited for?

I’m going to be cheeky and have three: The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon which it seems everyone’s talking about; My Name Is Leon by Kit De Waal which people I trust are telling me is wonderful, and Where Love Begins by Judith Hermann which I’ve had a sneaky read of the opening of and promises to be wonderful.

A book on your TBR that everyone recommends to you?

Middlemarch!

A book on your TBR that everyone has read but you?

Beloved by Toni Morrison. I’m going to rectify that before the end of the month.

A book on your TBR that you’re dying to read?

So many! If I was choosing one it’d be Pleasantville by Attica Locke. I loved Black Water Rising, I think Jay Porter’s a brilliant, complex character and Locke’s writing about politics is smart, nuanced and creates cracking page-turners.

How many books are on your TBR shelf?

Oh. Ah. Well, earlier this year I calculated it would take me 23 years to read all the books I have. I’ve removed 300 since then but added some too. Let’s just go with a lot!

People I’m tagging:

Susan at A Life in Books
Cathy at 746 Books
Jacqui at JacquiWine’s Journal
Eleanor at Elle Thinks
Janet at From First Page to Last 
Eric at Lonesome Reader
LaChouett at Chouett
Ali at HeavenAli

Inter-Media

(Thanks to my dad for the title. Hi, Dad *waves*)

Another mini-In the Media post of things I think are worth reading from (or that I’ve come across in) the last couple of weeks.

On the key topic of diversity, Taiye Selasi, author of Ghana Must Go, has a fantastic piece in The Guardian, ‘Stop pigeonholing African writers‘.

Scarlett Thomas wrote a great piece for The Guardian on writers, sex and how male and female authors writing about sex are seen differently, ‘Forget EL James, let’s have some real dirty fiction‘.

Claire Fuller won the Desmond Elliott Prize this week with her brilliant debut, Our Endless Numbered Days. Judge Louise Doughty wrote, ‘The Desmond Elliott prize reminds us that authors need long-term support‘ in The Guardian and prior to the announcement of the winner, ‘The Desmond Elliott Prize 2015: Why an author’s background makes no difference to talent‘ in The Independent.

Sunny Singh, writing on Media Diversified, looks at the reaction to Rihanna’s new video, ‘So We’re All Still Talking About Rihanna’s Bitch Better Have My Money?‘ Which I think is a really interesting piece to read alongside Eva Wiseman’s column in The Observer this week, ‘Why is there always a backlash against feminist stars?‘

Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen, wrote a very powerful piece for The New York Times last month, ‘The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning‘. While Irene Monroe on the Huffington Post looked at the Stonewall riots and asked why brown and black LGBTQ people have been written out of the narrative, ‘Dis-membering Stonewall‘.

Really interesting and grim piece from Michelle Thomas on ‘Tinder Dating‘ on her blog. Prepare to be angry. Which leads me to Laura Bates’ piece in The Guardian, ‘The Kim Kardashian sex-tape flag at Glastonbury was a particularly nasty attack‘.

At which point I have to mention Salena Godden’s brilliant new poem, ‘Flags: Kanye and Kanye‘ on her blog.

Sloane Crosley in The New York Times wrote, ‘Why Women Apologize and Should Stop‘.

On my favourite magazine site, The Pool, there are loads of cracking pieces: Viv Groskop, ‘The one word that undermines women at work‘; Sali Hughes, ‘There is no such thing as a superior mother‘, which goes nicely with Nina Stibbe’s beautiful piece about her mum, ‘People say my mother was awful. But there’s no one I’d rather spend time with‘; I also loved Sali Hughes piece about culling friends, ‘Why culling friends is OK‘, and Lauren Laverne wrote another cracking blog, ‘What’s happened to social mobility?‘. There’s also a fantastic interview with Cathy Rentzenbrink whose brilliant, heart-wrenching memoir The Last Act of Love has just been published. You can listen to the Director’s Cut or the 12 minute edit.

There’s also a fantastic interview with Candace Bushnell in The Cut about her new novel Killing Monica and Rebecca Mascull’s on The History Girls blog talking about her second novel Song of the Sea Maid.

In Nells In the Media, there are cracking interviews with Nell Zink (fast becoming my favourite writer purely on the basis of her candidness in interviews) in Vice and Nell Leyshon, whose last book The Colour of Milk was a Fiction Uncovered winner, in The Independent.

And in Naomi In the Media, the two discussions I took part in for Fiction Uncovered on Resonance FM are now available to ‘listen again’. The panel on diversity chaired by Nikki Bedi and including Danuta Kean and Nikesh Shukla and the discussion with Simon Savidge, chaired by Matt Thorne on blogging and the changing face of reviewing. There’s a full list of links to all the panels and interviews from the day on Simon’s blog Savidge Reads.

Also, I’m interviewed as part of Hayley Webster’s brilliant literary efestival, ‘All the Words‘. As are Antonia Honeywell, Alice Furse, Claire King, Amanda Jennings, Claire Hynes, Suzie Maguire and Devika Ponnambalam.

I’ve cheekily included a photo of myself so I can mention Helen MacKinven’s cover reveal for her forthcoming book Talk of the Toun and claim my photo was totally inspired by it. Best cover ever.

Things on the Internet I’ve Enjoyed Lately

I suppose this is a very mini version of In the Media with not quite so catchy a title. There are a few things that have caught my attention lately that I thought were worth sharing.

Firstly, The Prime Writers, a group of writers who had their debut novels published at 40+, have joined together and launched their website last week. (No surprise that the majority of the group are female.) There you’ll find everything you need to know about each of the writers and their books. There’s also fantastic content being posted regularly, I particularly enjoyed this conversation between Antonia Honeywell and Claire Fuller about their debuts which are both about fathers and daughters.

Norwich Writers Centre have announced their Brave New Reads for the summer. They include Black Country by Liz Berry, Green Carnation Winner Any Other Mouth by Anneliese Mackintosh and one of my books of the year so far, Jennifer Clement’s Prayers for the Stolen. You can find out more about the authors, read extracts from the books and find out how to join in the discussion on the website.

Other things well worth reading:

One of my favourite writers, Janice Galloway, has a new short story collection, Jellyfish, out this week. You can read a short story from it in Prospect called ‘Romantic‘.

Lauren Laverne’s blog for The Pool is always worth reading (published on Mondays) but this week’s is particularly good, ‘What’s Happened to Social Mobility?‘

Also on The Pool and worth reading every week is Sali Hughes. Last week she wrote, ‘Let’s hear it for honest celebrities‘.

Eva Wiseman’s column for the Observer is also brilliant every single week. This Sunday’s was particularly fantastic and beautiful: ‘What is the price of heartbreak?‘

Rufi Thorpe whose debut The Girls from Corona del Mar is well worth a read, wrote a beautiful piece about publishing a first novel on Medium: ‘The Frightening and Wondrous Things That Will Happen to You When You Publish Your First Novel‘.

Also beautiful is Jess Richards’ piece for Scottish Book Trust, ‘Undrowned‘.

Briliant interviews published in The Guardian/Observer this week with my new favourite writer Nell Zink and feminist YA writer Louise O’Neill whose book Only Ever Yours I bought last week as it sounds amazing.

Last week I said I was considering writing a response to Kamila Shamsie’s piece calling for a year of publishing only women but Foyles Assistant Head of Fiction, Marion Rankine, said everything I was going to say in her piece for The Guardian, ‘Battling bias on the shop floor: how bookstores can support diversity‘. I went into Foyles on the Southbank last week and face on to the door, first book you saw as you walked in was Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor. I was impressed (and I bought it).

And if you need a good laugh, there’s an extract from Bridget Christie’s forthcoming A Book for Her in The Guardian, ‘Feminists never have sex and hate men opening doors for them, even into other dimensions‘ and John Crace’s Digested Read of Grey by EL James also in The Guardian is hilarious. Count how many times you can get the phrase ‘enormous cock’ into one article (you’d never get away with that in The Times).

 

In the Media: 17th May 2015

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. 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.

Two excellent UK prizes – the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize and the Desmond Elliot Prize announced their longlist and shortlist, respectively this week. The former has eleven women on a longlist of fifteen. Yes, that does say ELEVEN, that’s 75% of the shortlist (well, 73.3 if you’re being pedantic). And the latter is an ALL WOMEN shortlist of three, from a longlist of ten that had gender parity. Excellent news.

You can read interviews with two of the Desmond Elliot shortlisted writers, Cary Bray and Emma Healey, in The Bookseller

Two important pieces about sexual abuse and victim blaming were published this week: Hayley Webster ‘31 years have passed with me thinking I asked for it…but what if I didn’t‘ on her blog and Lizzie Jones, ‘Sexual Assault: Society, Stop With the Slut Shaming‘ on The Huffington Post.

 

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Meytal Radzinski, ‘Women in Translation: The grim improvement of 2014‘ on Bibliblio
• Eve Ainsworth, ‘Why I wanted to tell the bully’s story‘ in The Guardian
• S.D. Sykes, ‘Memento Mori… Remember that you have to die‘ in Shots
• Laura Miller, ‘You Belong to Me: The fanfiction boom is reshaping the power dynamic between creators and consumers.’ on Vulture
• Kathryn Schulz, ‘Outside In‘ (on Nell Zink) in The New Yorker
• Lizzy Kremer, ‘Crime and Violence: Those who do not flinch‘ on Publishing for Humans
• Sophie Hannah, ‘No one should condescend to Agatha Christie – she’s a genius‘ in The Guardian
• Kate Spicer, ‘Why is the term dadbod so brilliantly perfect?‘ in The Pool (more about neologisms than the concept of dadbod itself)
• Mona Eltahawy, ‘Why I stopped wearing the hijab‘ in The Pool
• Rebecca Bowler, ‘Dorothy M Richardson deserves the recognition she is finally receiving‘ in The Guardian
• Cheryl Strayed and Pankaj Mishra, ‘Is There a Double Standard for Judging Domestic Themes in Fiction?‘ in The New York Times
• Beluah Maud Devaney, ‘Signs That Agatha Christie Is About To Murder You‘ in The Toast
• Laura Miller, ‘Fairy tales, fantasy and dangerous female desire: Celebrating Angela Carter, the literary link between Bros. Grimm and “50 Shades”‘ on Salon
• Joanna Cabot, ‘On Reading a Book You Don’t Like‘ on TeleRead
• Susan Price, ‘Reviving the Female Canon‘ in The Atlantic
• Susan Harlan, ‘Great House Therapy: Elizabeth & Darcy’s Neither Formal Nor Falsely Adorned Pad of Privilege‘ in The Toast
• Sarah Hughes, ‘Killer Women festival: The female crime novelists transforming how the publishing industry works‘ in The Independent
• Maria Farrer, ‘Why teenagers have to take terrible risks in YA literature – and in real life too‘ in The Guardian
• Hannah Lavery, ‘Why Libraries Are Important To Me‘ on her blog
• Suzi Henderson, ‘The Great Literature Gender Gap‘ on The Inflectionist

• Hannah Depp, ‘Meghan Daum, Live in the Capital‘ on Literary Hub
• Melissa Moorer, ‘This Writer’s On Fire: Sofia Samatar‘ in The Butter
• Ali Hope, ‘Mary Hocking reading week 1st-7th June‘ on her blog
• Sara Nović, ‘Topography of a Novel: Girl at War‘ on Blunderbuss
• B.E. Andre, ‘How to Make the Truth Palatable‘ on Women Writers, Women’s Books
• SD Sykes, ‘on writing crime during the time of a great plague‘ on Crime Files
• Sarah Bannan, ‘Can we do it? Yes, we can: on daring to use the first person plural‘ in the Irish Times
• M. Lynx Qualey, ‘Is There a Renaissance in Arabic Children’s Literature?‘ on Arabic Literature (in English)
• Sadie Stein, ‘Booksellers Week‘ on The Paris Review Blog
• Marian Palaia, ‘The Real World vs The MFA‘ on Literary Hub
• Jami Attenberg, ‘This week’s con.‘ on Tiny Letter
• Nicole Lee, ‘Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: ‘Fear of causing offence becomes a fetish’‘ in The Guardian
• Laura Sook Duncombe, ‘Literary Ladies Cage Fight: Baby-Sitters Club vs. Sweet Valley High‘ in The Butter
• Mona Eltahawy, ‘World in 2050: Women in Power‘ on Literary Hub
• Frances Wilson, ‘The nourishing blood of the novelist‘ in the New Statesman
• Lauren Laverne, ‘My own personal Wonderland‘ in The Pool
• Mallory Ortberg, ‘The Forgotten Brontë Sister‘ in The Toast
• Leesa Cross-Smith, ‘Books Are My Love Language & How to Treat Yourself‘ on Real Pants
• Sarah Pinborough, ‘Fantasy and Reality – Where Do You Draw the Line?‘ on the Huffington Post
• Cerrie Burnell, ‘Every child deserves to have their life represented in books‘ in The Guardian
• Lizzy Kremer, ‘Are you talking to me? Writing under a new identity‘ on Publishing for Humans
• Jill Lepore, ‘Women in Science Fiction‘ on The New Yorker Podcast
• Bridget Penny, ‘an ostentation of solitariness: looking for the wilderness in abney park cemetery‘ in 3AM:Magazine
• Alice Bolin, ‘Miss Marple vs. the Mansplainers: Agatha Christie’s Feminist Detective Hero‘ on Electric Literature
• Naomi Frisby, ‘Reading Ourselves‘ on Fiction Uncovered

Personal essays/memoir:

• Jesmyn Ward, ‘Cracking the Code‘ in The New Yorker
• Julie Brister, ‘Large as Life‘ on Slate
• Sali Hughes, ‘There’s no such thing as TMI‘ in The Pool
• Laura June, ‘The Little Things‘ in The Awl
• Meridith De Avila Khan, ‘A Girl and Her Books: On the Loss of Sweet Briar College‘ on The Millions
• Sophie Heawood, ‘I’ve fallen out of love with music‘ in The Guardian
• Leah Reich, ‘The Birth of Uncool‘ on Medium
• Deborah Landau. ‘When I Got Pregnant At 40, Time Slowed Down‘ on Buzzfeed
• Myfanwy Collins, ‘Bruise: On Living with the Fear of Dying‘ in The Butter
• Monica Heisey, ‘Walt‘ on Maisonneuve
• Sadie Stein, ‘Like Rain on Your Wedding Day‘ on The Paris Review Blog
• Ashley Ford, ‘Disrupting Domesticity: Bored to Broken‘ in The Butter
• Shirley Muir, ‘Out of the Blackness‘ on Scottish Book Trust
• Ailidh Lennon, ‘“I wanted a house with a garden and chickens”‘ in The Pool
• Cyn Vargas, ‘I Don’t Know What You’re Talking About‘ on Midnight Breakfast
• Sofia Soter Henriques, ‘Nossa Família‘ on Midnight Breakfast
• Samantha Hunt, ‘There Is Only One Direction‘ in The Cut
• Bryony Gordon, ‘‘I’m coming out of the mental health closet for my daughter’‘ in The Telegraph
• Leslie Nipkow, ‘How I became fat: “It’s tough to be a bad-ass girl in a dainty world”‘ on Salon
• Sarah Royal, ‘The Best Time I Was The Only Passenger Aboard A Cargo Freighter Container Ship Across the Pacific Ocean‘ on The Hairpin
• Jessica Valenti, ‘It’s great to have a vacation. And even better when you leave kids at home‘ in The Guardian

Feminism:

• Dawna I. Ballard and Sunshine Webster, ‘Why Women ‘Having It All’ Is an Empty Concept‘ on Medium
• Erika Hall, ‘Across the River and Into the Woods‘ on Medium
• Lauren Dozier, ‘The Inconsistent Acceptance of Black Beauty‘ on The Huffington Post
• Emily Mitchell, ‘A Boy My Sister Dated in High School‘ in Guernica
• Tracy Moore, ‘Single Mom By Choice: A Great Option for ‘Strong-Ass Bitches’‘ in Jezebel
• Anna Merlan, ‘‘Suck Dick, Fight or Quit Doing Gay Shit’: The Texas Prison Rape Problem‘ on Jezebel
• Caroline Criado-Perez, ‘What Makes a Good or Bad Female Role Model?‘ in Stylist
• Danielle Brooks, ‘How I Learned to Love My Body‘ in Glamour
• Minda Honey, ‘Empty Beds, Empty Wombs: Life Beyond the Blueprint‘ in The Los Angeles Review of Books
• Olga Kazan, ‘Into the Body of Another‘ in The Atlantic
• Ann Friedman, ‘What Getting Your Nails Done Really Means‘ in The Cut
• Sarah Tomlinson, ‘My conflicted relationship with female beauty‘ on Salon
• Christina Tesoro, ‘I’m a Bitch and Proud of It‘ in Cosmopolitan
• Louise Foxcroft, ‘The diet industry has exploited our health fears for centuries – here’s how‘ in The Guardian
• Elissa Strauss, ‘The Rise of “Mama”‘ on Longreads
• Louise Raw, ‘Why Are We So Afraid of the Idea of Women in Power‘ on Morning Star

Society and Politics:

• Zoe Williams, ‘What does the new government mean for women?‘ in The Pool
• Lyndsey Gilpin, ‘Women Making Whiskey: An 800-Year History‘ in The Atlantic
• Susan Berfield, ‘Chinese Maternity Tourists and the Business of Being Born American‘ on Bloomberg
• Aude Konan, ‘Why Black people in France are still invisible‘ on Media Diversified
• Sarah Ladipo Manyika, ‘Coming of Age in the Time of the Hoodie‘ on AGNI
• Anna Holmes, ‘The Underground Art of the Insult‘ in The New York Times
• Eleanor Margolis, ‘Is it just me, or did you receive loads more online dating attention on post-election Sunday?‘ in the New Statesman
• Ann Jones, ‘“Farkhunda is Our Sister”‘ in Guernica
• Jean Friedman Rudovsky, ‘The Ecotourism Industry Is Saving Tanzania’s Animals and Threatening Its Indigenous People‘ in Vice
• Emma Green, ‘American Religion: Complicated, Not Dead‘ in The Atlantic
• Helen Macdonald, ‘Spies in the Sky: On How Birds Reflect Our National Anxieties‘ in The Guardian
• Roisin Kiberd, ‘Will love win in Ireland?‘ in The Pool
• Alexis Gumbs, ‘an element of radical waywardness‘ in The Offing
• Sarah Maslin, ‘Perfect Nails, Poisoned Workers‘ in The New York Times
• Abby Tomlinson, ‘I’ll always be a Milifan. Ed was the best prime minister we never had‘ in The Guardian
• Caroline O’Donoghue, ‘Teenage girls are far smarter than we give them credit for‘ in The Pool

Film, Television, Music and Fashion:

• Anne Helen Petersen, ‘In Praise Of Betty Draper, Difficult Woman‘ on Buzzfeed
• Caroline Framke, ‘The Ascendancy of the ‘Awkward Older Sister’‘ in The Atlantic
• Jiayang Fan, ‘Chinese Whisperers‘ in The Awl
• Samira Sawlani, ‘What fresh hell is this? ‘The Princess of North Sudan; more scary tale than fairy tale’‘ on Media Diversified
• Jenn Lyons, ‘Women of the Wasteland – Mad Max: Fury Road‘ on her blog
• Alice Coote, ‘My life as a man‘ in The Guardian
• Eliana Dockterman, ‘How TV Sex Got Real‘ in Time
• Marissa Bate, ‘So, Hollywood thinks women aren’t superheroes?‘ in The Pool
• Jessica Winter, ‘David Letterman Raised Me‘ on Slate
• Sady Doyle, ‘Age of Robots: How Marvel Is Killing the Popcorn Movie‘ on Medium
• Hadley Freeman, ‘Why I owe it all to 1980s movies‘ in The Guardian

The interviews:

• Anne Enright in Vol. 1 Brooklyn
• Victoria Dahl in Jezebel
• Helen Macdonald on Electric Literature
• Sara Nović on Electric Literature
• Suzanne Scanlon in BOMB Magazine
• Aine Greaney on The Fem
• Margaret Jull Costa on Foyles’ Blog
• Jessica Hopper in The Hairpin and on Salon
• Lisa Kleypas on Jezebel
• Nell Zink on Literary Hub and on the Huffington Post
• Sora Kim-Russell on London Korean Links
• Kate Atkinson in The Globe and The Mail
• Amanda Palmer in Standard Issue
• Joanne Harris on Rebecca Mascull’s blog
• Sarah Govett on Teen Librarian
• Toni Morrison on Goodreads
• Cal Moriarty on Orenda Books
• Elisa Gabbert on Okey-Panky

 

If you want some fiction to read:

• ‘A Millennial Revenge Fantasy‘ by Jamie Lauren Keiles on The Hairpin
• The first five chapters of The Life and Death of Sophie Stark by Anna North in The Pool
• ‘Ghosts & Cyborgs‘ by Lyndsey Ellis in The Offing
• ‘Film Previews on a Plane: The Helpful Summaries‘ by Margaret Atwood in The National Post
• ‘Thanksgiving in Connecticut‘ by Katherine Bell on The Fem
• An extract from A Tale of Two Besties by Sophia Rossi on HelloGiggles
• An extract from My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff on Literary Hub
• ‘The Kind of Water I Like‘ by Lillian Akampurira Aujo on Sooo Many Stories
• ‘McCarthy and Woolf‘ by Chella Courington in Cacti Fur
• ‘Juke Joint Banshee‘ by Patty Templeton on Urban Fantasist
• ‘The Wretched Pet‘ by Betty McIntyre on Urban Fantasist
• ‘The Ice-Cream Van‘ by Jessica Patient on Urban Fantasist

If you want some poetry to read:

• ‘Extinction‘ by Jackie Kay in The Guardian
• ‘A Reading in New York‘ by Claire Potter in the New Statesman
• ‘[I can’t bear anymore what happens to the body]‘ by Victoria Lynne McCoy in The Offing
• ‘Words Like Applesauce‘ by Bethany Mary in The Fem
• ‘Thing is an Amen‘ by Rachael Katz in The Offing
• ‘Black Words Matter‘ Four poems by Baltimore Students on Real Pants
• ‘in this story…‘ by Lisa Marie Basile in Berfrois
• Six by Elisa Gabbert on Okey-Panky

The lists:

• 47 Books Every College Grad Should Read on Buzzfeed
• 10 Books to Read This Summer in the Wall Street Journal
• 8 reasons you absolutely have to watch Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell in The Pool
• Judith Claire Mitchell’s Top 10 (unconventional) ghosts in literature in The Guardian
• Books of the Week, May 18, 2015 on Publishers Weekly
• Amelia Gray’s 10 Best Dark Books on Publishers Weekly
• 13 Best Quotes from Adichie’s Pen Festival Lecture on Brittle Paper
• 4 Small Press Books to Read in May (All-Women Edition) on BookRiot
• Kirsty Logan’s Seven New(ish) Island Books on The Island Review
• 11 Teen Books About Growing Up in Scotland on Scottish Book Trust
• Sarah Menkedick’s Four Books on Early Motherhood on Vela
• 12 Feminist Books ‘Mad Men’s Joan And Peggy Could Have Used To “Burn This Place Down” on Bustle

In the Media: 11th January 2015

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.

(Photograph by Pedro Koechlin)

As it’s the first In the Media of the year, I’m going to begin by looking back at 2014 for a moment with pieces that appeared between Christmas and New Year. Katherine Angel’s brilliant piece, ‘Gender, blah, blah, blah‘ in The Los Angeles Review of Books; Jessie Burton, ‘Eggshells, Luck, Hope and Thanks‘ on her blog reflects on what a year it’s been for The Miniaturist; Emma Claire Sweeney and Emily Midorikawa ‘A Year of Hidden Friendships‘ on Something Rhymed; Rebecca Solnit, ‘Listen up, women are telling their story now‘ in The Guardian; Jia Tolentino, ‘The Promise in Elena Ferrante‘ on Jezebel; Charles Finch, also on Elena Ferrante for ‘A Year in Reading‘ for The Millions;  Ali Colluccio covers ‘The Best of Women in Comics 2014‘ on Panels, and  Elena Adler on ‘Why #ReadWomen 2014 has changed things, and why #ReadWomen matters‘ on her blog.

Looking forwards, there’s been a spotlight on diversity again this week with Celeste Ng writing about a male professor telling her there were few Asian-American women writers. There’s a fantastic list of writers at the bottom of the article. Nalo Hopkinson wrote ‘To anthology editors‘ on how to go about creating anthologies with a diversity of voices on her website; Alexis Teyie wrote this great piece, ‘Invoking the women in early African writing‘ on This Is Africa, while Lyn Gardner declared ‘Diversity is key to Creativity – and British Theatre’s Challenge for 2015‘ in The Guardian and Stella Duffy wrote, ‘Making Arts for All for ALL‘ on her blog.

While The White Review has kicked off the year with an all translation issue. You can read online pieces by Herta Müller (tr. Philip Boehm); poetry by Alejandra Pizarnik (tr. Yvette Seigert) and Angélica Freitas (tr. Hilary Kaplan); a short story by Tove Jansson (tr.  Thomas Teal); extracts from novels by Minae Mizumuru (tr. Juliet Winters Carpenter) and Han Kang (tr. Deborah Smith), and an interview with Magdalena Tulli (tr. Bill Johnston).

(Photograph by Kuba Kolinski)

The best of the rest articles/essays:

• Guilaine Kinouani, “Hatred breeds hatred”: Charlie Hebdo, marginalisation and terrorism on Media Diversified
• Harriet Evans, ‘I was living in a house where babies had been murdered‘ in The Guardian
• Margaret Talbot, ‘The Talking Cure‘ in The New Yorker
• Marta Maretich, ‘Landfill‘ in Boom
• Samantha Ellis, ‘How To Be a New Year Heroine‘ on Vintage Books and ‘Baddies in Books: Bertha Rochester, the madwoman in the attic‘ in The Guardian
• Antonia Honeywell on the writing of The Ship on the Curtis Brown blog
• Jenny Colgan, ‘What Makes Me Happy‘ in The Guardian
• Rivka Galchen and Leslie Jamison, ‘Why Do We Hate Cliché?‘ in The New York Times
• Maev Kennedy, ‘Families in Literature: The Clocks in The Borrowers by Mary Norton‘ in The Guardian
• Lindesay Irvine, ‘Families in Literature: the Tulls in Dinner at the Homesick restaurant by Anne Tyler‘ in The Guardian
• Sarah Crown, ‘Families in Literature: the Bagthorpes in The Bagthorpe Saga by Helen Cresswell‘ in The Guardian
• Meg Wolitzer, ‘My Debt to Sylvia Plath‘ in Time
• Naomi Skwarna, ‘How to Be a Woman: Lorrie Moore as the mother you never had‘ in Hazlitt
• Maureen Younger on why Simone de Beauvoir is still important in Standard Issue
• Shelley Harris, ‘Timey-Wimey: A Letter to My (Former) Self‘ on her blog
• Rebecca Makkai, ‘Second Time’s the Charm‘ on The Ploughshares’ Blog
• Elisa Gabbert, ‘Notes on a Trend‘ on Real Pants
• Hannah Marriott, ‘Joan Didion and Céline: why old age is having a fashion moment‘ in The Guardian
• Kevin Fitzpatrick, ‘Six Women You Didn’t Know Were Members of the Algonquin Round Table‘ on Huffington Post
• Alice Popplewell, “What’s This Issue All About” Five Dials and @ReadWomen2014 on Cloudbanks and Shimbleshanks
• Lizzy Dening, ‘A Year of Reading Women‘ in Grazia
• Jess Connett, ‘Transphobic Parents: The Problem Is You, Not Your Kids‘ on Rife
• Victoria Law, ‘Against Carceral Feminism‘ in Jacobin
• Qaisra Shahraz, ‘Researching a Novel in Morocco‘ on Women Writers, Women’s Books
• Amy Klein, ‘Fertility Fog‘ on Aeon
• Chloe Angyal, ‘The Paradoxical Rise of the Viral Marriage Proposal‘ on Buzzfeed
• Glynnis MacNicol, ‘Growing Up Meant Learning to Wear Red Lipstick‘ on The Cut
• Mallory Ortberg, ‘I’d Love to Help My Wife, But I’m Trapped Under Something Heavy‘ in The Toast
• Van Badham, ‘It’s time to open your eyes, Rusty. Female actors want better roles because none exist‘ in The Guardian
• Sinéad Gleeson, ‘Nollaig na mBan and the (gendered) horror of housework‘ on her blog
• Claire Fuller, ‘Dear Jane: A letter to my husband’s dead first wife‘ on her blog
• Claire Furniss on sick lit in The Guardian and ‘No matter how much research you do, it’s the story that matters‘ on the Waterstone Blog
• Laura Lippman, ‘A Detective and a Mother‘ on Publishers Weekly
• Caitlin Horrocks, ‘Live Demonstrations of Love‘ on AGNI Online
• Fatima Bhutto, ‘My Other Thing‘ in Granta
• Leesa Cross-Smith, ‘Bro Country and Tiny Littles‘ on Real Pants
• Elaine Blair, ‘All Told: Rachel Cusk’s autobiographical fiction‘ in The New Yorker
• Sarah Hughes, ‘The Gone Girl effect sparks year of flawed women behaving badly‘ in The Guardian
• Lucy Ribchester, ‘I vote we honour those brave Scottish suffragettes‘ in The Sunday Times (£)
• Cathy Rentzenbrink, ‘Elizabeth Jane Howard Remembered‘ on BBC Radio 4 Extra
• Lynn Shepherd, ‘Frankenstein: Mystery – Monster – Myth‘ on Wordsworth Trust Blog
• Emma Claire Sweeney, ‘Mary Lamb and Dorothy Wordsworth‘ on Something Rhymed
• Claire King on not being the most anticipated on her blog
• Vanessa Lafaye, ‘The Beast in Residence: Writing After Cancer‘ on her blog
• Yiyun Li, ‘Listening Is Believing‘ in The New Yorker
• Carlina Duan, ‘How an English Major Found Her (Chinese American) Voice on Campus‘ in Mochi Mag
• Jenny Diski, ‘Doris and Me‘ in the LRB
• Tess Vigeland, ‘Authors are now judged by their Twitter followers, and it’s a world gone mad‘ in The Guardian
• Paris Lees, ‘Honour Leelah Alcorn’s memory by banning conversion therapy‘ in Attitude
• Hilary Mantel on Grief in The Guardian

The interviews:

• Emily Woolf in The Guardian
• Seni Glaister on the 4th Estate site
• Megan Mayhew Bergman on Electric Literature and on Bookslut
• In Conversation: Barbara Ras and Matthew Dickman in Granta
• Emma Healey in The Guardian
• Priya Parmar on Huffington Post
• Lindsey Kelk on BBM Live
• Meghan McNamara of Stillhouse Press on Wendi Kaufman on Bloom
• Miranda July in The New York Times
• Edwidge Danticat in Guernica
• Harriet Lane on One Book Lane
• Wendy C. Ortiz on Electric Literature
• Megham Daum in The Los Angeles Review of Books
• Leesa Cross-Smith on Cari Luna’s blog
• Jodi Picoult and Helen Macdonald on Scottish Book Trust’s Book Talk
• Lucy Ribchester on Scottish Book Trust
• Kate Saunders in The Telegraph
• Nell Zink in The Guardian
• Vanessa Lafaye in The Guardian
• Alexandra Heminsley in The Telegraph
• Ann Patchett on The Hairpin
• Katharine Norbury in The Guardian
• Gayatri Spivak on Dawn
• Mary Costello on Annethology
• Carys Bray on Sara Crowley’s blog

If you want some fiction/poetry to read:

• An extract from Wake by Anna Hope
• ‘Sufferance’ and other poems by Rebecca Foust
• Invasive Species by Marie Gethins in Litro
• Orion’s Belt and Who it Fell On by Emily Ilett in Litro
• An extract from The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
• An extract from Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders
• Birdie by Ann DeWitt
• State of the Art Flesh Cleanser by Rahawa Haile
• Betty Came by to Say Goodbye by Claire Fuller
• An extract from Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey
• An extract from Year of the Rat by Clare Furniss
• An excerpt from La signora Rosetta by Tiziana Sferruggia (tr. Mati Colarossi) on Parallel Texts
• A Photograph of Her Showering by Elizabeth Langemak on AGNI Online
• The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel is Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime
• An extract from La Femme De Gilles by Madeleine Bourdouxhe (tr. Faith Evans)
• ‘Encounters with a Hare’ and other poems by Aoife Reilly

And the lists:

• The Best Books this Year Are All Written by Women: A Guide for 2015 on Gawker
• The Best 10 Books Shorter Than 150 Pages on Publishers Weekly
• 13 Books to Keep Up Your Post Holiday Spirits, Especially Now That the Cold Weather Has Really Set In on Bustle
• 27 of the Most Exciting Books of 2015 on Buzzfeed
• Keren David’s top 10 books about adopted and fostered children in The Guardian
• Lucy Ribchester’s Top 10 Books About the Suffragettes in The Guardian
• Lynn Kanter’s 30 Women Novelists You Should Know #20 Mary Doris Russell on her blog
• 16 of the Most Anticipated YA Debuts Due Out in the First Half of 2015 on Huffington Post
• The Best New Books of 2015 in Stylist
• 10 Underrated Novels by Women You Should Resolve to Read in 2015 on Bustle
• 10 Must Read Female Writers from the Middle East on The Culture Trip
• The Books to Look Forward to in 2015 in Marie Claire
• The TIA 100 – Best Books, 2010 – 2014 on This Is Africa
• 6 Books We’re Most Looking Forward to Reading in 2015 in Good Housekeeping
• 15 Feminist Books to Read in 2015 to Help You Stay Passionate All Year in Bustle

In the Media: 14th December 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 been a lot written about rape and the culture which surrounds it due to a piece published in Rolling Stone magazine about a gang rape at The University of Virginia. Responses came from Margaret Talbot in The New Yorker, Emily Yoffe on Slate, Maya Dusenbery on Feministing, Rhiannon Cosslett of The Vagenda in Time, Salamishah Tillet in The Nation and Sarah Ditum in The New Statesman; Deb Rox wrote about working at a rape crisis program in ‘Truth Is a Fire I Couldn’t Hold‘ on The Butter; Lena Dunham wrote about her own experience of speaking out on Buzzfeed; Katie McDonough comment on Salon in a piece titled, ‘The right’s Lena Dunham delusion: Anger, misogyny and the dangers of business as usual‘, and Caitlin Moran wrote about the Ched Evans’ case in the UK. While from a story focus, Kathleen Founds wrote about Vonnegut and rape culture on Buzzfeed and Sarah Hughes wrote about ‘Rape on TV‘ in The Guardian.

It’s also been another week where #readwomen2014 has been highlighted. Creator Joanna Walsh reflected on the year in The Guardian; Lauren Aimee Curtis wrote about her year of reading women in Meanjin; Lorraine Meads wrote about creating the first Feminist Library in Nottingham on Dawn of the Unread; Rebecca Mascull wrote about her reading year on her blog, and @hashughes began a Women’s Writing Calendar – send her forthcoming events you’re involved in/are aware of so we can share in the goodness. Meanwhile, Nicola Sheppey at The Vagenda wrote ‘Why Women Need to Read Books By Men‘.

And the other big story was Vlogger Zoella’s novel. The fasting selling debut since records began was ghostwritten, it was revealed last Sunday. You can read the story in The Telegraph. Keren David wrote her thoughts about it on An Awfully Big Blog Adventure; Matt Haig defended her in The Guardian; thirteen-year-old Zoella fan Julia Brookes commented on Girl Online, and on Thursday, Siobhan Curham, the ghost writer involved, commented on her own blog.

The best of the rest articles/essays:

• Ursula K. Le Guin, ‘Knowing a Book By its Cover‘ on Book View Cafe Blog
• Francine Prose, ‘Courts Without Reporters‘ in the New York Review of Books
• Sadie Stein, ‘Hand in Glove‘ in The Paris Review
• Michelle Dean, ‘Wild and Into the Wild‘ on Slate
• Bethany Rose on Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me and Other Essays on For Books’ Sake
• Karrie Fransman, ‘Why We Should Be Taking Comics More Seriously‘ at TedxYouth@Manchester (video)
• Libby Copeland, ‘Oxytots‘ on Slate
• Rowan Coleman, ‘Dear Marian Keyes‘ on Novelicious
• Val McDermid, ‘Why I Write Mysteries and Thrillers‘ on Publishers Weekly
• Glynnis MacNicol, ‘I’m 40. I Don’t Want to Be a Mom. Now What?‘ on The Cut
• Valeria Luiselli, ‘Collected Poems‘ on New York in The New Yorker
• Sanjida O’Connell, ‘Science in Fiction‘ on Women Writers, Women’s Books
• Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith, ‘How our children’s book about a gay superhero avoided the straightwash‘ in The Guardian
• Jan Bindas-Tenney, ‘The Border Crisis in Leisureville‘ in Guernica
• Ruth Graham, ‘The Disappearance of Rosemary Tonks‘ on Poetry Foundation
• Jessie Burton, ‘The Miraculous Healing Power of a Doll’s House‘ in The Independent
• Viviana Hurtado, ‘Open Letter to the New York Times: Latino Children’s Authors and Illustrators Have Earned a Place on the Year-End List‘ Latinas for Latino Lit
• Emily Schultz, ‘How Ursula Le Guin’s “Very Far Away from Anywhere Else” Made Me Feel Less Alone‘ on Bustle
• Tiffany Midge, ‘Ghoul, Interrupted‘ on The Butter
• Roxane Gay on Megham Daum and personal essays in The New York Times
• Sheila Curry Oakes, ‘A Lifetime of Losing (And Finding) Myself in Literature‘ on Huffington Post
• Salena Godden on writing Springfield Road on For Books’ Sake
• Sophie Coulombeau, ‘I’m getting married: should I change my surname‘ in The Guardian
• Grace Dent on Lorna Sage’s Bad Blood on BBC Radio 4
• Marina Warner, ‘How Fairytales Grew Up‘ in The Guardian
• Carrie Frye, ‘The Gothic Life and Times of Horace Walpole‘ on Longreads
• Lucy McKeon, ‘The Meaning of Coincidence‘ on Guernica
• Lauren Laverne, ‘The best Christmas Present? An NHS with no funding issues‘ in The Observer
• Triple Canopy honours Lynne Tillman

The interviews:

• Elena Ferrante in The New York Times
• Valeria Luiselli on Electric Literature
• Lindsay Hunter in The Los Angeles Review of Books
• Raquel Cepeda on Amy Gigi Alexander’s blog
• Nell Zink in The Paris Review
• Elizabeth McCracken on Literary Mama
• Roxane Gay on the Nerdette Podcast
• Julia Wertz in The Paris Review
• Darcey Steinke on About
• Jan Morris in The New York Times
• Rebecca Solnit on Free Thinking on BBC Radio 3 (from 17.30)
• Mary Costello on Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights blog
• Claudia Rankine in The Believer
• Lisa O’Donnell on Author Link
• Wendy Cope in The Guardian
• Marian Keyes – In the Bathroom, Part One on Sali Hughes Beauty

If you want some fiction or poetry to read:

• ‘The Sentimentality of William Tavener‘ by Willa Cather on Biblioklept
• ‘Savage Breast‘ by Elizabeth McKenzie in The New Yorker. McKenzie talks about the story here.
• An extract from Ridley Road by Jo Bloom on One Book Lane and a different extract on We Love This Book
• An extract from The Chimes by Anna Smaill on her website
• There’s a whole collection of chapbooks published by Sundress Publications free to read on their website
• ‘One-Hundred Percent Risk‘ by Cheryl Klein in Blunderbuss
• ‘Mother and Daughter‘ by Elisabeth Frost
• ‘Fragmented Instructions for Half-Formed Girls‘ by Claire Lombardo on Luna Luna
• ‘Through the Woods‘ by Abigail Mitchell on The Butter
• Academy Street by Mary Costello is BBC Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime
• ‘The Visit‘ by Kate Hamer on Wales Art Review
• ‘Crepuscular‘ by Leesa Cross-Smith on Wyvern Lit

Or some non-fiction:

• An extract from The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore on Bookanista
• An extract from Cinderland by Amy Jo Burns on The Butter
• ‘I miss my biggest heart‘, Emily Dickinson to Susan Huntingdon Gilbert on Letters of Note

And the lists:

• 19 Times Amy Poehler Gave Absolutely Sound Advice on Buzzfeed
• Amy Poehler’s Opinion on 26 Random Things on Buzzfeed
• 15 Powerful Books by Women to Give as Gifts on The Cut
• The Best Poetry Books of 2014 on Flavorwire
• 25 books You Might Have Missed in 2014 on Flavorwire
• Electric Literature’s 25 Best Novels of 2014
• Electric Literature’s 25 Best Story Collections of 2014
• For Books’ Sake’s Bookish Feminist Gift Guide
• 2015 Books We Can’t Wait to Read on Huffington Post
• 6 Things You Didn’t Know About Emily Dickinson’s Writing Process on Flavorwire
• YA Trilogies that Ended in 2014 (That You Should Read in 2015) on Huffington Post
• 2014’s 10 Best Debut Young Adult Novels on Bustle
• And The Millions added more contributions to their ‘A Year in Reading‘ overviews.