In the Media, April 2017, 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.

Photograph by Pari Dukovic

The Handmaid’s Tale is having a moment due to the television serial airing this coming week and the current political situation in America (and beyond).

• Madeleine Davies, ‘The Misogynist Future of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale Feels Terrifyingly Within Reach‘ on Jezebel
• Rebecca Mead, ‘Margaret Atwood, the Prophet of Dystopia‘ in The New Yorker
• Rebecca Mead, ‘Margaret Atwood’s Grimly Relevant Additions to “The Handmaid’s Tale” Audiobook‘ in The New Yorker
• Katrina Onstad, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale: A Newly Resonant Dystopia Comes to TV‘ in The New York Times
• Willa Paskin reviews the show on Slate
• Anne Helen Peterson, ‘The Radical Feminist Aesthetic Of “The Handmaid’s Tale”‘ on Buzzfeed
• Emily Temple, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale Adapts More than the Novel: Here Is America‘ on Literary Hub

As one series begins, another ended this week:

• Emma Gannon, ‘It’s time to move on from ‘Girls’…but I’ll always love Lena‘ in Glamour
• Sophie Gilbert, ‘What Was Missing From the Girls Finale‘ on The Atlantic
• Erica Jong, ‘Why Do Female Characters Have to Be “Likeable”‘ on the BBC
• Anna Leszkiewicz, ‘The final episode of Girls revealed Hannah Horvath’s two most important relationships‘ in the New Statesman
• Halima Marcus, ‘The Very Best Episodes of Girls Are Perfect Short Stories‘ on Electric Literature
• Jia Tolentino, ‘On Finally Watching “Girls”, A Different and Better Show than I’d Been Led to Imagine‘ in The New Yorker
• Elizabeth Wurtzel, ‘Of course ‘Girls’ spoke to my life. Its brilliance is that it could speak to everyone’s‘ in The Washington Post

And in women win prizes, ‘Heather Rose wins the Stella Prize for a novel that wouldn’t ‘let her go’‘ as reported by The Sydney Morning Herald.

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Negar Azimi, ‘The Extravagant Jane Bowles: Always on the Edge of Something‘ in The New York Times
• Megan Mayhew Bergman, ‘The Feminine Heroic‘ on The Paris Review
• Joanna Cannon, ‘Breaking and Mending‘ on her blog
• Sarah Churchwell, ‘Sylvia Plath, a voice that can’t be silenced‘ in The Guardian
• Paula Cocozza, ‘21st-century fox: how nature’s favourite outsider seduced the suburbs‘ in The Guardian
• Deidre Coyle, ‘Men Recommend David Foster Wallace to Me‘ on Electric literature
• Meghan Daum, ‘The Quality of Life Report, 2017‘ on VQR
• Adyita Desi, ‘Woman with Power Is Woman Unchecked: Reading Narratives of Indian Women‘ on The Millions
• Lissa Evans, ‘How my novel about film-making was turned into a film‘ in The Guardian
• Merve Fejzula, ‘Zadie Smith and Multiculturalism after Brexit‘ on Black Perspectives
• Elizabeth Fremantle, ‘“Cringing” Historical Novelists: on Mantel at the Oxford Lit Fest‘ on The History Girls
• Sarah Gerard, ‘Mourning My Grandfather Through The Velveteen Rabbit‘ on Literary Hub
• Louise Glück, ‘On Realism and Fantasy‘ on Literary Hub
• Sophie Hopesmith, ‘Women Who Shock‘ on Dead Ink Books
• Terry Huang, ‘Gender Gap in Non-Professional Writer Submissions‘ on The Black List
• Danielle Jackson, ‘Life in North Memphis, and the Women Who Taught Me to Read‘ on Literary Hub
• Lucy Mangan, ‘This way to the ginger pop shop! The day I stepped into the pages of the Famous Five‘ in The Guardian
• Edie Meidav, ‘Discovering the Power of Storytelling in a Tattered Old Pulp Paperback‘ on Literary Hub
• Jennifer Mills, ‘The beauty regimen of a woman writer‘ on Overland
• Eilis O’Hanlon, ‘“She’s a thief who steals others’ hard-won words” – on the plagiarist who stole her novel‘ in The Irish Independent
• Sarah Paretsky, ‘From Joan of Arc to Little Women, A History of Heroes‘ on Literary Hub
• Pamela Paul, ‘Why You Should Read Books You Hate‘ in The New York Times
• Grace Payley, ‘Of Poetry and Women and the World‘ on FSG Work in Progress
• Ella Risbridger, ‘The letters Sylvia Plath wrote to her therapist are not ours to see‘ on The Pool
• Michèle Roberts, ‘The fallen woman: prostitution in literature‘ in The Guardian
• Lucy Scholes, ‘The Sisters Who Are Secretly Evil‘ on the BBC
• Doree Shafrir, ‘Not Everyone Is Meant To Have A Book Club‘ on Buzzfeed
• Kathryn Schultz, ‘Literature’s Arctic Obsession‘ in The New Yorker
• Rebecca Solnit, ‘Get That Life: How I Became a Writer, Historian, and Activist‘ in Cosmopolitan
• Sarah K. Stephens, ‘What Edith Wharton Taught Me about Marriage‘ on The Millions
• Beth Underdown, ‘Not From Around There: finding a place in historical fiction‘ on Northern Soul
• Saskia Vogel, ‘The Swedish Gangster’s Wife’s Bag‘ on The Paris Review
• Kyle Winkler, ‘Gertrude Stein: Unlikely Comp Teacher‘ on The Millions

Personal essays/memoir:

• Pearl Abraham, ‘Dreams of My Mother for One Last Passover‘ on Literary Hub
• Kerri Arsenault, ‘Growing Up in Maine’s “Cancer Valley”‘ on Literary Hub
• Jami Attenberg, ‘How Sicily Cemented an Unlikely Friendship‘ in The New York Times
• DeMisty D. Bellinger, ‘Tell Me Something Good‘ on The Rumpus
• Katie Booth, ‘The Bathrobe: On Quilting and Memory‘ on Catapult
• Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza, ‘The Law of Historical Memory​’ on Catapult
• Elizabeth Crain, ‘On Girls, Trump, and Everyone I Ever Dated Before My Husband‘ on Literary Hub
• Elizabeth Ellen, ‘Messages for a Balloon: On Relocation and Families‘ on Catapult
• Jennifer Epperson, ‘When Good Hair Is Natural Hair‘ on Lenny
• Megan Galbraith, ‘Sin Will Find You Out‘ on Catapult
• Deepti Kapoor, ‘I Come from a Place on Your Bucket List‘ in Granta
• Maris Kreizman, ‘My “Sick” Body‘ on Medium
• Andrea Lauren, ‘Don’t Think Twice and the Power of Improvising Through the Unknown‘ on The Rumpus
• Vivien Lee, ‘The Loneliness Recipe‘ on Hazlitt
• Kimberly Melton, ‘Good Hair‘ on Oregon Humanities
• Grace Prassad, ‘Feathers from Home, and Other Family Heirlooms‘ on Catapult
• Elisabeth Sherman, ‘Am I Asian Enough?‘ on Catapult
• Tasha Kerry Smith, ‘Not Everything Legal is Clean‘ on Catapult
• Madeleine Thien, ‘The Land in Winter‘ on Granta
• Lidia Yuknavitch, ‘Civic Memory, Feminist Future‘ on Electric Literature
• Lidia Yuknavitch, ‘I Will Always Inhabit the Waters‘ on Literary Hub
• Iza Wojciechowska, ‘Family Trees‘ on Vela
• Laura Zera, ‘Waiting to Go Home: On Being a Traveler in Trinidad‘ on Catapult

Feminism:

• Laura Bates, ‘What I have learned from five years of Everyday Sexism‘ in The Guardian
• Sady Doyle, ‘Women Don’t Need to Apologize Less—Men Need to Learn How to Apologize‘ in Elle
• Petula Dvorak, ‘On Easter, Mary Magdalene will be maligned as a prostitute. Except she wasn’t‘ in The Washington Post
• Jean Hannah Edelstein, ‘It feels almost impossible to escape the desire to make my body smaller‘ on The Pool
• Ashley C. Ford, ‘Millennial Women Are Conflicted About Being Breadwinners‘ on Refinery29
• Hadley Freeman, ‘Successful, lairy, scary – what does a vulnerable woman look like?‘ in The Guardian
• Ann Friedman, ‘When Women Pursue Sex, Even Men Don’t Get It‘ on The Cut
• Maya Harris, ‘Equal Pay Day Isn’t a Holiday. It’s a Call to Fight.‘ on Lenny
• Maddie Holden, ‘Why the Sentiment Behind Cosmopolitan’s Appalling Diet Tweet Is Not Unusual‘ on HighSnobiety
• Rachel Holmes, ‘A new feminist statue is a great idea. Shame they picked the wrong feminist‘ in The Guardian
• Brionne Janae, ‘No One Looks for Black Girls‘ on Bitch Media
• Jennifer McShane, ‘Why We’re Done With The Idea Of “Likeable” Women‘ on Image
• Vonny Moyes, ‘Why sex for rent is not a deal like any other‘ in The National
• Leslie Nguyen-Okwu, ‘The Forgotten Language that Only Women Once Knew‘ on Ozy
• Emer O’Toole, ‘The Sisters of Charity presided over abuse. They must not run a maternity hospital‘ in The Guardian
• Kate Ristow, ‘Why Didn’t I Get Help for Postpartum Depression Sooner?‘ on The Cut
• Sophie Walker, ‘Brexit will be disastrous for women unless we fight the rollback of our rights‘ in The Guardian

Photograph by Adrienne Mathiowetz

Society and Politics:

• Eula Biss, ‘Murder Mystery‘ in The TLS
• Caren Chesler, ‘The Blood of the Crab‘ on Popular Mechanics
• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, ‘My generation has to choose between a child or a career. We can’t afford both‘ in The Guardian
• Caitlin Flanagan, ‘How Late-Night Comedy Fueled the Rise of Trump‘ on The Atlantic
• Elisa Gabbert, ‘Earth Is Not Vengeful—It’s Just Indifferent‘ on Pacific Standard
• Erika Hayasaki, ‘How a Single Gene Could Become a Volume Knob for Human Suffering‘ on Wired
• Gaby Hinsliff, ‘The viral image of Saffiyah Khan is an antidote to an era of escalating male rage‘ on The Pool
• Kate Imbach, ‘Fairytale Prisoner by Choice: The Photographic Eye of Melania Trump‘ on Medium
• Sarah Kendzior, ‘Trump craves praise. We praise him for bombings. What possibly could go wrong?‘ in The Globe and the Mail
• Sarah Lyall, ‘Will London Fall?‘ in The New York Times
• Eimear McBride, ‘in the West Bank: “All that is human in me recoils from this”‘ in The Irish Times
• Rachel Monroe, ‘#Vanlife, the Bohemian Social-Media Movement‘ in The New Yorker
• Suzanne Moore, ‘In dark times, this image has a glorious message – resistance is not futile‘ in The Guardian
• Sarah Nicole Prickett, ‘Free the Roses‘ on Hazlitt
• Jana G. Pruden, ‘A Radical Grief‘ in The Globe and the Mail
• Sarah Scholes, ‘Brain-Altering Science and the Search for a New Normal‘ on Pacific Standard
• Elif Shafak, ‘Turkey could be about to leap from division to despotism‘ in The Guardian
• Sonia Weiser, ‘Do Women Actually Wear Men’s Dress Shirts After Sex?‘ on Racked

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

• Sarah Barker, ‘The Brutality of the Barkley Marathons‘ on Deadspin
• Angelica Jade Bastíen, ‘What the Debate Around Black American and British Actors Gets Wrong‘ on Vulture
• Francine Prose, ‘“Sex and the City” in Hell‘ in The New York Review of Books
• Fariha Róisín, ‘Kids Like Us‘ on Hazlitt
• Donna Seaman, ‘Surrealist Gertrude Abercrombie, Queen of the Bohemian Artists‘ on Literary Hub

The interviews/profiles:

• Sara Ahmed on Literary Hub
• Diana Athill on Lenny Letter
• Jennifer Finney Boylan on Vice
• Durga Chew-Bose in The Guardian and on Literary Hub
• Patty Yumi Cottrell in The Paris Review and on Electric Literature
• Jessa Crispin in The Observer and on Vox
• Rachel Dolezal (interviewed by Ijeoma Oluo) on The Stranger
• Sarah Gerard on Electric Literature
• Zoe Gilbert on The Word Factory
• Camilla Grudova on Minor Literature[s]
• Paula Hawkins on Northern Soul
• L.S. Hilton on The Pool
• Donna Leon in The Guardian
• Deborah Levy in The TLS
• Alia Malek in Gurenica
• Helen McClory on The Skinny
• Lisa McInerney in The Guardian and on TSS Publishing
• Dorthe Nors on The Man Booker Prize and Words Without Borders
• Hanna Nowinski on Teen Vogue
• Sarah Perry in The Radio Times
• Claudia Rankine in The Paris Review
• Emma Ramadan on Conversational Reading
• Samantha Schweblin on Words Without Borders
• Shanthi Sekaran on The Rumpus
• Olivia Sudjic on Flavorwire
• Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan on The Rumpus
• Angie Thomas on The Rumpus
• Mónica de la Torre on Literary Hub
• Laura Waddell on Nothing in the Rule Book
• Joanna Walsh on Review 31
• Lidia Yuknavitch on Electric Literature

The regular columnists:

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

In the Media, November 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.

This fortnight’s been dominated by post-election coverage:

• Rebecca Traister, ‘Blaming Clinton’s Base for Her Loss Is the Ultimate Insult‘ in The Cut
• Mo Moulton, ‘An American in Brexit Britain: Reflections After the Presidential Election‘ on Catapult
• Toni Morrison, ‘Making America White Again‘ in The New Yorker
• Sal Randolph, ‘A Letter to My Male Friends Who May Not Know That They Are Women‘ on The Rumpus
• Gabrielle Bellot, ‘Queer Writers in the Age of Trump‘ on The Atlantic
• Hennessy Williams, ‘As a Sex Worker, I’m Terrified for the Next Four Years‘ on Vice
• Masha Gessen, ‘Why We Must Protest‘ on Literary Hub
• Valeria Luiselli, ‘This Is How the World Ends?‘ on Literary Hub
• Shani Gilchrist, ‘When There Is No Option to Forget: How My Family Shares Our Stories of Survival‘ on Catapult
• Jenny Zhang, ‘Against Extinction‘ on The New Enquiry
• Helen Lewis and Caroline Crampton, ‘How Ivanka, the new first daughter, sold the Trump brand to women‘ in the New Statesman
• Various, ‘What It Means To Be A Writer In The Time Of Trump‘ on The Huffington Post
• Kali Holloway, ‘Stop Asking Me to Empathize with the White Working Class‘ on Alternet
• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, ‘Hillary Clinton lost because of her gender, and it hurts like hell‘ in the New Statesman
• Muna Mire, ‘Resisting Trump’s Islamophobic Promise for America‘ on The New Enquiry
• Liz Meriwether, ‘After the Election, the White People of Los Angeles Adopted Pets‘ on The Cut
• Megan Garber, ‘Pop Culture Resents ‘The Establishment’ Too‘ in The Atlantic
• Sarah Blackwood, ‘Parenting by the Books: Slavery’s White Women‘ on The Hairpin
• Christina Sharpe, ‘Lose Your Kin‘ on The New Enquiry
• Melissa Febos, ‘Teaching After Trump‘ on Granta
• Rebecca Solnit, ‘How to Survive a Disaster‘ on Literary Hub
• Various, ‘Aftermath‘ in The New Yorker
• Rebecca Solnit, ‘Don’t call Clinton a weak candidate: it took decades of scheming to beat her‘ in The Guardian
• Abi Wilkinson ‘We need to talk about the online radicalisation of young, white men‘ in The Guardian
• Catherine Baker, ‘Queer grief and the secret chord with Kate McKinnon: it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah‘ on Little Queer Ideograms
• Rachel Klein, ‘I, For One, As a White Woman, Welcome Our New Alien Overlords‘ on McSweeney’s
• Caitlin Frazier, ‘The Iconic Hillary Clinton‘ on The Atlantic
• Clare Foran, ‘Women Aren’t Responsible for Hillary Clinton’s Defeat‘ on The Atlantic
• Summer Brennan, ‘Cohen Dies, Trump Wins, and We Will Sing About these Dark Times‘ on Literary Hub

And the woman with the most publicity this fortnight is Zadie Smith. She’s interviewed on Literary Hub, Nylon, Waterstones, Lenny, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate and profiled by Sarah Hughes in The Observer.

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Rebecca Slater, ‘Verse goes viral: how young feminist writers are reclaiming poetry for the digital age‘ in The Guardian
• Mica Lemiski, ‘Does Genre Really Matter?‘ on Room
• Emily Reynolds, ‘The literary glamour of madness‘ in The TLS
• Amy Kurzweil, ‘How I Made This Comic About How I Make My Comics: An Interactive Essay‘ on Catapult
• Miranda Popkey, ‘Call Me Elena‘ on The New Enquiry
• Sian Cain, ‘Costa book award 2016 shortlists dominated by female writers‘ in The Guardian
• Danielle Groen, ‘How Rupi Kaur Became the Voice of Her Generation‘ on Flare
• Aamna Mohdin, ‘Women are horribly under-represented in the world’s top literary awards‘ on Quartz
• Alanna Bennett, ‘The Harry Potter Fandom Is At A Crossroads‘ on Buzzfeed
• Ruth Padel, ‘Writing needs connection to the outside world: a lot of it seems to get done when you’re simply living’ in The Guardian
• Katherine Faw, ‘Elena Ferrante and Me: An Irrational Essay‘ on Catapult
• Svetlana Alexievich (tr. Anna Gunin and Arch Tait), ‘In Chernobyl‘ in Five Dials
• Melinda Sailsbury, ‘Why I will no longer submit my books for review by the Daily Mail or the Sun‘ in The Guardian
• Elaine Blair, ‘Chris Kraus, Female Antihero‘ in The New Yorker
• Ruth Scurr, ‘Elena Ferrante: Game of clothes‘ in the TLS
• Cornelia Funke, ‘Hurrah for translators: why we need to translate more children’s books‘ on BookTrust
• Nina Renata Aron, ‘Fake Failures: Why Are Successful Young Women Writers Playing Miserable Online?‘ on The Millions
• Zana Fraillon, ‘on writing about refugee children: “Their resilience keeps hope alive”‘ in The Guardian
• Jane Martinson, ‘Only 1.8% of sport articles are written by women – so much for progress‘ in The Guardian
• Jo Scott-Coe, ‘The Communion of Saints‘ on Talking Writing
• Milena Britto, ‘Women Writing in 21st Century Brazil: Experimentation and Narratives of Self‘ on Critical Flame
• Bim Adenwunmi, ‘Why “The Walking Dead” Has Become Fanfiction’s Muse‘ on Buzzfeed

Photograph by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Personal essays/memoir:

• Kathleen Alcott’s Ghosts of Thanksgiving on Literary Hub
• Alison Stine, ‘Graffiti Taught Me Grit‘ on Lenny
• Jen Maidenberg, ‘Misfit Doc: In Living Colour‘ on Queen Mob’s
• Marian Ryan, ‘Things I Never Told Her‘ on Granta
• Kelly Luce, ‘Truth, Lies, and Videotape‘ in NY Mag
• Jen Sookfong Lee, ‘I Was Once That Girl‘ on Room
• Morgan Parker, ‘How to Stay Sane While Black‘ in The New York Times
• Ana Maria Guay, ‘Living in the Labyrinth of My Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder‘ on Catapult
• Elisabeth Sherman, ‘Why I Never “Fixed” My Teeth‘ on Catapult
• Evelyn Hampton, ‘Weightlessness‘ on Catapult
• Leah Kaminsky, ‘Finding Love at the End of History‘ on Literary Hub
• Esmé Weijun Wang, ‘After the Psych Ward, Eggs Are Freedom‘ on Extra Crispy
• Linda H. Davis, ‘Open After My Death‘ on Granta
• Eliza Kostelanetz Schrader, ‘The F Word‘ on Guernica

Feminism:

• Lisa Whittington-Hill, ‘Gateway Spice‘ on Hazlitt
• Alex Ronan, ‘What Women Used Before They Could Use the Law‘ in n+1
• Zoë Beaty, ‘Why we should celebrate our difficult friendships‘ on The Pool
• Kiera Feldman, ‘With Child‘ in Harper’s

Photograph by Kevin Day

Society and Politics:

• Celeste Ng, ‘Giving Thanks Is a Political Act‘ on Literary Hub
• Jane Martinson, ‘Why didn’t the Daily Mail put the jailing of Jo Cox’s murderer on its front page?‘ in The Guardian
• Anne Helen Peterson, ‘One Hundred Years Of Men Taking Off Their Shirts‘ on Buzzfeed
• Tara Isabella Burton, ‘Cult of One‘ on Real Life
• Rebecca Altman, ‘The Toxic-Waste Drum Is Everywhere‘ on The Atlantic
• Morgan Babst, ‘Everything Is Not Fine If It’s Not Fine for Everyone‘ on Literary Hub
• Charlotte Higgins ‘The hygge conspiracy‘ in The Guardian
• Ariel Ramchandani, ‘When the Devil Enters‘ on The Atavist Magazine
• Lara Whyte, ‘The Campaign Recruiting Former Extremists to Stop Girls from Joining ISIS‘ on Broadly
• Sara Peterson, ‘I Hate Shopping (and Shops Are the Problem)‘ on Catapult

The interviews/profiles:

• Kate Tempest (and Phoebe Waller-Bridge) in The Guardian
• Brit Bennett on Broadly
• Lydia Davis on Literary Hub and The TLS
• Alice Mattison on The Rumpus
• Emily Witt on Jezebel
• Magda Szubanski in The Guardian
• Julie Koh on Asymptote
• Lara Pawson on 3:am
• Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie on Racked
• Chivvis Moor on Literary Hub
• Elif Shafak in The TLS
• Ottessa Moshfegh on Publishers Weekly
• Ambai in the Indian Express
• Margot Livesey on The Millions
• Robin Coste Lewis on Literary Hub
• Carolyn Parkhurst on The Rumpus
• Elena Ferrante on Hazlitt

The regular columnists:

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

In the Media, June 2016, Part One

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

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

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

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

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

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

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

Personal essays/memoir:

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

Feminism:

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

Society and Politics:

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

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

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

The interviews/profiles:

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

The regular columnists:

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

In the Media, May 2016, Part One

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

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

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

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

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

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

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

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

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

Personal essays/memoir:

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

Feminism:

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

Society and Politics:

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

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

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

The interviews/profiles:

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

The regular columnists:

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

In the Media, 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

In the Media: 24th 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.

The Cannes Film Festival’s been in the spotlight (haha) this week for turning women away from a screening because they were wearing flat shoes. Heels as compulsory footwear for women may or may not (depending which day it is someone asks) be part of their dress policy. Helen O’Hara writes ‘How the 2015 Cannes Film Festival became all about women‘  while Laura Craik asks, ‘Is the tyranny of high heels finally over?‘ both in The Pool. Hadley Freeman wrote, ‘Can’t do heels? Don’t do Cannes‘ in The Guardian, while Elizabeth Semmelhack wrote, ‘Shoes That Put Women in Their Place‘ in The New York Times

The other big feminist story was about ‘wife bonuses’ after Wednesday Martin wrote a piece for the New York Times called, ‘Poor Little Rich Women‘. Amanda Marcotte asked, ‘What’s Wrong With “Wife Bonuses”?‘ in Slate

Awards this week went to the five 2015 Best Young Australian Novelists, three of whom are women, all of whom are women of colour – hurrah for progress. Also in Australia, the shortlist for the Miles Franklin Award was revealed, four of the five shortlisted writers are women. The O. Henry Prize Stories for 2015 were announced. Of the twenty selected, fifteen were by women. You can read those by Dina Nayeri, Molly Antopol and Lynne Sharon Schwartz by clicking on their names.

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Bryony Gordon, ‘How to survive Hay Festival‘ in The Telegraph
• Sinclair McKay, ‘Leading Ladies: meet the Queens of Romance‘ in The Telegraph
• Cate Dicharry, ‘Diary of a First-Time Book Tour‘ on Literary Hub
• Kelly Link, ‘Subversive Pleasure‘ (on Angela Carter) in the New York Times
• Katy Waldman, ‘It’s Time to Stop Praising Authors for Being “Good at the Internet”‘ on Slate
• Laurie Uttich, ‘In Defense of ‘Depressing’ Books‘ on the Huffington Post
• Emily M. Keeler, ‘Friends don’t let friends review their friend’s books… do they?‘ in the National Post
• Susanna Rustin, ‘Literary festivals are getting too big for their books‘ in The Guardian
• Various, ‘Take a book holiday with some of our favourite authors!‘ on One Book Lane
• Abie Longstaff, ‘A history of human rights abuses in fairytales‘ in The Guardian
• Jonathan Clarke, ‘Six Possibly True Observations About Renata Adler‘ on The Millions
• Eleanor Morgan, ‘What the Hell Is a Hot Feminist?’ on Vice
• Samantha Langsdale, ‘Simon Pegg is wrong – comics aren’t an escape from reality, they help us deal with it‘ in The Guardian
• Claire Landsbaum, ‘How the Success of Marvel’s Female Superheroes Heralds a More Inclusive Age of Comics‘ on Vulture
• Felix Kent, ‘How To Tell If You Are In An ’80s Biography Of A Famous Woman‘ in The Toast
• Meytal Radzinski , ‘WITMonth 2015 Intro Post: FAQs and helpful references‘ on Biblibio
• Lizi Gilad Silver, ‘Please Come with Me on the Yellow Bus for a Field Trip to the Library Where We Will Find Bean Spasms and Other Rare Treasures‘ on Real Pants
• Sarah Seltzer, ‘Why Do We Re-Read Our Favorite Books as Kids, and Why Do We Stop When We Get Older?‘ on Flavorwire
• Caitriona Lally, ‘on writing Eggshells: from the dole to a debut novel‘ in The Irish Times
• Karen Gordon, ‘Against Type: Unapologetically Sexual‘ on Rewriting Mary Sue
• Jessica Valenti, ‘Feminists don’t care if you like hot pink, eat salads or shave your crotch‘ in The Guardian
• Polly Vernon, ‘The Hot Feminist Manifesto‘ in The Times

• Rebecca Falkoff, ‘To Translate Is to Betray: On the Elena Ferrante Phenomenon in Italy and the US‘ on Public Books
• Alison Flood, ‘Agatha Christie’s ‘forgotten’ Syrian memoir gets new lease of life‘ in The Guardian
• Natalie Haynes, ‘March of the megabooks: it’s all Donna Tartt’s fault‘ in The Guardian
• Alice Jones, ‘If this is the year of the mega-novel, it’s going to be a very long 12 months‘ in The Independent
• Philip Graham, ‘Trouble Using Light: The Complications of Art in the Fiction of Christine Sneed‘ on The Millions
• Joanna Cannon, ‘The Story Behind Goats and Sheep‘ on her blog
• Sara Nović, ‘What it’s like to be a deaf novelist‘ in The Guardian
• Whitney Phillips, ‘Laugh It Off?‘ on Slate
• Rebecca Mascull, ‘The difficult second novel‘ on Just Write
• Diane Hurlburt, ‘“Bee Theres”: The Mormon YA of My Youth‘ in The Toast
• Lauren Alwan, ‘A Brief History of the Colloquial Title‘ on The Millions
• Iona Grey, ‘The things we should’ve asked‘ on Gransnet
• Kelly Jensen, ‘Depression Has No Straight Lines, Only Lies‘ on Disability in Kidlit
• Ruth Ware, ‘“When I was about thirteen or fourteen, I fell in love”‘ (on Josephine Tay) on the Penguin Blog
• Julia Donaldson, ‘Why hearing children should find out about signing‘ in The Guardian
• Madeline Thein, ‘Why Hong Kong is clamping down on creative writing‘ in The Guardian
• Jami Attenberg, ‘How 15 Minutes Of Internet Fame Did Nothing For My Books‘ on Buzzfeed
• Jessica Anya Blau, ‘My Favorite Women Writers of the 1950s‘ on Read Her Like an Open Book
• Leesa Cross-Smith, ‘Writing Some Stuff & Keeping On Keeping On‘ on Real Pants
• Helen Grant, ‘My inspiration: The Lost World‘ in The Guardian
• Kirsty Logan, ‘Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell: A Fairytale Education‘ on Vintage Books
• Jessica Valenti, ‘You might not think you’re sexist – until you take a look at your bookshelf‘ in The Guardian
• Susan Lannigan, ‘We need to talk about…Day jobs and money‘ on her blog
• Christine Sneed, ‘on The Pleasure of Influence‘ on Read Her Like an Open Book

Personal essays/memoir:

• Rebecca Wait, ‘One woman’s experience of cults‘ in The Pool
• Sali Hughes, ‘What do brilliant, extravagant presents actually mean?‘ in The Pool
• Lauren Laverne, ‘Why everyone needs a list of Cheering-Up Things‘ in The Pool
• Suzanne Moore, ‘In a far corner of the school field, we would defy gravity‘ in the New Statesman
• Clare Archibald, ‘Sweet Sixteen Saturdays‘ on TYCI
• Clare Archibald, ‘Meandering Route of the Muscle Memories‘ on Scottish Book Trust
• Eva Holland, ‘Unclimbable‘ in SB Nation
• Susie Cage, ‘What Is A Woman’s Wardrobe Worth?‘ on Buzzfeed
• Eryn Loeb, ‘Return Trip, OBX‘ in Vela
• Martha Stortz, ‘How I Gave Myself Permission To Be Gluten-Free‘ on Buzzfeed
• Upasna, ‘A Girl Without a Country‘ on Rookie
• Maureen O’Connor, ‘De-Cluttering Is the New Juice Cleanse (and Equally Annoying)‘ in The Cut
• Stephanie Butzer, ‘Heat‘ on The Fem
• Alysia Abbott, ‘Fairyland: Memories of a Singular San Francisco Girlhood‘ on Longreads
• Trisha Low, ‘On Being-Hated: Conceptualism, the Mongrel Coalition, the House That Built Me‘ on San Fransisco MOMA
• Storm Persephone Tara-Meiying Liu, ‘How Losing My Sight Helped Me Express My Gender Identity‘ on Vice
• Catherine Santino, ‘Dear college graduates: it’s OK not to know‘ on Hello Giggles
• Rebecca Riley, ‘How I Learned the Meaning of Ableism‘ on The Fem
• Sadie Stein, ‘Bus Pass‘ on The Paris Review Blog
• Ella Wilson, ‘The Therapist Who Saved My Life‘ on Literary Hub
• Sarah Maria Medina, ‘Iced Cake Frosting‘ in Midnight Breakfast
• Sousan Hammad, ‘A Map of Jerusalem‘ in Words Without Borders
• DeLaynna Corley, ‘Motel 6‘ in New Mexico Review
• Alexis Paige, ‘Not a Place on Any Map‘ in New Mexico Review
• Melissa Grunow, ‘Out of Ash‘ in New Mexico Review
• Erika Anderson, ‘Never Write From a Place of Despair‘ in Midnight Breakfast
• Elena Dunkle, ‘The Cost of My Teenage Years as an Unrecovered Anorexic‘ on the Huffington Post
• Wendy C. Ortiz, ‘What is Sacred‘ in Midnight Breakfast
• Amanda Parrish Morgan, ‘O Martyr My Martyr!‘ on The Rumpus
• Seyward Darby, ‘I was on Amtrak train 188. Afterward, I saw the crash through my fiance’s eyes‘ in The Washington Post
• Jochebed Smith, ‘Swearing Off the Modern Man‘ in The New York Times
• Suzanne Clores, ‘When You Dream Your Husband Is Trying to Kill You‘ on The Rumpus

Feminism:

• Eve Barlow, ‘The horrible proof that sexism in the workplace still exists‘ in The Pool
• Isabelle O’Carroll, ‘A comprehensive guide to the sexist world of beer adverts‘ in The Pool
• Caroline Criado-Perez, ‘Five Fearless Women Who Have Inspired Me To Be A Proud Feminist‘ in Marie Claire
• Mac McClelland, ‘We Learned Together: A Nice Afternoon With The Women Of New Orleans’ Trans Veterans Support Group‘ on Buzzfeed
• Jill Lepore, ‘To Have and To Hold‘ in The New Yorker
• Sharon H. Chang, ‘This Mocha-Caramel-Honey Post-Racial Fantasy Is Making Me Sick‘ on Buzzfeed
• Syreeta McFadden, ‘Revelations About Being Brown In A World Of White Beauty‘ on Buzzfeed
• Paula Cocozza, ‘Actors: go ahead, lie about your age – look how Maggie Gyllenhaal was treated‘ in The Guardian
• Glosswitch, ‘The feminist history of surrogacy: should pregnancy give a woman rights over a baby?‘ in the New Statesman
• Mika Brzezinski, ‘Working Your Value‘ on Medium
• Jessica Roake, ‘I Am a Good Mother‘ on Slate
• Sammy Nickalls, ‘I don’t know if I want to have kids, and that’s OK‘ on Hello Giggles
• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, ‘Bring back self-defence classes for women – it’s the feminist thing to do‘ in The Guardian
• Meredith Talusan, ‘Women’s colleges should reinvent themselves as havens for trans women‘ in The Guardian
• Tracy King, ‘No, Mad Max: Fury Road is not a feminist masterpiece (but that’s OK)‘ in the New Statesman
• Eva Wiseman, ‘Which body should I try on next?‘ in The Observer
• Heather Havrilesky, ‘With Amal Clooney, We Finally Have the Consummate Feminist Superhero. Let’s Not Ruin It‘ in The Cut
• Nicole Nolan, ‘Boobs, Money, and Plastic Surgery‘ in The Toast
• Talat Yaqoob, ‘29% is Equality‘ on the Huffington Post

Society and Politics:

• Suzanne Moore, ‘Why is it so hard to say sorry?‘ in The Pool
• Sophie Heawood, ‘Call me naive, politicians, but how about saying what you really think?‘ in The Guardian
• Sarah Hagi, ‘Those Who Leave Somalia Need Remittance Too‘ on Buzzfeed
• Hon Lai Chui, ‘I Just Want To See The Sea‘ (tr. Henry Wei Leung with Louise Law) in The Offing
• Jaimie Lauren Keiles, ‘How To Be Spiritual (If You’re Not)‘ on The Awl
• Amy Maxmen, ‘Frontline health workers were sidelined in $3.3bn fight against Ebola‘ in Newsweek
• Diana Kapp, ‘Why Are Palo Alto’s Kids Killing Themselves?‘ in San Francisco Magazine
• Lisa Miller, ‘Can Racism Be Stopped in the Third Grade?‘ in New York Magazine
• Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, ‘A Woman’s Worth‘ in Granta
• Alexis Coe, ‘By Reason of Insanity‘ in Lapham’s Quarterly
• Anonymous, ‘Confucius say what? Whitewashed by the colorblind‘ on Empathize This
• Lindsey Newhall, ‘Fighting for Identity: The Life of a Transgender Kickboxer in Rural Thailand‘ on Vice
• Katie Roiphe, ‘Why Professors Should Never Have Affairs With Their Students‘ on Slate
• Eleanor Margolis, ‘The Breakfast in Bed Café is a desperate cry for help – Ikea should stick to meatballs and sofas‘ in the New Statesman
• Elyssa Goodman, ‘Riding with the Oldest All-Gay, All-Male, All-Riding Motorcycle Club‘ on Vice
• Neda Tehrani, ‘It’s Time To Talk About ‘British Values’‘ on Media Diversified

Film, Television, Music and Fashion:

• Hadley Freeman, ‘My Dirty confession‘ in The Jewish Chronicle
• Karen Krizanovich, ‘Mad Max: Fury Road is a brilliant celebration of women’s power‘ in The Pool
• Bim Adewunmi, ‘The Curious Conformity Of YouTube’s Beauty Tutorials‘ on Buzzfeed
• Emily Yahr, ‘From guilty pleasure to Emmy Awards: The delightfully weird history of Lifetime movies‘ in The Washington Post
• Deborah Cohen, ‘How Indie Rock Changed the World‘ in The Atlantic
• Kathleen E. Kennedy, ‘What Sansa Stark’s Rape Tells Us About Our Culture‘ on Vice
• Anna Leszkiewicz, ‘Amy Schumer’s coarse, playful comedy explores how women are complicit in their oppression (And forgives them for it.)‘ in the New Statesman
• Kate Aurthur, ‘All 90 Episodes Of “Mad Men” Ranked, From Good To Perfect‘ on Buzzfeed

The interviews:

• Marian Keyes in The Pool (or the 40 minute Director’s Cut)
• Rachel Trezise on London Short Story Festival
• Judy Blume in The Guardian and The New York Times
• Mary Costello on Bloom
• Jodi Picoult on Bustle
• Melissa Harrison on Tania Hershman’s Blog
• Taiye Selasi on Essence
• Hanya Yanagihara on Electric Literature
• Sophia Jansson on Bookanista
• Edna O’Brien in The New York Times
• Anne Enright on The Millions
• S.D. Sykes on Rebecca Mascull’s blog
• Rainbow Rowell on Buzzfeed
• Honorée Jeffers on The Rumpus
• Kate Atkinson on Our Book Reviews Online
• Sunetra Gupta on Medium
• Kirsty Logan, Vesna Goldsworthy and Anne Enright on Vintage Books Podcast
• Randa Abdel-Fattah on Words Without Borders
• Elenor Kopka on Okey-Panky
• Naomi Novik on Publishers Weekly Podcast
• Keller Easterling in Guernica
• Vivian Gornick on Longreads and in The Observer
• Maggie Nelson on Jezebel
• Alison Layland on Thriller Books Journal
• Dasha Kelly on The Rumpus
• Lynda Barry in The Guardian
• Meera Syal in The Times
• Ashley Ford on IndyStar
• Elaine Feeney in the Honest Ulsterman

If you want some fiction to read:

• The first five chapters of The Woman Who Stole My Life by Marion Keyes in The Pool
• ‘The Edge‘ by Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende in Guernica
• ‘The Biscuit‘ by Jette Harris on The Fem
• ‘Come Make Love With Us‘ by Cari Luna in Midnight Breakfast
• An extract from Uprooted by Naomi Novik on Pan Macmillan
• An extract from Coming Up Roses by Rachel Lucas on Pan Macmillan
• An extract from The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan on The Awl
• ‘Star Bellies‘ by Evelyn Alfred in Literary Orphans
• ‘Survival of the High-Riding Bitch‘ by June Frances Coleman in Literary Orphans
• ‘Fade‘ by Morgan Jerkins in Literary Orphans
• ‘Passive-Aggressive‘ by Naadeyah Haseeb in Literary Orphans
• ‘A Warm Winter‘ by Molly McArdle in Midnight Breakfast
• ‘The Necklace‘ by Claire Fuller on her blog
• ‘Your Baby‘ by Asmaa Alghoul (tr. Kareem James Abu-Zeid) on Words Without Borders
• ‘What Wolves Dream‘ by Olya Stoyanova (tr. Angela Rodel) in Words Without Borders
• ‘Scumbag‘ by Gabrielle Moss in Midnight Breakfast
• ‘The Freezer Chest‘ by Dorthe Nors in The New Yorker and she discusses the story here
• ‘The Murder Stone‘ by Jo Mazelis on Litro

Photograph by Kwesi Abbensetts

If you want some poetry to read:

• ‘My Tits Are More Feminist Than Your Tits‘ by Salena Godden on This Is My Jam (or watch it on Youtube (images of tits, obviously))
• ‘A Numbered Graph That Shows How Each Part of the Body Would Fit Into A Chair‘ by Mary Jo Bang in Granta
• ‘No Soft Pink Hands‘ by Helena Chung in Pank
• ‘All They Want Is My Money My Pussy My Blood‘ by Morgan Parker on Literary Hub
• ‘Travel Anatomy‘ by Corinne Gaston in Literary Orphans
• ‘Art | is | Sometimes They Call Me “T”‘ by Teré Fowler-Chapman in Literary Orphans
• ‘The Body on the Interstate‘ by Paige Sullivan in New Mexico Review
• ‘Sharks in Albuquerque‘ by Janna Layton in New Mexico Review
• ‘The haunting of the Oatman Hotel‘ by Leah Angstman in New Mexico Review
• ‘Ways to Divide‘ by Meghan McClure in New Mexico Review
• ‘The Answers That Were Sewn‘ by Jacqueline Markowski in Up the Staircase Quarterly
• ‘After Marvin Bell’s Dead Man poems‘ by Tamra Hays in Up the Staircase Quarterly
• ‘Lovesick Woman Spends Week in KFC‘ by Laryssa Wirstuk in Up the Staircase Quarterly
• ‘Tree‘ by Jennifer Martelli in Up the Staircase Quarterly
• ‘interstellar‘ by Orooj-e-Zafar in Up the Staircase Quarterly
• ‘Final Purification‘ by Kelly Andrews in Up the Staircase Quarterly
• Two Poems by Lauren Gordon in Up the Staircase Quarterly
• ‘Shipwreck Survivor Refuses to Speak to CNN‘ by Janeen Pergrin Rastall in Up the Staircase Quarterly
• ‘As It Is‘ by Lauren Camp in Up the Staircase Quarterly
• ‘This is the Healing Part, it Looks Like Setting a Broken Bone‘ by Bri Lopez Donovan in Burn Something
• ‘Force‘ by Irna Landrum
• ‘Women’s Poetry‘ by Daisy Fried in Berfrois
• Three Miley Cyrus Poems by Talin Tahajian in Blunderbuss
• ‘I’m a Young Cowboy and Know I’ve Done Wrong‘ by Catherine Pond in the Boston Review
• ‘For the Officer Who Put the 8-Year-Old Boy in Handcuffs‘ by Katy Richey in The Offing
• ‘No System for Grief‘ by Kimberly Grey on Linebreak
• ‘You Probably Think This Poem Is About You‘ by Tovah Leah Green on Cahoodaloodaling
• ‘How Mike Weston Died‘ by Janet Hagelgans in Thrush

If you want some non-fiction to read:

• An extract from Ballad of the Black and Blue Mind by Anne Roiphe on Literary Hub

The lists:

• Female Literarti Pick Summer’s Best Books in Harper’s Bazaar
• 22 Thrilling, Imaginative, and Twisted Genre Books By Women on Flavorwire
• 8 Books To Read Over A Long Holiday Weekend on The Huffington Post
• Kirsty Logan’s Born This Way: 10 great LGBT books for teens on Scottish Book Trust
• SD Sykes’ Five Favourite Historical Crime Novels on the Curtis Brown Book Group Blog
• 6 African novels to fuel your wanderlust on Voices of Africa
• Best Books: May Part One on Quadrapheme

In the Media: 3rd 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.

There’s an election in the UK this week. As you’d expect, there’s been a number of articles about it, policies and where the previous coalition has left us. Huffington Post have been running a ‘Beyond the Ballot’ series. Contributions include: Vivienne Westwood, ‘The Housing Crisis – Politicians Are Criminals‘ and Denise Robertson, ‘Today, There Are No Housing Lifelines for People Who Fall on Hard Times‘. Media Diversified also have a series called ‘Other Voices’. Contributions include, Maya Goodfellow ‘Why aren’t politicians talking about racial discrimination in the job market?‘ and ‘Letting migrants drown in the Mediterranean, is this what the Tories mean by ‘British values’?‘ and ‘The pro-Tory business letter: a reminder that politics shouldn’t be dominated by a privileged few‘

Elsewhere, Zoe Williams wrote ‘10 big misconceptions politicians have about women‘ in The Pool; Deborah Orr, ‘Scotland is sending a curveball down Westminster way – and it’s not just Labour that will get hit‘ in The Guardian; Gaby Hinsliff, ‘We floating voters may be unenthused but we’re definitely not unprincipled‘ in The Guardian; Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett wrote, ‘Why I’m thinking about spoiling my ballot‘ in the New Statesman; Laura Waddell, ‘Pink Vacuum Politics‘ on Libertine’ Suzanne Moore, ‘Parliament? Over the years I’ve met several powerful men there who have no idea of boundaries‘ in the New Statesman; Hannah Pool asks, ‘Why aren’t black women voting?‘ in The Pool; Suzanne Moore, ‘I’m sick of this estate agent election‘ in The Guardian

Saturday saw the death of crime writer, Ruth Rendell. The Guardian reported her death and ran a series of articles: Val McDermid wrote, ‘No one can equal Ruth Rendell’s range or accomplishment‘; Mark Lawson, ‘Ruth Rendell and PD James: giants of detective fiction‘; Stanley Reynolds wrote her obituary; here she is ‘In Quotes‘ and if you haven’t read anything by her, The Guardian also recommend ‘Five Key Works’ while The Telegraph have, ‘The best of Ruth Rendell: 10 to read, watch and listen to‘.

And then there was that beach body ready advertisement. Responses to which ranged from Gemma Correll, ‘Hilarious Illustrations Show You How to Get “Beach Body Ready”‘ in Stylist; Hadley Freeman, ‘What is a beach body anyway?‘ in The Guardian, and Tara Costello explained, ‘Why I Stripped to Make a Statement‘ on the Huffington Post.

Congratulations to Marion Coutts on winning the Wellcome Prize. Jenny Turner writes in The Guardian as to why Coutts is her hero. The shortlist for the Encore Award was announced and includes Harriet Lane, Amanda Coe, Rebecca Hunt and Deborah Kay Davies. And Gaby Wood was ‘…made Booker’s literary director‘ reports The Bookseller.

And the woman with the most publicity this week is Leesa Cross-Smith who’s the featured writer on Atticus Review. She’s interviewed and has two stories up, ‘My Lolita Experiment‘ and ‘Dandelion Light‘; another in Synaesthesia Magazine, ‘The Darl Inn‘, and her column on Real Pants this week is ‘Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? & Girlfriendships‘.

 

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• John Yau, ‘Language Is Not Colorless: The Amazing Writing of Sawako Nakayasu‘ on Hyperallergic
• Bim Adewunmi, ‘Crush of the week: Toni Morrison‘ in The Guardian
• MJ Carter, ‘We should thank a Devon shoemaker for freedom of the press’ in The Guardian
• Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, ‘“Who Is Cagney Without Lacey?”: The Fug Girls on Writing as a Duo‘ in The Toast
• Neil Gaiman, ‘Why I love Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell‘ in The Guardian
• Susanna Clarke ‘on the TV Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell: “My own characters were walking about!”‘ in The Guardian
• Masha Gessen, ‘“Paying Attention and Paying Respect Is All That Writers Can Do”‘ on Slate
• Ali Smith, ‘The Joy of Finding Myself Guest Director of Brighton Festival‘ on the Huffington Post
• Doreen St. Félix, ‘Toni Morrison‘ on The Oyster Review
• Lucy Worsley, ‘It doesn’t matter if The Tudors and Wolf Hall are historically inaccurate and a bit silly‘ in the Independent
• Sarah Hilary, ‘Writing a New Crime Series‘ on Headline
• EllaClaire, ‘Teenage opinion: why you should read classic books‘ in The Guardian
• Patrice Gopo, ‘Does Race Matter If Books, Like ‘Anne of Green Gables,’ Touch Your Heart?‘ in The New York Times
• Charlotte Gordon, ‘Why I Teach Mary Wollstonecraft‘ on the Huffington Post
• Louise O’Neill ‘on Lisbeth Salander‘ on We Love This Book
• Kirsty Logan, ‘Boats, Buddhism and the Boom‘ on Foyles
• Hillary Kelly, ‘Bring back the serialized novel‘ in the Washington Post
• Arifa Akbar, ‘How many more books will there be telling me how to be a Muslim?‘ in The Independent
• Lesley McDowell, ‘Do you have to be middle-class to be a writer?‘ on her blog
• Amelia Gray ‘on “Labyrinth”‘ on Real Pants
• Hannah Gersen, ‘The Value of Writing Programs: On Why I Don’t Have an M.F.A.‘ on The Millions
• Mo Moulton, ‘On Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey: An Essay with Personal Interruptions‘ in The Toast
• Charles Wolford, ‘Obsessive Love: Sex in Brontë and Faulkner‘ on Quadrapheme
• Allison Pohle, ‘The Last Days of Ladies’ Home Journal‘ on The Hairpin
• Hannah Furness, ‘Jane Austen’s real Mr Darcy unmasked by historian‘ in The Telegraph
• Alice Audley, ‘Zoella and the YouTuber books you need to buy‘ in The Telegraph
• Hanya Yanagihara, ‘How I Wrote My Novel: A Little Life‘ on Vulture
• Francine Prose, ‘I admire Charlie Hebdo’s courage. But it does not deserve a PEN award‘ in The Guardian
• Julia Copus, ‘A Self Among the Crowd‘ on Royal Literary Fund
• Elisa Gabbert, ‘The Art of the Paragraph‘ on The Smart Set
• Emma Teitel, ‘Why romance novelists are the rock stars of the literary world‘ on Macleans
• Laura Sook Duncombe, ‘Literary Ladies Cage Fight: Mommie Dearest‘ in The Butter
• Kirsty Logan, ‘Made-up worlds (and a worldie maid)‘ on Bookanista
• Melissa Moorer, ‘This Writer’s On Fire: Lisa Mecham‘ in The Butter
• Lizzy Kremer, ‘What Happens Next: Predicting the Future‘ on Publishing for Humans
• ‘Day and Night I Find Neither Rest Nor Peace’; Charlotte Brontë’s Beautiful Letters On Unrequited Love‘ in Stylist
• Katrina Otuonye, ‘On Deadlines, Failure, and Getting Started‘ on Litro
• Dr Jenny McAuley, ‘on “Vindication of the Writes of Woman” by Mary Wollstonecraft‘ on The History Vault

Personal essays/memoir:

• Alison Taylor, ‘I’ve become part of a new social phenomenon – the boyfriend proposal‘ in The Independent
• Stacey Duguid, ‘Marathon Shopper‘ in The Pool
• Jordana Narin, ‘No Labels, No Drama, Right?‘ in The New York Times
• Michelle García, ‘The War of Forgetting‘ in Guernica
• Allison P. Davis, ‘Boxing Helped Me Tap Into My Inner Rage‘ in The Cut
• Sonya Lea, ‘Shattered‘ in Guernica
• Alana Massey, ‘The Dickonomics of Tinder‘ on Medium
• Casie Brown, ‘The Boy Is Mine‘ on The Hairpin
• Leah Reich, ‘The Cruelest Month‘ on Medium
• Amanda Giracca, ‘The Art of Butchery‘ in Aeon
• Rebecca Harrington, ‘The Apple Watch Is Great for Starting Conversations About the Apple Watch‘ in The Cut
• Alix Johnson, ‘Telling Stories: Secrets, Lies, and Sexual Assault‘ in The Toast
• Vivian Underhill, ‘Steal This Book if You Need To‘ on The Fem
• Sali Hughes, ‘Not going out‘ in The Pool
• Erika Smith, ‘A Return to Babysitting‘ on The Billfold
• Amy Glynn, ‘Desire Lines‘ on Berfrois
• Caolan Madden, ‘I Was Somebody: My Weekend With Miranda July’s App‘ on Weird Sister
• Tracy Moore, ‘My Love Affair with Androgynous Clothes‘ on Jezebel
• Shanrah Wakefield, ‘The Best Time I Burned the Shit Out Of My Hand Whilst Waxing My Box For A Boy‘ on The Hairpin
• Lynsey White, ‘Old Maid‘ on her blog
• Heather Steadham, ‘Firepower‘ in The Butter
• Colleen Kinder, ‘Long Night’s Journey Into Spring‘ in VQR
• Louise Troh, ‘The Tragic Love Story Behind America’s First Ebola Victim‘ in Vanity Fair

Feminism:

• Hattie Crisell, ‘Why is going grey still such a big deal?‘ in The Pool
• Meghan Murphy, ‘On ‘corporate feminism’ and the appropriation of the women’s movement‘ on Feminist Current
• Caitlin Moran, ‘How to Build a Girl‘ in The Times
• Jennifer Purdie, ‘Mormon, Childless, And Constantly Condescended To‘ on Buzzfeed
• Alexandra Duncan, ‘How I Made A Career Out Of Showing People My Cervix‘ on Buzzfeed
• Ann Friedman, ‘Older Women Aren’t Enemies, They’re Envied‘ in The Cut
• Ann Glaviano, ‘Report from the Field: On (Not) Reporting Sexual Violence‘ on VIDA
• Amelia Gentleman, ‘Time, gentlemen: when will the last all-male clubs admit women?‘ in The Guardian
• Siobhan Fenton, ‘Why do British feminists care more about sexist adverts than abortion rights in Northern Ireland?‘ in The Independent
• H. Liang, ‘Advice to my former self: desperate working mother of two young children‘ on Shrink Grows Kids
• Alana Levinson, ‘Girl, Send Me a Frext‘ on Medium
• Julia Alsop, ‘Out of Our Hands‘ on Maisonneuve
• Jessica Roy, ‘A Modest Proposal: How to Close the Gender Wage Gap‘ in The Cut
• Tracey Moore, ‘What Do Men Want? Obedient Wives and Independent Daughters, Apparently‘ on Jezebel
• Mara Lee, ‘Kissing historically‘ on Media Diversified
• Joanne McAlpine, ‘Looking Back: Fragments From Women’s Shelters (1981 – 1996)‘ in The Toast
• Janet Reitman, ‘Abortion Rights at Risk: The GOP Opens a New Front in the War on Women‘ in Rolling Stone
• Jane Merrick, ‘Should wolf-whistling be reported to the Police? If you’re Poppy Smart, then yes‘ in The Independent
• Shani Gilchrist, ‘Why I Talk To My Sons About My Work‘ on Role Reboot
• Vaidehi Mujumdar, ‘The state still controls women’s bodies. Especially brown and black ones‘ in The Guardian
• Joni Edelman, ‘Being Thin Didn’t Make Me Happy, But Being ‘Fat’ Does‘ on Everyday Feminism
• Joan Smith, ‘Women who waive their anonymity are changing our perspective on rape‘ in The Guardian

Society and Politics:

• Megan Garber, ‘The History of ‘Thug’‘ in The Atlantic
• Meredith Talusan, ‘From A Symbol Of Athletic Power To A Symbol Of Gender Transition‘ on Buzzfeed
• Pilot Viruet, ‘Black Exhaustion‘ on Medium
• Shannon Keating, ‘Coming Out as Gay in Elementary School‘ on Buzzfeed
• Anna Della Subin, ‘In the Light of Ras Tafari‘ in The White Review
• Amie Ferris-Rotman, ‘The Earthquake-Wrecked Town That the Nepali Government Forgot‘ in The Atlantic
• Sharon Harrigan, ‘Foie Gras, the Vegetable‘ in VQR
• Amy Quan Barry, ‘Forty Years Ago Today‘ in the Huffington Post
• Leigh Cowart, ‘The Drug That’s Infecting Indiana‘ on Medium
• Dawn Foster, ‘Free Schools‘ in the London Review of Books
• Minal Hajratwala, ‘A Brief Guide to Gender in India‘ in Granta
• Julie Vuong, ‘What does it feel like to flee your country in an unsafe boat?‘ in The Pool
• Erika Hayasaki, ‘Living with Being Dead‘ on Medium
• Annie Waldman, ‘Scientific Expertise on Lethal Injection Falls Short‘ in Guernica
• Joan Walsh, ‘The hideous white hypocrisy behind the Baltimore “Hero Mom” hype: How clueless media applause excuses police brutality‘ on Salon
• Bella Qvist, ‘Freshly Filtered Favouritism: Why I Wouldn’t Want to Be a Barista at Pret‘ on the Huffington Post
• Maureen Rich Wallace, ‘My Son Belongs in Your Child’s Class‘ on Medium
• Myriam Francois-Cerrah, ‘To talk about race, we need to talk about the problem with “whiteness”‘ in the New Statesman
• Kamila Shamsie, ‘Murdered on the streets of Karachi: my friend who dared to believe in free speech‘ in The Guardian
• Diana Prichard, ‘Cultivating a New Immigrant Narrative‘ on Medium
• Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, ‘The Day AIDS Hit the Fashion Industry‘ in The Atlantic
• Rafia Zakaria, ‘Drones — One white death can change everything‘ on Dawn
• Alex Morris, ‘How Exactly Do You Teach Femininity?‘ in The Cut
• Paris Lees, ‘Why the world needs to stop gawping, and support Bruce Jenner’s transition.’ in Cosmopolitan
• Laura Gottesdiener, ‘A Foreclosure Conveyor Belt‘ in Guernica
• Elif Shafak, ‘There is no us and them: remembering the lost Armenians‘ in the New Statesman
• Nancy Cook, ‘When Cities and Suburbs Work Together‘ in The Atlantic
• Morgan Meaker, ‘Gentrification in Brixton: who wins, who loses and who’s to blame?‘ in the New Statesman
• Helen Lewis, ‘The battle for better maternity care shows the limits of the Amazon warehouse approach to medicine‘ in the New Statesman

Music, Film and Television, Personalities:

• Tracey Thorn, ‘In music today, it’s all or nothing – rich at the top or languishing forlornly at the bottom‘ in the New Statesman
• Louisa Thomas, ‘The Boxer and the Batterer‘ on Grantland
• Sally Howe, ‘Pulp Nonfiction: Death (and Life) on Reality TV‘ on Blunderbuss
• Helen O’Hara, ‘Meryl Streep and Rose Byrne are prising open Hollywood for women‘ in The Pool
• Eleanor Margolis, ‘Calling Eurovision too gay for a “family show” is as perplexing as it is insidious‘ in the New Statesman
• Lauren Laverne, ‘Katie Hopkins and incendiary opinions are the new celebrity gossip‘ in The Pool
• Agata Pyzik, ‘In Praise of Vulgar Feminism: On Kim Gordon and Courtney Love‘ in n+1

The interviews:

• Sandra Newman on The Writes of Woman
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in the Wall Street Journal
• Miriam Toews in The Guardian
• Mariel Hemingway in the LA Times
• Sarah Gerard on Literary Hub
• Aimee Bender on Literary Hub
• Elizabeth Alexander in the Washington Post
• Lucy K Shaw on Real Pants
• Rachel Holmes on Guernica
• Sarah Waters in the Huffington Post and Culture Whisper
• Meghan Daum on Slate
• Jandy Nelson in The Guardian
• Tracey Thorn in The Pool
• Alison Bechdel in TIME
• Michelle Tea on The Rumpus
• Valeria Luiselli on Literary Hub
• Sarah Lepiciger on Reading Agency
• Darcey Steinke on The Rumpus
• Jillian Tamaki on The Hairpin
• Laura Salters on Sky’s Book Corner
• Hilary Mantel on Fourth Estate
• Carla Berrocal on Broken Frontier
• Jodi Picoult and Samantha van Leer via Bustle
• Vivian Gornick on Publishers Weekly
• Anna North on One Book Lane
• Janice Galloway in the Falkirk Herald
• Liza Klaussman on The White Company
• Janet Champ on The Toast
• Annelise Finegan on Three Percent
• Kate Hamer on Thriller Books Journal
• Kim Gordon on The Quietus
• Cece Bell in The Guardian

If you want some fiction to read:

• ‘The Taste of Home‘ by Ola Awonubi on The Reading Life
• An extract from The Green Road by Anne Enright in The Irish Times
• ‘Love Isn’t Easy When You’re the National Anthem‘ by Aoko Matsuda (translated by Jeffrey Angles) in Guernica
• ‘Light‘ by Leslie Nneka Arimah in Granta (Winner of Commonwealth Writers Short Story for Africa)
• ‘Famished Eels‘ by Mary Rokonadravu in Granta (Winner of Commonwealth Writers Short Story for the Pacific)
• An extract from The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld on Orion Books
• ‘Redshift‘ by Erin Calabria in Atlas and Alice
• ‘Chamber in My Heart‘ by Sossity Chiricuzio in Atlas and Alice
• ‘The School of English‘ by Hilary Mantel in the London Review of Books
• An extract from The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan on Foyles
• An extract from The Last Summer of Us by Maggie Harcourt on We Love This Book
• An extract from Today I Am a Book by xTx on Literary Hub
• ‘Escape, Release, and Return‘ by Leslie Baum in Guernica
• An extract from Sphinx by Anne F. Garréta (translated by Emma Ramadan) on Electric Literature
• ‘A Satisfying End-of-Relationship Goods Exchange In Three Acts‘ by Maria Yagoda on The Hairpin
• ‘How to Clean a Dollhouse‘ by Betty Capot on Blunderbuss
• ‘A Sheltered Woman‘ by Yiyun Li (Winner of the Times’ Short Story Award)
• An extract from The Sound of a Sundial by Hana Andronikova (translated by David Short) on Body
• An extract from The Children’s Crusade by Ann Packer
• ‘How to Hook‘ by Jodi Angel in The Offing
• ‘The Fairy Sword‘ by Laura Madeline Wiseman on The Fem
• An extract from God Help the Child by Toni Morrison on Essence
• ‘Fortune‘ by Erin Lawless on Books With Bunny
• ‘Fincan‘ by Mia Hooper in The Toast
• ‘Normal‘ by Bree in Guernica
• An extract from A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson on the Penguin Blog

If you want some poetry to read:

• Twenty-One Love Poems (The Floating Poem, Unnumbered) by Adrienne Rich on All Poetry
• ‘exodon paradoxus (bucktooth tetra)‘ by Dana Ranga (translated by Monika Cassel) in Guernica
• ‘Backdrop‘ by Andrea Gilham in Atlas and Alice
• Two Poems from Monetized by Alissa Quart on The Offing
• Three Pantoums by Lo Kwa Mei-en in The Offing
• ‘The Advantage of Sexual Cannibalism‘ by Antoinette Nena Villami on CactiFur
• Three Poems by Marika Prokosh on Lemon Hound
• ‘The Bookbinder‘ by Clare Best on Anthony Wilson’s blog
• ‘Whitewashed‘ by Natasha Head on The Tashtoo Parlour
• Two Poems by Sandra Simonds on Fanzine
• ‘Scientific‘ by Marisa Seigel on The Rumpus
• Two Poems by Sharon Olinka in Drunken Boat
• ‘Agression Diary‘ by Annemarie Austin
• ‘Errant Fathers, Stupid Women‘ by Marina Sofia in Think Pink

If you want some non-fiction to read:

• An extract from Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science and the World by Rachel Swarmy on Literary Hub
• An extract from Naked at the Albert Hall by Tracey Thorn in The Pool

The lists:

• Books of the Week, May 1, 2015 on Publishers Weekly
• 14 Of The Most Buzzed-About Books Of 2015 on Buzzfeed
• 18 Brilliant Books You Won’t Want To Miss This Summer on the Huffington Post
• 18 Of May 2015’s Best Books To Either Read By Yourself Or Share With Your Mom This Month on Bustle
• 10 Reasons to Love Nella Larson on For Books’ Sake
• 21 Books Every Woman Should Read By 35, Because Reading Keeps You Young (Sort Of) on Bustle
• The June 2015 Indie Next List Preview on American Booksellers Association
• Anne Helen Petersen’s Ten Writers On Entertainment in Vela
• 5 Great Books To Read In May on Buzzfeed
• Best Books April Part Two on Quadrapheme
• Best New Fiction: May 2015 on Typographical Era
• Top 10 books about working life in The Guardian
• Life Lessons from To Kill a Mockingbird on Scottish Book Trust
• 11 Steamy Books for Teens on Scottish Book Trust
• Novelicious Picks…Psychological Thrillers on Novelicious
• Kirsty Logan’s Top Five Literary Circuses on We Love This Book

In the Media: 26th April 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.

This week’s been all about friendship. The Cut declared it Friends Forever Week and ran a series of articles including, ‘The Friend Who Showed Me the Life I Could Have Had‘ by Nell Freudenberger; Emily Gould wrote, ‘Envy Nearly Wrecked My Best Friendship‘; Carina Chocano, ‘9 Friends Who Made Me Who I Am‘; Heather Havrilesky, ‘The Friend I’ve Been Fighting With for 20 Years‘; ‘Clique-Stalking: Instagram’s Greatest Social Pleasure‘ by Maureen O’Connor, and ‘25 Famous Women on Female Friendship‘. While Megan O’Grady wrote ‘This Spring’s Literary Subject May Have You Calling Your Pals‘ in Vogue; Lauren Laverne says ‘It’s time to rehabilitate matchmaking‘ in The Pool, Sulagna Misra writes ‘How Captain America Helped Me Make Friends in the Real World‘ on Hello Giggles and Leesa Cross-Smith writes, ‘Broken Friendships & Knowing All Too Well‘ on Real Pants.

If you’re still to discover it, one of my favourite blogs Something Rhymed covers friendships between female writers and is run by two female writers who are also best friends, Emma Claire Sweeney and Emily Midorikawa. On the site this week, ‘Crying Tears of Laughter: Irenosen Okojie and Yvette Edwards‘.

And then there’s the Amy Schumer sketch with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Patricia Arquette and Tina Fey celebrating Louis-Dreyfus’ ‘Last Fuckable Day’. If you haven’t seen it yet, you must watch it RIGHT NOW! And when you’ve done that you can read Eleanor Margolis, ‘This Inside Amy Schumer sketch about the media’s treatment of “older” women is perfect‘ in the New Statesman and/or Lynn Enright, ‘Hollywood actresses skewer sexism and ageism brilliantly‘ in The Pool.

Unfortunately, it’s also been about Twitter trolls: Soraya Chemaly wrote in Time, ‘Twitter’s Safety and Free Speech Tightrope‘; Fiona Martin wrote ‘Women are silenced online, just as in real life. It will take more than Twitter to change that‘ in The Guardian; Sali Hughes wrote, ‘Trolls triumph by shutting down women’s voices‘ in The Pool

Congratulations to Yiyun Li who became the first woman to win the Sunday Times short story award and to Emily Bitto who won The Stella Prize this week.

In this week’s Harper Lee news, ‘Reese Witherspoon set to record Harper Lee’s new novel‘ reports Alison Flood in The Guardian.

And the woman with the most publicity this week is Kate Bolick, author of Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own, who writes ‘How Writers Can Grow by Pretending to Be Other People‘ in The Atlantic, and is interviewed on Slate, in Cosmopolitan and on Longreads. While Stephanie Gorton Murphy writes, ‘The Uneasy Woman: Meghan Daum, Kate Bolick, and the Legacy of Ida Tarbell‘ on The Millions.

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Doireann Ní Ghríofa, ‘on writing Clasp and what became of Airt Uí Laoghaire’s horse‘ in The Irish Times
• Ali Smith, ‘on Public Libraries‘ in The Independent
• Anne Milano Appel, ‘Skirting the Juniper Brambles: A Translator Narrowly Misses Getting Trapped in the Copyright Thicket‘ on Publishing Perspectives
• Anne Boyd Rioux, ‘Creating the Literary World of the Future: A Response to VIDA’s Recommendations‘ on The Millions
• ‘“Can You Think About Rising?” A year after the firings of two top women editors, four journalism leaders discuss the challenges of editing while female‘ in Politico
• Sage Stossel, ‘Writers who are also mothers‘ in The Boston Globe
• Lindsay Merbaum, ‘Not a Real Writer: How Self-Doubt Holds Me Back‘ on Electric Literature
• Caitlin White, ‘J.K. Rowling’s New Robert Galbraith Novel Is Coming, and Her Announcement Proves Again Why She’s the Queen of Twitter‘ on Bustle
• Moira Redmond, ‘The Girl on the Train – and other express encounters in literature‘ in The Guardian
• Sarah Winman, ‘What it means to be a reader‘ on Waterstones’ blog
• Elizabeth Andre, ‘Now Writing Is for Extroverts Too‘ on The Rumpus
• Ann Patchett, ‘Owning a bookstore means you always get to tell people what to read‘ in The Washington Post
• Norah Vincent, ‘On the Subject of My Suicide‘ on Literary Hub
• Rosy Edwards, ‘Why You Should Never Read Your Reviews, and it’s Not the Reason You Think‘ on the Huffington Post
• James Parker, ‘Renata Adler: Troll or Treasure?‘ in The Atlantic
• Alice Stephens, ‘Behind in the Count‘ in the Washington Independent Review of Books
• Elif Shafak, ‘Books were my crazy, wise companions in a conservative world‘ in The Pool
• Leslie Wilson, ‘Writing Last Train from Kummersdorf – A Little Bit of My Soul‘ on The History Girls blog
• A Celebration of Reading, by Outside the Box: Women Writing Women on Jane Davis’ website
• Concepta Cassar, ‘Food For Thought: What Montaigne Can Teach Us About Ultraprocessed Foods‘ on Litro
• Robin Black, ‘What’s So Great About Young Writers?‘ in The New York Times
• Sulagna Misra, ‘The Everyday Matters of Superheroes, Part I: Civil War, Marvel Nine Nine, and Dwayne McDuffie‘ and ‘The Everyday Matters of Superheroes, Part II: Jane Austen, AUs, and Pacific Rim‘ in The Toast
• Amanda Holmes, ‘Reading Wuthering Heights with Juvenile Offenders‘ on Women Writers, Women’s Books
• Melissa Harrison, ‘How to get down to grips with writing a book? Take a walk on the wild side‘ in The Guardian
• Sunili, ‘Reading as Revolution: Why I’m still banging on about People of Colour and Literature‘ on Medium
• Kelly Jensen, ‘A Conversation About Girls’ Stories with Laurie Halse Anderson and Courtney Summers‘ on Bookriot

• Mallory Ortberg, ‘How To Tell If You Are In A Shirley Jackson Story‘ in The Toast
• Arifa Akbar, ‘A foreign language can make sex scenes read better‘ in The Independent
• Rene Denfeld, ‘Books Saved Me‘ on Waterstones’ blog
• Michelle Dean, ‘Race, wit and mansplaining: female authors debate at Los Angeles books festival‘ in The Guardian
• Genevieve Cogman, ‘Women in SF&F Month‘ on Fantasy Cafe
• Taylor Sperry, ‘Readers may binge, but they do not purge‘ on Melville House
• Jessamyn West, ‘Kind of a Big Deal: What it’s like to be a famous librarian‘ on Medium
• Kamila Shamsie, ‘How I Began to Read‘ on Yahoo News India
• Harriet Mallinson, ‘Is romantic fiction a dangerous passion?‘ in The Guardian
• Courtney Maum, ‘Why Being A Debut Author Isn’t Exactly A Dream Come True‘ on Buzzfeed
• Joanna Walsh, ‘Kathy Acker’s pioneering adventures in the internet’s erogenous zone‘ in The Guardian
• Danielle Lazarin, ‘Where Are the Female Lit Mag Editors? Here.‘ on The Review Review
• Caitlin Moran, ‘What Have They Done to My Library?‘ on Nosy Crow
• Emily Beber, ‘Passed over to a broken machine: on Claire Potter’s Mental Furniture‘ in 3AM: Magazine
• ‘Glamorous and Bold: The Story of the First Black Female Cartoonist‘ on Black Then
• Bronte siblings bicentenary plans announced on the BBC
• Alissa Wilkinson, ‘The Power of Confession‘ in Pacific Standard
• Jonathan Shia, ‘Alison Bechdel: The Bechdel Test “Has Been a Very Strange Turn in My Life”‘ on Vulture
• Kaitlyn Greenidge, ‘The Riotous Power of Toni Morrison‘ in VQR
• Melissa Moorer, ‘This Writer is on Fire: Cathy Linh Che‘ in The Butter
• Alyssa Cole, ‘History in Color: A Black American Romance Roundtable‘ in The Toast
• Paul Kerschen, ‘Sour, Salty, Bitter, Spicy, Sweet: On Can Xue and Five Spice Street‘ in Music & Literature
• Alexander Chee, ‘From Potter to Tartt To Ferrante: How We Came to Love the Multi-Volume Novel‘ on Literary Hub
• Rachel Joyce, ‘In my head, books are always competing with real life‘ in The Telegraph
• Anna James, ‘Slew of second novels set for this summer‘ in The Bookseller
• Alison Flood, ‘Report finds UK books world has marginalised and pigeonholed ethnic minorities‘ in The Guardian

Personal essays/memoir:

• Hayley Webster, ‘I love cemeteries and memorial gardens…I need to see the evidence someone existed‘ on her website
• Ashley C. Ford, ‘I Moved to New York on Crutches’ on Femsplain
• Jo Hogan, ‘Heartbeats and Heartbreak‘ on her blog
• Lisa Grunwald, ‘The Art of Being Apart‘ in the New York Times
• Anna Feintuck, ‘Making sense of the city‘ on Scottish Book Trust
• Edwidge Danticat, ‘Without Her‘ in The New York Times
• Cal Flyn, ‘How do you acknowledge a shameful heritage?‘ in The Pool
• Sadie Stein, ‘Shying‘ in The Paris Review
• Abby Kloppenberg, ‘Small Talk: Intimacy Doesn’t Require Two People, Does It?‘ on Medium
• Heidi Julavits, ‘Turning Clutter Into Joy‘ in The New York Times
• Robyn Wilder, ‘How motherhood messes with your identity‘ in The Pool
• Leah Reich, ‘The Princess Who Learned To Lock Her Heart Away‘ on Medium
• Madhurima Chakraborty, ‘By Any Other Name‘ on The Hairpin
• Nicole Soojung Callaghan, ‘First Steps: Searching for My Birth Family‘ in The Toast
• Anastasia Selby, ‘The Day Before Thanksgiving I Got an Abortion‘ on Weird Sister
• Bridget Foley, ‘“I am not supposed to be alone. I am one of a pair”‘ on Salon
• Kelly Davio, ‘The Waiting Room: There Was That One Time‘ in The Butter
• Alexandra Neuman, ‘Tampon‘ on The Fem
• Pia Ehrhardt, ‘Inpatient, Outpatient‘ in The Butter
• Jess Bergman, ‘Letters to Anita: On My Grandmother’s Legacy‘ in The Toast
• Dini Karasik, ‘A Country Called My Mother‘ in The Butter
• Claire Greaves, ‘How Am I? Honestly!‘ on the Huffington Post
• Laura Turner, ‘The Claustrophobia of Fear‘ on Medium

Feminism:

• Caitlin Moran, ‘on Getting Her Legs Out‘ on The Pool
• Maanvi Singh, ‘See Priya Cook: Gender Bias Pervades Textbooks Worldwide‘ on NPR
• Margaret Corvid, ‘Moving on from the “happy hooker”: why I love my job as a sex worker‘ in the New Statesman
• Adeline Ginn, ‘Why Do Fewer Women Vote?‘ on the Huffington Post
• Anonymous, ‘I had an abortion because of extreme morning sickness. Spare others that pain‘ in The Guardian
• Camille Beredjick, ‘When A Queer Woman Counts Calories‘ on Buzzfeed
• Jetta Rae, ‘The Incidental Activism Of My Going Outside‘ on Ravishly
• Nilanjana S Roy & Radhaben Garva, ‘Painting the Women’s Movement‘ in Granta
• Jane C. Hu, ‘Gal Science: What Is Female Brain?‘ in The Toast
• Jamie Lauren Keiles, ‘Acceptable Catcalls‘ on The Awl
• Suzanne Moore, ‘Wanting to be liked won’t earn you respect‘ in The Pool
• Imogen Fox, ‘Sideburns for women: get in the loop‘ in The Guardian
• June Carbone and Naomi Cahn, ‘The Marriage Calculus‘ in Aeon
• Polly Neate, ‘Domestic Abuse Can Deny Women Their Vote – Here’s How‘ on the Huffington Post
• Alexandra Heminsley, ‘Paula Radcliffe’s final marathon‘ in The Pool

Society and Politics:

• Bim Adewunmi, ‘An Article About Black Women Shouldn’t Have To Come With A Warning Label‘ on Buzzfeed
• Rachel Munroe, ‘Have You Ever Thought About Killing Someone?‘ on Medium
• Kim Brooks, ‘The Struggle To Reclaim Parenting‘ on Buzzfeed
• Sarah Stillman, ‘Where Are the Children?‘ in The New Yorker
• Amanda Ripley, ‘The Upwardly Mobile Barista‘ in The Atlantic
• Tyler Wetherall, ‘Female distillers prove women know their alcohol – and always have‘ in The Guardian
• Amy Merrick, ‘Designing for Disability‘ in The New Yorker
• Paula Cocozza, ‘Unlike Matilda Kahl, I enjoy making decisions on what to wear every morning‘ in The Guardian
• Beejoli Shah, ‘My Bindi Is Not Your Bindi‘ on The Frisky
• Zakia Uddin, ‘What It’s Like Speaking A Different Language From Your Parents‘ on Buzzfeed
• Elizabeth Minkel, ‘From Nate Silver to #Milifans: welcome to the age of political fandom‘ in the New Statesman
• Sophie Heawood, ‘How hard can it be to cancel a mobile phone or satellite TV contract?‘ in The Guardian
• Lo Kwai Mei-en, ‘Reports from the Field– Speak Test: The Silencing of the Racialized Body‘ on VIDA
• Chimene Suleyman, ‘From Boyle to May, Immigration, as it turns out, has done rather well on providing jobs‘ on Media Diversified
• Eleanor Margolis, ‘No more “gal pals”: why do we assume lesbians are confused, attention-seeking, or man-boycotting straight women?‘ in the New Statesman
• Kristina Kay Robinson, ‘What’s Old Is New Again‘ in Guernica
• Morgan Meaker, ‘How has Britain’s most deprived community fared under the coalition?‘ in the New Statesman
• Marcia Rigg, ‘I Am Tired of Reports and Recommendations – What We Need Is a Culture Change in Attitudes Towards Mental Health‘ on the Huffington Post
• Natalie Bennett, ‘It’s Time for the UK to Stand Up for Migrants‘ on the Huffington Post
• Natasha Devon, ‘I’m a size 14 to 16, and Jamelia doesn’t think I should be able to shop for clothes that fit me – is she ok?‘ in The Independent
• Caroline Criado Perez, ‘Why don’t you care who made your clothes?‘ in the New Statesman
• Rachel Shabi, ‘Britain must help stop the human tragedy in the Mediterranean‘ in the Evening Standard
• Jameela Jamil, ‘Thank God I’m Not Jamelia‘ on the Huffington Post
• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, ‘Hooray for the Milifans. They can change the world for the better‘ in The Guardian
• Lauren Smiley, ‘What Strippers Can Teach Uber‘ on Medium
• Angela Flournoy, ‘When Black Neighbourhoods Disappear‘ on Literary Hub
• Joanna Biggs, ‘Keep smiling if you want a job in 2015‘ in The Guardian
• Zoe Williams, ‘Demanding more: on where democracy lives in the 21st century‘ on the Penguin blog
• Deborah Orr, ‘Why the hysteria over Nicola Sturgeon?‘ in The Guardian
• Bryony Gordon, ‘Katie Hopkins is a monster of our own making‘ in The Telegraph
• Hannah Pool, ‘Jourdan Dunn draws attention to fashion’s problem with black hair‘ in The Pool
• Laurie Penny, ‘There may be nothing to vote for — but there’s plenty to vote against‘ in the New Statesman
• Zoe Williams, ‘Katie Hopkins calling migrants vermin recalls the darkest events of history‘ in The Guardian
• Jane Rawson, ‘Don’t Mention the War‘ in Overland
• Sarah Ditum, ‘What Katie Hopkins wrote was monstrous. But save your anger for the politicians who decided to let migrants drown‘ in the New Statesman

Music, Film and Television:

• Rawiya Kameir, ‘Your Fave Is Problematic, And That’s Okay For You, But They Still Need To Apologize‘ in Fader
• Tracy Ann Oberman, ‘Here’s to you, Anne Bancroft‘ in The Pool
• Jeanette Leach, ‘Say What You Can‘ on [post-rock]
• Lauren Barton, ‘Patti Smith: punk’s poet laureate heads back on the road for her sins‘ in The Guardian

The interviews:

• Toni Morrison in The Guardian and on NPR
• Nicky Beer on The Rumpus
• Kirsty Logan on the Penguin Blog
• Charlotte Gordon in the Wall Street Journal
• Sabaa Tahir on Publishers Weekly podcast
• Yumi Sakugawa on Okey Panky
• Heidi Julavits on Electric Literature and Lit Up
• Meredith Talusan in The Toast
• Emily Schultz in Vol. 1 Brooklyn
• Lora Mathis on The Fem
• Jillian Tamaki in The Guardian
• Laila Lalami on the Los Angeles Review of Books Podcast
• Monica Byrne on The Rumpus
• Jan Morris in The Guardian
• Paula Hawkins on The Daily Beast and in The Guardian
• Mary Costello on Electric Literature
• Attica Locke on Kirkus and NPR
• Renée Knight on The Gymkhana Club
• Liz Fenwick on One Book Lane
• Helen Skelton in The Guardian
• P.P. Wong in The Strait Times
• Elizabeth Alexander on Salon
• Iona Grey on Rebecca Mascull’s blog
• Claire Potter on Very Small Kitchen
• Liza Klaussman in The Pool
• Andrea Gillies on Novelicious

If you want some fiction to read:

• ‘The Penis Problem‘ by Suzanne Schafer on her website
• ‘Last Chapter on Hotel Stationery‘ by Ursula Villarreal-Moura in The Butter
• ‘The Rental Heart‘ by Kirsty Logan on Storychord
• ‘Last Night & Yesterday‘ by Joslyn Sklar in The Offing
• An extract from Adult Onset by Anne-Marie MacDonald on Literary Hub
• ‘Maps‘ by Kate Sparks on Whiskeypaper
• ‘The Beacon‘ by Claire Fuller on her blog
• ‘Bird Song‘ by Nadia Hassan on Rewriting Mary Sue
• ‘Far Beyond the Brilliant Sky: 9‘ by Rebecca Burns on The Word Runs Through It
• An extract from Amy Wild: Amazon Summer by Helen Skelton
• An extract from The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld on Orion Books
• The opening of Mental Furniture by Claire Potter on Very Small Kitchen
• ‘Letters to a Mostly Imagined Correspondent‘ by Katherine Riegal in The Offing
• The first five chapters of Villa America by Liza Klaussman
• ‘You Are a Sacred Space‘, by Yumi Sakugawa in Okey Panky
• ‘Inkubation‘ by Jacqui Pack on Litro

If you want some poetry to read:

• ‘Elegie of a Diaspora‘ by Ally Ang on Vagabond City
• Five poems by Elizabeth T. Gray Jr. in Drunken Boat
• ‘All My Creys‘ by Cynthia Arrieu-King in Drunken Boat
• ‘Pathology‘ by Kenzie Allen on Litragger
• Three Poems by MRB Chelko on Blunderbuss
• ‘Dorothy Parker Swipes Left‘ by Heather Alexander in The Toast

If you want some non-fiction to read:

• An extract from Angry in Piraeus by Maureen Freely in The New York Review of Books
• ‘Small Stories #11‘ by Madeline Witt on The Rumpus
• An extract from The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
• An extract from Hammer Head by Nina MacLaughlin on Literary Hub

The lists:

• The Spinster Hall of Fame: Cut-out Dolls of Five Pioneering Women Writers on Literary Hub
• 11 Novels That Expectant Parents Should Read Instead of Parenting Books on Electric Literature
• LGBTQ* Poets You Should Know: Highlighting Women of Color on The Fem
• 11 Books To Give Your Future Daughter Throughout Her Life on Bustle
• 31 Contemporary Poets You Need To Read on Buzzfeed

In the Media: 19th April 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.

The Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist was revealed this week. Sarah Shaffi of The Bookseller reports, ‘Experience tells on Baileys Women’s Prize shortlist‘ while Anna James of We Love This Book introduces us to each of the books and invites us to read along in this video.

Other big news was London Book Fair. For readers, this means announcements about new acquisitions from significant writers. Alison Flood in the Guardian reports, ‘Age shall not weary them: Diana Athill, 97, and Edna O’Brien, 84, are stars of London book fair‘ and ‘London book fair excited by Erica Jong’s new novel‘. The Quietus reports on Viv Albertine’s new book and the cover for Patti Smith’s sequel to Just Kids was released this week, see it in The Pool. If you want a glimpse into what goes on at the fair, Antonia Honeywell wrote on her blog about the panel she was part of, ‘Promoting Debut Authors – London Book Fair 14th April 2015‘.

The woman with the most publicity this week is Evangeline Jennings who’s interviewed on The Indie View, Col’s Criminal Library, Quirky Fiction, Omnimystery News and in character as one of the narrators of her short stories, Helen Wheels on Reflections of Reality.

In this week’s Harper Lee news, ‘PRH reveals Harper Lee title page‘ reports Publishers Weekly.

And in this week’s Elena Ferrante news, if you haven’t read anything by her, she’s this week’s Bedtime Bookclub in The Pool where you can read the first five chapters of My Brilliant Friend. Also in The Pool, Viv Groskop asks, ‘Is being a bestseller all in a name?‘ and Cristina Marconi writes, ‘Elena Ferrante versus Italy‘ on Little Atoms.

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Elif Batuman, ‘Reading Racist Literature‘ in The New Yorker
• Alice Jolly, ‘My little girl has three mothers‘ in the Daily Mail
• Sophie Gilbert, ‘Why Women Aren’t Having Children‘ in The Atlantic
• Sarah Laskow, ‘The Nun’s Story‘ in Lapham’s Quarterly
• Allison Pearson, ‘Sandwich Woman‘ in The Telegraph
• ‘Stella prize 2015: the shortlisted authors on the stories behind their books‘ in The Guardian
• Amy McDaniel, ‘Frenzied, Zesty, Voracious: A Writing Exchange Between Caracas and Sarajevo‘ on Real Pants
• Jennifer Moses, ‘Literary Louisiana‘ in The New York Times
• Meg Wolitzer, ‘Literary Idol: on Mary McCarthy‘ in The LA Times
• Tracy K. Smith, ‘What Memoir Can Do That Poetry Can’t‘ on Lit Hub
• 2015 Pen Literary Awards Shortlists
• Nick Laird, ‘A New Way of Writing About Race’ (on Claudia Rankine’s Citizen) in the New York Review of Books
• Gina Fattore, ‘How Will I Live? Fame, Money, Day Jobs, and Fiction Writing‘ on The Millions
• Radhika Jones, ‘Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie‘ in Time’s 100 Most Influential People
• Mallory Ortberg, ‘Things I’ve Learned About Heterosexual Female Desire From Decades Of Reading‘ in The Toast
• Lily Meyer, ‘Literary Enemies: Ann Patchett v. Zadie Smith‘ on Ploughshares
• Anna Wiener, ‘Millennials, Meet Renata Adler‘ in New Republic
• Mallory Ortberg, ‘A Day In The Life Of A Fictional Female Reporter‘ in The Toast
• Christina Lauren, ‘Romance Novels Are Primed To Make An Impact On Society, So Stop Calling Them “Trashy,” OK?‘ on Bustle
• Mia You, ‘Recreate That Thing!‘ (on Gertrude Stein) on Jacket2
• Sally O’Reilly, ‘The Mindful Writer‘ on Bookanista
• Victoria Patterson, ‘Minding Other People’s Business: On Dawn Powell‘ in The Los Angeles Review of Books
• Sarah Hughes, ‘Feeding the Hunger – female writers are storming the male citadels of sci-fi‘ in The Guardian
• Eleanor Arnason, ‘Me and Science Fiction: What Are We, Chopped Liver?‘ on Strange Horizons
• Julie Enszer, ‘“Who You Are”: On Anne Carson’s Short Talks and Reprint Editions‘ on The Rumpus
• Anita Singh, ‘Agatha Christie and the book cover most foul‘ in the Telegraph
• Rachel McIntyre, ‘Why it’s OK to discuss teacher-pupil relationships in teen books‘ in The Guardian
• Nicky Richmond, ‘Whose Small, Unpeopled Life Is It Anyway?‘ (on India Knight’s In Your Prime) on Not Entirely Legal
• Alena Graedon, ‘Print is dead. Long live print!‘ on W&N
• Elisa Gabbert, ‘Inside the Mind of Poetry‘ on The Smart Set
• Marisa Wikramanayake, ‘Focus on Australian Women Writers of Ethnic Heritage‘ on Australian Women Writers Challenge
• Rahimeh Andalibian, ‘In My Own Words: Up in the Rose Hotel‘ on Publishers Weekly
• Laura Sook Duncombe, ‘Literary Ladies Cage Fight: Battle Royale‘ in The Butter
• Amanda Hess, ‘My Haters, Myself: Mastering the art of the haterbrag‘ (on Jennifer Weiner) on Slate
• Sibéal Pounder, ‘My inspiration: on Jill Murphy’s The Worst Witch‘ in The Guardian
• Hermione Eyre, ‘on Viper Wine‘ on Waterstones’ blog
• N.K. Jemisin, ‘Not the affirmative action you meant, not the history you’re making‘ (on the Hugo Awards) on Epiphany 2.0
• Leesa Cross-Smith, ‘Outlander & Aye‘ on Real Pants
• Lucy Hounsom, ‘Becoming part of the pattern‘ on Waterstones’ Blog
• I.W. Gregorio, ‘One Asian Book is Quite Enough‘ on Diversity in YA
• Rachel Billington, ‘Why I followed my grandfather’s final footsteps at Gallipoli‘ in The Telegraph
• Jess Meacham, ‘An Appreciation of David Foster Wallace’s Conjunctions and Prepositions‘ on her blog
• Lucas Klein, ‘Sinophone Women Write Better‘ on Paper Republic
• Nabina Das, ‘Why don’t we have more women on literary award shortlists?‘ on Scroll.in
• Rachel Cooke, ‘Caught in the parent trap: the fierce social politics of not having children‘ in the New Statesman
• B, ‘A letter to … JK Rowling, whose words gave me a sense of home‘ in The Guardian
• Sarah Seltzer, ‘Why We Should All Be Spinsters: Writers Take on a New Feminine Mystique‘ on Slate
• Lynn Kanter, ‘30 Women Novelists You Should Know – #24 Emily Gray Tedrowe‘ on Start with a Story

Personal essays/memoir:

• Samantha Simmonds, ‘Gone in 60 Seconds: That’s All It Takes for My Children to Turn Me From Sane Mild-Mannered Woman to Screaming Harridan‘ on the Huffington Post
• Kaitlyn Wylde, ‘The Corpse of Wall Street‘ on The Rumpus
• Leah Reich, ‘Will You Know It When You Get There?‘ on Medium
• Sali Hughes, ‘Have you got Summer Affective Disorder?‘ in The Pool
• Lucy Mangan, ‘“Why Isn’t This Holiday Making Me Miss Home?”‘ in Stylist
• Sarah C. Baldwin, ‘Build-a-Bear‘ on The Rumpus
• Lauren Laverne, ‘In defence of not wanting to swim with dolphins‘ in The Pool
• Sali Hughes, ‘Madonna has been my life’s guiding light‘ in The Pool
• Tracy Wan, ‘The Best Time I Had Alopecia‘ on The Hairpin
• Annalise Mabe, ‘The Spies‘ in Proximity Magazine
• D.L. Mayfield, ‘When God and Your Mom Think You’re Awesome‘ in The Toast
• Bec Susan Gill, ‘The Diminishing Probability of Kanye West Falling in Love With Me‘ on Medium
• Wayétu Moore, ‘Love/Woman/Thirty‘ on The Rumpus
• Laura Bogart, ‘I can’t forgive my mother‘ on Salon
• Awitin Mo, ‘Out of Fracture‘ on her blog
• Tracy Thorn, ‘Back in front of the cameras this week – and posing doesn’t get any easier‘ in the New Statesman
• Terri Schweitzer, ‘Silent Confrontations in Klamath Basin‘ on Medium

Feminism:

• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, ‘Am I beach body ready? Advertisers, that’s none of your business‘ in The Guardian
• Roxane Gay, ‘How to Handle Street Harassment: Don’t “Hey, Baby” Me‘ in Glamour
• Bridie Jabour, ‘Hate selfie sticks, or just young women having fun?‘ in The Guardian
• Suzanne Virdee, ‘Why Girls Are in Danger of Becoming Second Class Citizens and Why We Need to Act Now‘ on the Huffington Post
• Rachel McGrath, ‘We Need to Talk About Sexual Harassment That Happens at Concerts and Music Festivals‘ on the Huffington Post
• Heather Havrilesky, ‘Ask Polly: Should I Have a Baby or Establish My Career First?‘ in The Cut
• Jessica Testa, ‘What Happens When We Treat Anonymous Stories Of Sexual Assault Like Gossip Items‘ on Buzzfeed
• Sarah Ditum, ‘Nice try, Maajid Nawaz, but you didn’t go to a lapdancing club because you’re a feminist‘ on Medium
• Rebecca Schiller, ‘Sheila Kitzinger was unafraid to confront female sexuality on a daily basis‘ in The Guardian
• Monica Mark, ‘Chibok kidnapping: stoicism as girls taken by Boko Haram are remembered‘ in The Guardian
• Malala Yousafzai, ‘Malala Letter to Chibok Girls‘ on Scribd
• Maggie Stiefvater, ‘The Anatomy of Rage‘ on her blog
• Samira Ahmed, ‘The girlification of TV characters’ hair‘ in The Pool
• Various, ‘Why Can’t We Accept That Some Women Don’t Want Kids?‘ Zócalo on KCRW
• Amy Gastelum, ‘Miscarriage or Murder?‘ in Guernica
• Chantelle Fiddy, ‘We Need To Talk About Sexual Harassment In Nightclubs‘ in Mixmag
• Lyndsay Kirkham, ‘…I’m No Angel…On Why We Can’t Let Fat People Be Happy‘ on Queen Mob’s Teahouse
• Syreeta McFadden, ‘The lack of female genitals on statues seems thoughtless until you see it repeated‘ in The Guardian
• Bidisha, ‘The exhibition and sale of Frida Kahlo’s love letters is a grubby violation‘ in The Guardian
• Huma Munshi, ‘George Galloway’s comments on forced marriage are a dangerous abuse of power‘ in The Guardian
• Sarah Ditum, ‘Why are we so desperate to find a genetic explanation for sex offenders?‘ in the New Statesman
• Ann Friedman, ‘Women Can’t End the Wage Gap on Their Own‘ in The Cut
• Jessica Valenti, ‘Male politicians always play up gender in their races. Hillary Clinton can, too‘ in The Guardian
• Hayley Webster, ‘I want to be a stay at home mum…but it feels impossible‘ on her website
• Sharline Chiang, ‘Could I Have Been Jailed For My Miscarriage?‘ on Buzzfeed
• Alison Taylor, ‘We are irretrievably married to ourselves, for richer or poorer‘ in The Independent
• Eva Wiseman, ‘The smiling face of “seaside sexism”‘ in The Observer
• Donna Ladd, ‘A female president would be cool, but I’m not sold on Hillary Clinton yet‘ in The Guardian

Society and Politics:

• Vanessa Mártir, ‘Color in AW(hite) Place‘ in Side B Magazine
• Nicole Pyler Fisk, ‘Walter Scott, A Black Man, Was Shot To Death — But My White Husband, Also Walter Scott, Is Safe And Sound‘ on Bustle
• Dhanya Nair, ‘An Open Letter to UK Politicians From an Immigrant Woman‘ on the Huffington Post
• Rebecca Atkinson, ‘How David Cameron has betrayed people with disabilities‘ in The Guardian
• Suzanne Moore, ‘Our art schools have become finishing schools for a wealthy few‘ in The Guardian
• Parisa Tabriz, ‘Pwnd: How a Google hacker would hack you‘ on Medium
• Nissa Rhee, ‘Back to War‘ in Guernica
• Jessica Probus, ‘Planning For A Future We Can Actually Imagine‘ on Buzzfeed
• Carolyn Asome, ‘The Style Uniform‘ in The Pool
• Rebecca Mead, ‘Hilary For President: No Joke‘ in The New Yorker
• Jade E. Davis, ‘Black Men Being Killed Is The New Girls Gone Wild‘ on Medium
• Luba Ostashevsky, ‘Sacrificial States‘ in Aeon
• Julie Chinitz, ‘Shiftiness: The Border In Eight Cases‘ on Lit Hub
• Dawn Foster, ‘“Every low-paid interviewee knows their hourly rate to the penny”‘ in The Guardian
• Suzanne Moore, ‘Extending right to buy is the Tories’ zombie Thatcherism at its worst‘ in The Guardian
• Sultanah Parvin, ‘The Straw Man Cometh‘ on Media Diversified
• Palwesha Yusaf ‘The Aid Industry: Can we really get by on doing good with good intentions only?‘ on Media Diversified
• Maya Goodfellow, ‘Letting migrants drown in the Mediterranean, is this what the Tories mean by ‘British values’?‘ on Media Diversified
• Deepa Bhasthi, ‘That Mallu Joke: Racism in India, and the Fear of the Outsider‘ in Kindle Magazine
• Caitlin Doughty, ‘The sacred task of caring for the dead should be a normal part of life‘ in The Guardian
• Theresa Brown, ‘Love, Death and Spaghetti‘ in The New York Times
• Sophie Heawood, ‘Why is David Cameron so afraid of single parents?‘ in The Guardian
• Susan Ferriss, ‘Virginia tops nation in sending students to cops, courts: Where does your state rank?‘ on Center for Public Integrity
• Brooke Lee Foster, ‘What is it like to be poor at an Ivy League school?‘ in the Boston Globe

Music, Film and Television:

• Chantal Braganza, ‘Happy Birthday, Selena Quintanilla-Pérez‘ on The Hairpin
• Angela Clarke, ‘How shouting spoilers at Wolf Hall shows the world has imploded‘ on The Wharf
• Caroline C, ‘Why Della in Raised By Wolves is the best female character on TV right now‘ on Beamly
• Lisa Peet, ‘Punk Rock Indeed: The Two Sides of Viv Albertine‘ on The Millions
• Anna March, ‘Dead girls, killer ratings: “Game of Thrones,” “True Detective” and TV’s epidemic of violence against women‘ on Salon
• Jaya Saxena, ‘The Bride Paradox Of “Four Weddings”‘ on Buzzfeed
• Julie Beck, ‘Dashboard Confessional, or When It Was Cool to Have Feelings‘ in The Atlantic
• Angela Watercutter, ‘Ex Machina Has a Serious Fembot Problem‘ on Wired
• Lili Loofbourow, ‘The Many Faces of Tatiana Maslany‘ in The New York Times
• Laura Goode, ‘The New Ladder: Anatomy of Indie Women’s Picture “Farah Goes Bang”‘ on Indiewire

The interviews:

• Bidisha on Asian Culture Vulture
• Gurkeyrith on The Fem
• Mona Eltahawy in The New York Times
• Attica Locke on Serpent’s Tail and in The Independent
• Lily King on Lit Hub
• Tishani Doshi & Karthika Naïr in Granta
• Monica McClure on the Huffington Post
• Jane Rawson on Australian Writers’ Centre
• Ladan Osman on Black Girl in Om
• K.A. Holt on the Huffington Post
• Alice Stevenson on Bookanista
• Sharma Shields on Okey-Panky
• Sarah Vaughan on Rebecca Mascull’s blog
• Poetry As Practice Contributors on The Quietus
• Rachel Billington in The Guardian
• Sofi Oksanen in The Guardian
• Kim Moore on Seren Books’ Blog
• Monica Byrne in The Guardian
• Valeria Luiselli on The Guardian Books’ Podcast
• Jenny Offill and Ali Smith on the RTÉ Book Show
• Sam Baker and Lauren Laverne in The Independent
• Toni Morrison in The Independent
• Sarah Helm on Slate
• Rachel Held Evans in The Atlantic
• Roxane Gay on ABC
• Jill Alexander Essbaum on The Rumpus
• Liza Klaussman in The Independent

If you want some fiction to read:

• ‘Morning, Noon & Night‘ by Claire-Louise Bennett in The White Review
• ‘Words Escape Me‘ by Claire-Louise Bennett in 3:AM Magazine
• An extract from Preface, or We As Two Separate Planets by Shushan Avagyan (translated by Deanna Cachoian-Schanz) in Words Without Borders
• ‘Wide Shot‘ by Anna Davtyan (translated by Nazareth Seferian) in Words Without Borders
• ‘I’m Not Going to Die‘ by Ani Asatryan (translated by Adrineh Der-Bogossian) in Words Without Borders
• ‘Before Sunrise‘ by Lilit Karapetyan (translated by Nairi Hakhverdi) in Words Without Borders
• ‘A Mansion with Many Rooms‘ by Kutti Revathi (translated by Lakshmi Holmström) in Words Without Borders
• ‘Revolution Nathan‘ by Dhamayanthi (translated by Lakshmi Holmström) in Words Without Borders
• ‘For Your Safety and Enjoyment‘ by Emily Schultz in The Butter
• An extract from Summertime by Vanessa Lafaye on Orion Books
• ‘The Reality Game‘ by Rachael Dunlop
• An excerpt of Viper Wine by Hermione Eyre on The Awl
• ‘The First Six Meters‘ by Vidya Panicker on The Fem
• ‘Theresa Enters‘ by Amy Silverberg in The Offing
• ‘Where Things Are Made‘ by Tera Joy Cole in Blunderbuss
• ‘Right Eye‘ by Isabel Costello on FlashFlood
• An extract from The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett on One Book Lane
• An extract from The Folded Clock: A Diary by Heidi Julavits on Lit Hub
• ‘Major Maybe‘ by Ann Beattie in The New Yorker. She talks about it here.
• ‘Making Babies‘ by Laurie Penny on Motherboard
• ‘House Heart‘ by Amelia Gray on Longreads
• An extract from Eve Out of Her Ruins by Ananda Devi (translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman) in The Offing
• An excerpt from A Portable Shelter by Kirsty Logan in The Butter
• ‘The Other Woman‘ by Cath Bore on FlashFlood
• ‘Clowns/Clown‘ by Mati Colarossi (translated by Arabella Bertola)
• ‘Killing Stones‘ by Ananda Devi on PEN American

If you want some poetry to read:

• ‘What Did Sriraman Say?‘ by Perundevi (translated by Padma Narayanan and Subashree Krishnaswamy) in Words Without Borders
• ‘Highway‘ by Malathi Maithri (translated by Lakshmi Holmström) in Words Without Borders
• ‘Three Dreams‘ by Sharmila Seyyid (translated by Lakshmi Holmström) in Words Without Borders
• ‘Fear‘ by Krishangini (translated by Padma Narayanan and Subashree Krishnaswamy) in Words Without Borders
• ‘Shunaka: Blood Count‘ by Karthika Nair in Granta
• ‘Gone to Pasture/To Speak‘ by Natalie Eilbert in The Offing
• ‘Compromised Field‘ by Shareen Mansfield on The Honeyed Quill
• ‘Humbles‘ by Frances Leviston on Poem Today
• ‘The Handshake‘ by Isabel Rogers on her blog
• ‘A Psalm for the Scaffolders‘ by Kim Moore on Seren Books’ Blog

If you want some non-fiction to read:

• An extract from Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematorium by Caitlin Doherty on Canongate
• ‘Small Stories #10‘ by Madeline Witt on The Rumpus
• Extracts from From The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of The Mind in The Offing
• ‘Meet the Stanley Cup‘ by Molly Brooks on The Nib
• An extract from Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution by Mona Eltahawy on Macmillan Audio
• An extract from Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris on Lit Hub
• An extract from I’m Very Into You: Correspondence 1995–1996 by Kathy Acker and McKenzie Wark on Lit Hub

The lists:

• Books of the Week on Publishers Weekly
• Anna Freeman’s Stereotype-Busting Women In Historical Fiction on the Huffington Post
• 20 Fascinating Facts About J.K. Rowling You Probably Never Knew in Stylist
• 11 new British crime series on PanMacmillan
• 6 J.K. Rowling Quotes On Failure, Because Failing Well Is A Life Skill That Even The Most Successful Need on Bustle
• Women to Watch: 2015 Edition on BookPage
• Lorraine M. López’s Six Writers On Social Class on Vela
• Five Great Pieces of Advice from J.K. Rowling’s New Book Very Good Lives in Paste
• 5 Books Written by Queer and Trans Women That Set Me Free on Everyday Feminism
• 10 Women’s Books in Translation You Should Be Reading in Litro

In the Media: 8th March 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.

It’s International Women’s Day today and, as you might expect, there have been a number of articles written about and with regards to it. Verso Books published a reading list; in the New Statesman, Stella Creasy said, ‘On International Women’s Day, let’s ask men why progress towards equality is so slow‘; One Book Lane ran a series, ‘The #WonderWomen you need to read about this International Women’s Day‘; Rebecca Winson wrote, ‘We mustn’t forget the revolutionary roots of International Women’s Day‘ in the New Statesman; Somayra Ismailjee, wrote ‘Self-Love Amidst Marginalisation‘ on Media Diversified; Cathy on 746Books wrote, ‘Putting Irish Women Writers Back in the Picture‘ with links to the articles the Irish Times have been running for the past fortnight and their celebratory poster which you can download; Harriet Minter wrote, ‘No need for International Women’s Day? What world do you live in?‘ in The Guardian; Emily Thornberry declared, ‘We Need a New Equal Pay Act‘ in the New Statesman, and Lucy Mangan says, ‘Women take more than enough shit‘ in Stylist.

The Harper Lee story continues, Connor Sheets of AL.com wrote to her and got a response, ‘Harper Lee appears to be fully lucid: She just told me to ‘go away’ via snail mail‘.

And an absolute joy of a series in Vogue: for the whole of March, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie does ‘Today I’m Wearing‘.

The best of the rest articles/essays:

• June Eric-Udorie, ‘How books made me a feminist‘ in The Guardian
• Sarah Thomasin, ‘Excluding Transgender People Doesn’t Make Anything Safer for Anyone‘ on LaDIYfest
• Kate Mayfield, ‘Women in the Mourning‘ on Death & the Maiden
• Alison Taylor, ‘I decided to come clean that we’d shared an ex… and made a lifelong friend‘ in The Independent
• Maia Szalavitz, ‘The Drug Lord With a Social Mission‘ on Pacific Standard
• Jessica Grose and Hanna Rosin, ‘Two Moody Bitches Discuss Moody Bitches‘ on Slate
• Kara Anderson, ‘Why I’m Done With Saying “I’m Sorry” When I Have Nothing To Apologize For‘ on Bustle
• Nick Clark, ‘Elif Shafak: Turkish author warns against rise of British nationalism‘ in The Independent
• Jean Kim, ‘What a Woman Wants: The Story of My Inchon Aunt‘ on The Toast
• Nick Clark, ‘Fay Weldon interview: ‘Abandon your dignity and write a racy page-turner’ in The Independent
• Alison Flood, ‘Fay Weldon has misread ebook readers as “non-literary”‘ in The Guardian
• Andrea Barrett, ‘Traveling Corpse‘ in The American Scholar
• Alissa J.Rubin, ‘Afghan Policewomen Struggle Against Culture‘ in The New York Times
• Leslie Jamison, ‘Spin the Globe, Sri Lanka: The Two Faces of Paradise‘ in Afar
• Jacqueline Doyle, ‘The Tyranny of Things‘ in Litragger
• Jamie Herndon, ‘Jo March Have I Loved: On Identifying With Fictional Women‘ on Bookriot
• Allison Pearson, ‘Sandwich Woman: You are not going out on World Book Day dressed like Spiderman…‘ in the Telegraph
• Beth McLoughlin, ‘Method and Madness‘ in Aeon
• Meaghan O’Connell, ‘True Romance Is Combining Your Finances‘ in The Cut
• Laura June, ‘I’m A New Mom — What If I Never Work Full-Time Again?‘ on Buzzfeed
• Sally Howe, ‘How to Tell If You Are in a Virginia Woolf Novel‘ on The Toast
• Miriam Krule, ‘Elena Ferrante’s Paris Review Interview Finally Convinced Me to Stop Caring Who She Really Is‘ on Slate
• Brenda Wineapple, ‘The Brilliance of Sybille Bedford‘ in The New York Review of Books
• Laura Munson, ‘Writing in Community: You Don’t Have To Do It Alone‘ on Women Writers, Women’s Books
• Jess Meacham, ‘Books! What Are They Good For?‘ on her blog
• Jenny McPhee, ‘Nella Larsen’s Fantastic Motley of Ugliness and Beauty‘ on her blog
• Natalya Din-Kariuki, ‘Feminist academics take note: women are not all white and straight‘ in The Guardian
• Toby Lichtig, ‘Genderalizations‘ in The Los Angeles Review of Books
• Katrine Marçal, ‘Why women are the worst affected by zero hours contracts‘ in the New Statesman
• David MacFarlane, ‘Traces of Mavis‘ (on Mavis Gallant) in The Walrus
• Ann Neuman, ‘Their Dying Wishes‘ in The New York Times
• Mallory Ortberg, ‘How to Talk to Babies About Post-Structuralism‘ in The Toast
• Mallory Ortberg, ‘Advice from Femputer‘ in The Toast
• Valeria Costa-Kostritsky, ‘In France, who gets to be a feminist?‘ in The New Statesman
• Marcy Cook, ‘Eddie Redmayne And Hollywood’s Cis Problem‘ on The Mary Sue
• Diana Souhami, ‘Retelling A Classic Novel — From A Heroine’s Point Of View‘ on the Huffington Post
• Rosanna Boscawen, ‘Dark domesticity: the making of the Hausfrau book cover‘ on the Picador blog
• A.M. Homes, ‘On Shirley Jackson‘ on the Penguin Blog

• Charlotte Gordon, ‘Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley: Rule Breakers‘ on the Penguin Blog
• Nina Stibbe, ‘On Nancy Mitford‘ on the Penguin Blog
• Rockstar Dinosaur Pirate Princess, ‘Consent: Not actually that complicated‘ on her blog
• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, ‘Can porn empower women?‘ in The Guardian
• Syreeta McFadden, ‘Black Bodies In White Words, Or: Why We Need Claudia Rankine‘ on NPR
• Nikole Hannah-Jones, ‘A Letter from Black America‘ in Politico
• Nishta Mehra, ‘Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair‘ in Guernica
• Maggie Jones, ‘Why a Generation of Adoptees Is Returning to South Korea‘ in the New York Times
• Louise Ettinger, ‘The Birth Mother With No Baby‘ in Dame Magazine
• Sarah Menkedick, ‘It’s Not Personal‘ in Vela
• Samantha Shannon, ‘What do you think about the portrayal of girls in YA fiction? Good, bad or just right?‘ on her tumblr
• Meg Rosoff, ‘Fuelling Creative Minds‘ on Writers’ Centre, Norwich
• Marian Keyes, ‘Mind Your Head‘ in The Sunday Times
• Louis Wise, ‘The Unknown Great‘ (on Elena Ferrante) in The Sunday Times
• Emily Anthes, ‘What Happens to a Lonely Ant?‘ in The New Yorker
• Jessa Crispin, ‘Wounded Women‘ in the Boston Review
• Susan Bernofsky, ‘on Artists as Translators‘ on The Pew Centre for Arts & Heritage
• Anna Leszkiewicz, ‘Alan Bennett is right: if you consult the literature, hypocrisy is a very English tradition‘ in the New Statesman
• Ursula K. Le Guin, ‘Are they going to say this is fantasy?‘ (on Kazuo Ishiguro) on Book View Cafe
• Evelyn Somers, ‘“The Live Wire of the Life”: the Fiction of Tessa Hadley‘ on Bloom
• Mallory Ortberg, ‘Signs You May Be Currently Menstruating‘ in The Toast
• B.N. Harrison, ‘The Unified Theory of Ophelia: On Women, Writing, and Mental Illness‘ in The Toast
• Samantha Tucker, ‘The Dreams of a Million Girls Who Are More: On Beauty‘ in The Butter
• Rachel Hills, Laurie Penny, Reni Eddo-Lodge and Jacob Tobia, ‘The 1970s Feminist Who Warned Against Leaning In‘ on Buzzfeed
• Chitra Ramaswamy, ‘I love being a housewife and that doesn’t make me any less of a feminist‘ in The Guardian
• Various, ‘The Salon of (Hair) Acceptance‘ on Thandie Kay’s website
• Liesl Schillinger, ‘Darkness at Midnight‘ on Guernica
• Sarah Einstein, ‘On Why I Won’t Take Up the Challenge to Stop Reading White, Straight, Cis Male Authors‘ on Brevity
• Amy Shearn, ‘It’s Women Writers, Not Novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard, Who’ve “Struggled”‘ in Dame Magazine
• Yalla Tallon-Hicks, ‘Setting the (Lesbian) Bar: Queer Love & Lessons from the Lexington Club in The Toast
• Ann Friedman, ‘On Being a Badass‘ in The Cut
• Emma Törzs, ‘Other People‘ on Electric Literature
• Laura Sook Duncombe, ‘Literary Ladies Cage Fight: Special Oscars Edition‘ in The Butter
• Roohi Choudhry, ‘On Island: Journeying to Penal Colonies from Rikers to Robben‘ in The Butter
• Claire Hayward, ‘No one was “gay” in the 18th century: why we must not rewrite history with today’s terms‘ in the New Statesman
• Rebecca Whitney, ‘Are women hardwired to love thrillers?‘ in the Telegraph
• Kathryn Heyman, ‘My mother stayed with my abusive father for 22 years. That’s a lot of bruises‘ in The Guardian
• Elliott Holt, ‘This Essay Was Due 25 Years Ago‘ (on Tess of the D’Urbervilles) on Slate

The interviews:

• Clare Grogan in The Guardian
• Polly Samson in The Guardian
• Alexandra Fuller and Ruth Scurr on the Guardian Books’ Podcast
• Hanya Yanagihara on Slate
• Valeria Luiselli in BOMB Magazine
• Plum Johnson in the National Post
• Jennifer Jacquet in The Guardian
• Tessa Hadley on Bloom
• Louise O’Neill on the Inspireland Podcast
• Caitlin Moran in Marie Claire Australia
• Sarah Manguso in The Guardian
• Anthea Bell on A Different Stripe
• Elizabeth Gilbert on Dear Sugar
• Cecilia Ekback on Mr B’s Emporium
• Dorthe Nors on Bookanista
• Paula Hawkins on Essential Phil Williams
• Tania James in the LA Times
• Susmita Bhattacharya on Carys Bray’s website
• Rene Denfeld on Foyles’ website
• Miranda July on Foyles’ website
• Holly Smale in The Guardian
• Lily King in Guernica
• Sarah Smarsh on Longreads

If you want some fiction/poetry to read:

• ‘He’s Killed the May‘ by Adelaid Crapsey on Quadrapheme
• ‘Parma Violet‘ by Frances Leviston in The Guardian
• An extract from On Elizabeth Bishop by Colm Tóibín on Princeton University Press
• ‘Pillow‘ by Jana Prikryl in The New York Review of Books
• ‘The Cola of Oblivion‘ by Achy Obejas in The Butter
• Poems from L’Heure Bleue, or The Judy Poems by Elisa Gabbert in Pank Magazine
• ‘Female Killers‘ by Dorthe Nors on Bookanista
• A selection of poems by Michèle Roberts on her website
• ‘How I Abandoned My Body To His Keeping‘ by Kim Moore on And Other Poems
• An extract from Suite for Barbara Loden by Nathalie Léger (tr. Natasha Lehrer and Cécile Menon) in 3:am Magazine
• ‘Kinder than Miriam‘ by Kajal Ahmad (tr. Choman Hardi and Mimi Khalvati) on Poetry Translation Centre
• ‘Diaries: Where Is Their Real Mother?‘ by Jane Eaton Hamilton on Litro
• ‘Skies‘ by Laura Herbek on Blunderbuss
• ‘The Waiting Room‘ by Rebecca Burns on Halfway Down the Stairs
• ‘Water‘ by Meghann Plunkett on the ASDF
• ‘False River‘ by Paula Morris in Five Dials
• ‘Static Caravan Holiday‘ by H.L. Foster in Quotidian

Or some non-fiction:

• An extract from This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein in The Guardian

The lists:

• 8 Poetry Collections by Contemporary Female Poets on Scottish Book Trust
• My top five books about feminism in The Guardian
• Readers’ favourite books by women in The Guardian
• Maria Tatar’s 10 Lesser-Known Fairy Tales That Should Get More Love on the Huffington Post
• The 16 Best NYC Novels on the Gothamist
• Fiction for Young Feminists on Scottish Book Trust
• 9 Ways Reading Joyce Carol Oates Will Make You Feel More Powerful on Bustle
• 30 Books By Women To Read During Women’s History Month on Refinery 29
• 25 of the best books ever written by women in the Metro
• Books To Read When Your Brain Is Fried on the Huffington Post
• 12 leading reporters on aid and development on Humanosphere
• Samantha Ellis’ Top 5 Literary Heroines on the Penguin Blog
• 10 Must-Read Books For March on Flavorwire
• 12 Books For Young People That Will Turn You Into A Feminist At Any Age on Bustle
• Books of the Week on Publishers Weekly
• 22 Contemporary Authors You Absolutely Should Be Reading on Buzzfeed
• Buy, Borrow, Bypass: Graphic Novels About Kick-Ass Ladies on Bookriot