In the Media: May 2017

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

In prize news, the Granta Best of Young American Novelists list was announced:

• Laura Miller, ‘Granta Made Us Obsessed With “Best Young Novelist” Lists‘ on Slate
• Michelle Dean, ‘The age of anxiety: what does Granta’s best young authors list say about America?‘ in The Guardian

Fiona McFarlane took The Dylan Thomas Prize for her short story collection The High Places, Maylis de Kerangal won The Wellcome Book Prize, and Sarah Perry and Kiran Millwood-Hargrave were winners at The British Book Awards. While Kit de Waal and Rowan Hisayo Buchanan were shortlisted for The Desmond Elliott Prize.

Chris Kraus and I Love Dick are having a moment:

• Kraus is interviewed in The Guardian and on Hazlitt with Sarah Gubbins
• Rachel Syme, ‘The Liberating Obsessiveness of I Love Dick‘ in New Republic
• I don’t usually link to book reviews but ‘Reviewing this book put me off marriage. And book reviewing‘ by Anakana Schofield is a brilliant piece of writing in its own right and is about Kraus’ novel Torpor.

And The Handmaid’s Tale has generated even more pieces:

• haettinger, ‘I Grew Up In A Fundamentalist Cult — ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Was My Reality‘ on The Establishment
• Megan Garber, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale Treats Guilt as an Epidemic‘ on The Atlantic
• Priya Nair, ‘Get out of Gilead: Anti-Blackness in The Handmaid’s Tale‘ on Bitch Media
• Kayla Chadwick, ‘The Biggest Lesson Of The Handmaid’s Tale? Silence Is Complicity.‘ on the Huffington Post
• Nora Caplan-Bricker, ‘One Sly Lesson of The Handmaid’s Tale:Appreciate the Messy Feminism We Have Now‘ on Slate
• Elizabeth Day, ‘What the Handmaid’s Tale taught me about being a woman‘ on The Pool
• Laura Hudson, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale: The Biggest Changes From the Book‘ on Slate
• Alexandra Schwartz, ‘Yes, “The Handmaid’s Tale” Is Femininst‘ in The New Yorker
• Soraya Nadia McDonald, ‘In “Handmaid’s Tale” a postracial, patriarchal hellscape‘ on The Undefeated
• Various, ‘“Margaret Atwood Made a Feminist Out of Me”: 12 Authors on The Handmaid’s Tale‘ in Elle
• Stacey D’Erasmo, ‘On Power Between Women: The Handmaid’s Tale Revisited‘ on Catapult
• Jamie Lincoln, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale: The Hidden Meaning in Those Eerie Costumes‘ on Vanity Fair

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Emily Gould, ‘My Bad Parenting Advice Addiction‘ on Longreads
• Jenny Landreth, ‘Water Women: Jenny Landreth’s Swell and the Female Swimmers Who Changed the World‘ on the Waterstones’ blog
• Heather Corcoran, ‘One thing Amazon got wrong about “I Love Dick” (and women)‘ on Slate
• Judith Newman, ‘Dear Book Club: It’s You, Not Me‘ in The New York Times
• Susanna Basso (translated by Matilda Colarossi) ‘Lessons in Slowness‘ on Asymptote
• Rafia Zakaria, ‘The Lizzie Borden murder industry won’t die – but its feminism has‘ in The Guardian
• Elizabeth Alsop, ‘What Ferrante learned from Woolf‘ in The TLS
• Caren Lissner, ‘That Time a Guy Asked Me to Channel My Novel’s Protagonist On Our Creepy First Date‘ on Narratively
• Barbara Browning, ‘The Lie in My Novel‘ on Catapult
• Sarah Menkedick, ‘The Blue Jay’s Dance‘ in The Paris Review
• Sarah Menkedick, ‘The Book and the Baby‘ on Vela
• Meghan Daum, ‘What Makes a House a Home‘ on Literary Hub
• Alexandra Schwartz, ‘The Art and Activism of Grace Paley‘ in The New Yorker
• Kathryn Hughes, ‘George Eliot: is this a new portrait of the author as a young woman?‘ in The Guardian
• Lisa McInerney, ‘Don’t tell me that working-class people can’t be articulate‘ in The Guardian
• Emily Ballaine, ‘Bookselling in the 21st Century “Please Don’t Touch Me”‘ on Literary Hub
• Lisa Ko, ‘Not Finishing My Novel Would’ve Ruined My Life‘ on Literary Hub
• Hope Nicholson, ‘The fury and the fashion: comic-book heroines down the years‘ in The Guardian
• Helena Kelly, ‘The Many Ways in Which We’re Wrong About Jane Austen‘ on Literary Hub
• Jenni Fagan, on her path to publication on Dewar Art Awards
• Lorraine Berry, ‘on Didion, the South, and Race‘ on Essay Daily
• Rachel Rhys, ‘on writing a community of strangers‘ on The Literary Sofa
• Sarah Hughes, ‘‘She gave her mother 40 whacks’: the lasting fascination with Lizzie Borden‘ in The Guardian
• Nicola Streeten, ‘Drawn from history‘ in The TLS
• Sydney Moore, ‘Were women accused of witchcraft the first Essex Girls?‘ on The Pool
• Ever Dundas, ‘The Problems with Gender and Language‘ on The Skinny
• Danuta Kean, ‘Crossing the Line of Duty: why novels would never get away with TV’s crimes‘ in The Guardian
• Claire Cameron, ‘Why You Shouldn’t Get into a Fight with Jane Smiley‘ on Literary Hub
• Sunny Singh, ‘MP accuses BAME book prize of discrimination‘ on Media Diversified
• Kristen Arnett, ‘The Queer Erotics of Handholding in Literature‘ on Electric Literature
• Danuta Kean, ‘Why Brit crime fiction is paying international dividends‘ in The Guardian
• Nell Stevens, ‘Elizabeth Gaskell: Charlotte Brontë’s unlikely defender against prurient gossip‘ in The Guardian
• Sisonke Msimang, ‘All your faves are problematic: A brief history of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, stanning and the trap of #blackgirlmagic‘ on Africa Is a Country
• Rafia Zakaria, ‘A publisher of one’s own: Virginia and Leonard Woolf and the Hogarth Press‘ in The Guardian
• Laura Lam, ‘Gender-fluid Fiction: False Hearts Author on Breaking Stereotypes‘ on Waterstones’ Blog
• Dani Shapiro, ‘Writing About Marriage When You Want to Stay Married‘ on Catapult

Personal essays/memoir:

• Linda Mannheim, ‘Searching for the Internment Camp Where My Father Was Held‘ on Catapult
• Sarah Maria Griffin, ‘This Is What It’s Like To Have Sleep Paralysis‘ on Buzzfeed
• Caity Weaver, ‘My 14-Hour Search for the End of TGI Friday’s Endless Appetizers‘ on Gawker
• Ashley C. Ford, ‘My Father Spent 30 Years In Prison. Now He’s Out.‘ on Refinery29
• Eva Dillon, ‘My Father’s Secret Life as a Cold War Spy‘ on Literary Hub
• Stacy Torres, ‘The Admission‘ on Longreads
• Lisa Ko, ‘How I Learned To Live With A Chronic Skin Condition‘ on Buzzfeed
• Laura Turner, ‘On Miscarriage, Anxiety, and the Burden of Hope‘ on Catapult
• Julia Kingsford, ‘Aspergers and Asparagus‘ on Medium
• Sari Botton, ‘Hit Eject‘ on Longreads
• Kat Lister, ‘It’s essential that I tell you about my miscarriage‘ on The Pool
• Marie Myung-Ok Lee, ‘J. Stands Up‘ in The Paris Review
• Erin Chack, ‘My Boyfriend Isn’t My Soulmate, He’s My Carrot‘ on Buzzfeed
• Jennifer Hope Choi, ‘I Filmed The End Of My Parents’ Marriage‘ on Buzzfeed
• Zing Tsjeng, ‘My 14-Year-Old Cousin Taught Me How to Be a Cool Teen‘ on Broadly
• Betty Ann Adam, ‘How I lost my mother, found my family, recovered my identity‘ in Saskatoon Star Phoenix
• Clarissa Wei, ‘The Struggles of Writing About Chinese Food as a Chinese Person‘ on Munchies
• Lyz Lenz, ‘Lead Me On‘ on Hazlitt
• Eloghosa Osunde, ‘Don’t Let It Bury You‘ on Catapult
• Erin Kelly, ‘Learning to be a red lipstick kind of person‘ on The Pool
• Elisabeth Geier, ‘The Nostalgia of the Neighborhood Hardware Store‘ on Okey-Panky

Feminism:

• Nimco Ali, ‘I’m a Women’s Equality Party candidate – here’s why I’m standing against a female Labour MP‘ on The New Statesman
• Jess Zimmerman, ‘Dove’s dumb body wash bottles are an answer to a question nobody asked‘ in The Washington Post
• Eleanor Margolis, ‘Thanks Dove! Now I will finally stop comparing myself to the perfect form of a soap bottle‘ in The New Statesman
• Becca Andrews, ‘As a Girl, I Went Through Abstinence Ed. As a Woman, I’m Trying to Understand the Damage Done.‘ on Mother Jones
• Jenny Landreth, ‘Heroic British women swimming figures who deserve statues‘ in The Guardian
• Sady Doyle, ‘“Stealthing” Is Not a Trend. It’s Sexual Assault‘ in Elle
• Amy Hatvany, ‘I Taught My Son How Not to Be a Rapist‘ in Harper’s Bazaar
• Jess Zimmerman, ‘The Monstrous Female Ambition of the Harpy‘ on Catapult
• Danielle Dash, ‘Serena Williams and Black Pregnancy‘ on Danielle Dash
• Hawa Allen, ‘Becoming Meta‘ on Longreads

Society and Politics:

• Zoe Samudzi, ‘Who Are You and What Do You Really Know?‘ on The New Enquiry
• Masha Gessen, ‘The Autocrat’s Language‘ in The New York Review
• Maya Binyam, ‘Spell-Check Nation‘ on The New Enquiry
• Carla Bruce-Eddings, ‘Creating a Community for My Black Daughter‘ in The Cut
• Carole Cadwalladr, ‘The great British Brexit robbery: how our democracy was hijacked‘ in The Guardian
• Jessica Wapner, ‘Austin, Indiana: the HIV capital of small-town America‘ on Mosaic
• Nesrine Malik, ‘I Am Not Your Muslim‘ on NPR
• Javaria Akbar, ‘In praise of smelly food‘ on The Pool
• Rebecca Solnit, ‘Facing the Furies‘ in Harper’s
• Katherine Fidler, ‘How it feels when your research is used to justify disability benefit cuts‘ in The New Statesman
• Chimene Suleyman, ‘Britain is still searching for Maddie – why don’t we care about missing children of colour?‘ in International Business Times
• Julia Rampen, ‘View from Paisley: How the Conservatives are wooing Labour’s Scottish heartlands‘ in The New Statesman
• Rachel Monroe, ‘How rich hippies and developers went to war over Instagram’s favourite beach‘ in The Guardian
• Emma Green, ‘How Two Mississippi College Students Fell in Love and Decided to Join a Terrorist Group‘ on The Atlantic
• Irin Carmon, ‘If abortions become illegal, here’s how the government will prosecute women who have them‘ in The Washington Post
• Nina Caplan, ‘Beware of tea: the cuppa has started wars and ruined lives’ in The New Statesman
• Jess Phillips, ‘May says this is about stability. She should meet my constituents‘ in The Guardian
• Santilla Chingaipe, ‘Hair and social inclusivity‘ on The Saturday Paper
• Megan Garber, ‘Are We Having Too Much Fun?‘ in The Atlantic
• Ruth Whippman, ‘Work/life integration? No, thanks – I’d rather have balance‘ on The Pool

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

• Caity Weaver, ‘Dwayne Johnson for President!‘ in GQ
• Anna Leszkiewicz, ‘“I’m only human”: the rise and rise of male singers who cannot take criticism‘ in The New Statesman
• Helen Lewis, ‘From wars to power ballads: the geopolitics of Eurovision‘ in The New Statesman
• Sophie Gilbert, ‘What Does a Girlboss Look Like?‘ on The Atlantic
• Jude Rogers, ‘Bananarama – the ultimate British girl band – is back‘ on The Pool

The interviews/profiles:

• Joanna Ruocco in The Paris Review
• Dorothy Allison on Lenny
• Meg Howrey on Electric Literature
• Patricia Lockwood on The Pool, Literary Hub and The Observer
• Alyssa Cole on Jezebel
• Jess Arndt in The Cut
• Claudia Rankine on Literary Hub
• Dana Schwartz on Electric Literature
• Hala Alyan on Electric Literature
• Stephanie Powell Watts on Literary Hub
• Doree Shafrir on Hazlitt
• Edan Lepucki on The Millions
• Scaachi Koul on Hazlitt
• Olivia Sudjic in Vogue
• Irenosen Okojie on Medium and Minor Literature[s]
• Fiona Melrose on Short Story Day Africa
• Naomi Alderman in The New Statesman
• G. Willow Wilson in The New Yorker
• Kate Tempest in The Guardian
• Paula Cocozza in The Hackney Gazette
• Anne Elizabeth Moore on Literary Hub
• Claire Cameron on The Millions
• Lise Gaston on All Lit Up
• Sally Rooney on Short Story Award
• Lidia Yuknavitch on The Rumpus
• Monica Youn on Dive Dapper
• Morgan Parker in The New Yorker
• Amy Liptrot on Literary Hub
• Diane Schoemperlen on Queen Mob’s Tea House
• Jessie Burton in The TLS
• Aliette De Bodard on SciFiNow
• Elizabeth Strout in The New Yorker

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, 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, April 2017, Part One

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

Photograph by Murdo MacLeod

 

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

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

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

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

Personal essays/memoir:

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

Feminism:

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

Society and Politics:

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

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

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

The interviews/profiles:

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

The regular columnists:

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

In the Media, March 2017, Part One

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

This fortnight’s seen a number of prize lists announced. The big ones for women writers are the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist and the Stella Prize shortlist.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s comments on trans women have prompted a number of responses.

• Thembani Mduli, ‘When Callouts Become Anti-Black: On Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Transphobia, Disposability Culture & British Colonialism‘ on Rest for Resistance
• Rhyannon Styles, ‘The New Girl: A Trans Woman’s View Of White Male Privilege‘ in Elle
• Kuchenga Shenjé, ‘Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Transgender Comments Invalidated My Womanhood‘ on gal-dem
• Halle Kiefer, ‘Laverne Cox Responds to Chimamanda Adichie’s Comments About Trans Women and Male Privilege‘ on Vulture
• Jarune Uwujaren, ‘Why Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Comments on Trans Women are Wrong and Dangerous‘ on Unapologetic Feminism
• Racquel Willis, ‘A trans woman’s thoughts on Chimamanda Adichie‘ on Twitter
• Morgan Jerkins, ‘Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Is Getting Criticized for Her Comments About Transgender Women‘ on Teen Vogue
• Hadley Freeman, ‘Identity is the issue of our age: so why can’t we talk more honestly about trans women?‘ in The Guardian
• Glosswitch, ‘The debate over Jenni Murray suggests we don’t see older women as “real women”‘ in the New Statesman

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Emine Saner, ‘Books for girls, about girls: the publishers trying to balance the bookshelves‘ in The Guardian
• Lynn Steger Strong, ‘When Femininity Is Code for Feelings‘ on Literary Hub
• Caitlin Moran, ‘Were I not a writer, I’d have the peachy, zingy buttocks of Gigi Hadid’ in The Guardian
• Andreá Stella, ‘Clarice Lispector’s Children’s Story Taught Me to Read Her Like An Adult‘ on Literary Hub
• Becky Chambers, ‘My Alien Family: Writing Across Cultures in Science Fiction‘ on Tor.com
• Lorraine Berry, ‘The Man Who Doesn’t Read Women‘ on Signature
• Shaj Mathew, ‘Poetry as Life, Life as Poetry‘ on Guernica
• Jami Attenberg, ‘How Working at a Bookstore Changed My Writing Career‘ on Literary Hub
• Roxane Gay, Aimee Bender, and more ‘On Assault and Harassment in the Literary World‘ on Literary Hub
• Sophie Brown, ‘How to Escape from Prison‘ in The TLS
• Jhumpa Lahiri, ‘on the Compulsion to Translate Domenico Starnone‘ on Literary Hub
• Madeleine Wattenbarger, ‘Finding a Room of One’s Own in the Mexico City Metro‘ on Literary Hub
• Rebecca Solnit, ‘On Silence, Pornography, and Feminist Literature‘ on Literary Hub
• Alex Clark, ‘Writers unite! The return of the protest novel‘ in The Guardian
• Margaret Atwood, ‘on What ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Means in the Age of Trump‘ in The New York Times
• Casey Stepaniuk, ‘Meet Your New Favourite Darkly Comic, Magical Realist Writer: Eden Robinson‘ on BookRiot
• Margaret Atwood, ‘on What it’s Like to Watch Her Own Dystopia Come True‘ on Literary Hub
• Larissa Pham, ‘Your Own Private Party: How reading Eve Babitz got me through the depths of winter‘ on The Paris Review
• Alexandra Schwartz, ‘Rereading Paula Fox’s “Desperate Characters”‘ in The New Yorker
• Lauren Oyler, ‘How the Push to ‘Break the Silence’ Fails the Feminist Movement‘ on Broadly
• Candy Royale, ‘Ali Cobby Eckermann’s poetry: inspiring those of us who feel like outsiders‘ in The Guardian

Personal essays/memoir:

• Carolyn Desalu, ‘The Kitchen Drawer: On Black Families and Suicide‘ on Catapult
• Katherine Laidlaw, ‘A Place of Absorption‘ on Hazlitt
• Anna Graham Hunter, ‘Lying Down With Older Men‘ on Medium
• Valeria Luiselli, ‘On the Choices People Make in Coming to America‘ on Literary Hub
• Nicole Cox, ‘Proper Young Ladies: Writing My Mother’s Shakespeare Essay‘ on Medium
• Funmi Iyanda, ‘Theory of Death” In Conversation with My Mother‘ on Medium
• Elisabeth Fairfield Stokes, ‘Life and Breath: On Pregnancy and the Spirit World‘ on Catapult
• Keph Senett, ‘A Bed of Fists: On Playing Soccer in Moscow‘ on Catapult
• Ashley P. Taylor, ‘Für Bess: On Neighbors, Music Parties, and Growing Up‘ on Catapult
• Jessica Furseth, ‘I Don’t Have Cancer (Yet)‘ on Buzzfeed
• Darcy Steinke, ‘How I Came to the Church of Rock and Roll‘ on Literary Hub
• Jessie Male, ‘Mirror Pain‘ on Guernica
• Nicole Chung, ‘The Worry I No Longer Remember Living Without‘ on Hazlitt
• Nneka Onwuzurike, ‘My Mother’s Name‘ on The Offing

Feminism:

• Rachel Vorona Cote, ‘The Misogynistic History of Trying to Understand Women Who Self-Harm‘ on Broadly
• Liza Munday, ‘Why Is Silicon Valley So Awful to Women?‘ on The Atlantic
• Zoe Williams, ‘Cuts are a feminist issue. So what would a suffragette do?‘ in The Guardian
• Erin Vanderhoof, ‘How the Combative Beginning of Women’s Studies Shaped Feminist In-Fighting Today‘ on Broadly
• Arianna Rebolini, ‘Heads Up, ‘Slimming’ Is Not a Compliment‘ on Racked
• Jendella Benson, ‘Patriarchy and The Idealisation Of Motherhood‘ on Media Diversified
• Han Yujoo, ‘Misogyny blooming and the universal feminine‘ on The TLS
• Rebecca Solnit, ‘Silence and powerlessness go hand in hand – women’s voices must be heard‘ in The Guardian
• Jia Tolentino, ‘The Women’s Strike and the Messy Space of Change‘ in The New Yorker
• Joanna Cannon, ‘How to embody the “Be Bold For Change” ethos‘ on The Pool
• Maxine Beneba Clarke, ‘My Feminism‘ on Victoria Women’s Trust

Society and Politics:

• Jess Phillips, ‘I feel sorry for the people of Tatton – I hear their MP is just too busy to care‘ in The Guardian
• Amelia Tait, ‘Joining Generation Rent isn’t a quirky choice – it’s our unavoidable state of economic insecurity‘ in the New Statesman
• Ijeoma Oluo, ‘Welcome To The Anti-Racism Movement — Here’s What You’ve Missed‘ on The Establishment
• Molly Ball, ‘Kellyanne’s Alternative Universe‘ on The Atlantic
• Vera Chok, ‘If you saw a nanny in this BBC interview, what does that say about you?‘ in The Guardian
• Molly Ball, ‘Washington’s Spy Paranoia‘ on The Atlantic
• Julie Beck, ‘This Article Won’t Change Your Mind‘ on The Atlantic
• Sara Noviç, ‘The Right to Remain Silent‘ in The New Enquiry
• Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi, ‘“I want to try. Live or die”: how refugees decide whether to make the dangerous trip to Europe‘ in the New Statesman
• Sarah Menkedick, ‘The Making of a Mexican-American Dream‘ on Pacific Standard
• Renata Adler, ‘Brontosaurs Whistling in the Dark‘ in Lapham’s Quarterly
• Alana Semuels, ‘The Racist History of Portland, the Whitest City in America‘ on The Atlantic

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

• Kate Robertson, ‘Why Female Cannibals Frighten and Fascinate‘ in The Atlantic
• Sophie Gilbert, ‘Is Girls Heading Toward a Conventional Happy Ending?‘ on The Atlantic

The interviews/profiles:

• Katie Kitamura in The Guardian
• Rachel Cusk in The Cut
• Jami Attenberg on The Millions, Vogue and Electric Literature
• Rebecca Solnit in Elle
• Ann Goldstein on Hazlitt
• Delia Bell Robinson on Bloom
• Can Xue on Words Without Borders
• Ariel Levy on Longreads and Jezebel
• Ahd Niazy on The Establishment
• Elif Batuman on Vulture and Publishers Weekly
• Megan Bradbury in The Skinny
• Allison Benis White on Electric Literature
• Gwendoline Riley on The Skinny
• Sawako Nakayasu on Asymptote
• Chris Kraus on Ssense
• Angie Thomas in The Bookseller
• Danielle Dutton on Catapult
• Claudia Roden on Food52
• Susan Hill on Waterstones
• Dorthe Nors on The Writes of Woman
• Sharon Olds on Literary Hub
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in The Guardian
• Ursula K. Le Guin in The TLS
• Judith Kerr in The Guardian

The regular columnists:

• 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, February 2017

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

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

 

On or about books/writers/language:

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

Personal essays/memoir:

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

Feminism:

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

Society and Politics:

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

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

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

The interviews/profiles:

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

The regular columnists:

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

In the Media, January 2017

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

Image by Abigail Grey Swartz

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

On the Women’s March:

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

On Melania:

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

On American society under Trump:

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

On Trump:

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

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

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

Personal essays/memoir:

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

Feminism:

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

Society and Politics:

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

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

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

The interviews/profiles:

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

The regular columnists:

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

Difficult Women – Roxane Gay

There’s an easy way to find out whether or not you’re a difficult woman according to the title story in Roxane Gay’s debut collection: check your pulse.

Dead Girls

Death makes them more interesting. Death makes them more beautiful. It’s something about their bodies on display in final repose – eyes wide open, lips blue, limbs stiff, skin cold. Finally, it might be said, they are at peace.

Although still not safe from the patriarchal gaze.

Societal structure and its oppression of women forms the backbone of the collection. Beginning with ‘I Will Follow You’ in which two sisters – Carolina and Savvie – whose relationship is so close that when Carolina’s husband moves to Nevada and Savvie doesn’t want to go, they remain in California together. And ending with ‘Strange Gods’ in which an unnamed narrator tells the man who’s asked him to marry her ‘There are things you do not know about me. These things are not inconsequential’ before relating the various ways in which she self-harms and the reason for her behaviour.

When Gay’s good, she’s very very good. In ‘Open Marriage’, the narrator eats a tub of sour yoghurt to prove a point as her husband declares he wants an open marriage. The payoff is delicious and had me punching the air.

‘Requiem for a Glass Heart’ details a relationship between a glass woman and her stone thrower husband. She wants space from his protection, from her husband ‘who sees too much and loves too carefully’ but discovers he seeks his own space too.

‘I Am a Knife’ and ‘The Sacrifice of Darkness’ both involve women dealing with tragedies. The first has a wife hunting with her husband, attempting to fill a void:

When the buck was finally dead, I used one fingernail, cutting the creature open from his neck to his rear. His flesh fell open slowly, warm innards steaming out into the cold air. The air became sharp and humid with the stench of death surrounded by prayer. I am a knife.

While the latter is a rewriting of the Icarus myth focusing on what happened after Hiram Hightower, a miner who couldn’t face another day underground, flew into the sun, as told by his future daughter-in-law:

In the early days of darkness, we thought it might end. We thought we might once again see the sun, feel its golden shine holding our skin. The bright red crease in the sky pulsed, and like the sun, that crease grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared. Scientists tried to make sense of what happened to the sun. It was nearly impossible for them to believe a man could be so full of darkness he needed to swallow all the light of the sun.

Thematically, the stories are about relationships – with spouses, siblings, parents, lovers, ourselves; male treatment of women; whites’ treatment of blacks.

In ‘North Country’, an engineering lecturer moves from Nebraska to Michigan and has to deal with constant microaggressions.

“Are you from Detroit?”

I have been asked this question twenty-three times since moving to the area. In a month, I will stop counting, having reached a four-digit number. Shortly after that, I will begin telling people I have recently arrived from Africa.

However, ‘La Negra Blanca’ is the sole mishit. William Livingstone III is obsessed with black women and black culture. He visits a strip club where he watches Sierra, a mixed-race woman who passes for white, dance three times a week. The story lacks any subtlety and is less effective for it. It’s a shame in a collection which also highlights how sharp Gay can be elsewhere in her writing.

Overall, Difficult Women is a satisfying and, at times, a superb read. It’s impossible not to read these stories and feel that Gay gets it. She conveys what it’s like to be a living, breathing woman. The title story is divided into different types of difficult women and then into vignettes. ‘What a Crazy Woman Thinks About While Walking Down the Street’ ends like this:

She once told a boyfriend about these considerations and he said, “You are completely out of your mind.” She told a new friend at work and she said, “Honey, you’re not crazy. You’re a woman.”

 

Thanks to Corsair for the review copy.

 

 

Ones to Read in 2017

One of the joys of running this blog is getting to read advance copies of books I’ve been looking forward to as well as titles from new writers being published in the first half of 2017. I’ve read a whole host of books, mostly fiction – novels, novellas, short stories, and I’ve selected ten I think are must reads.

All publication dates are correct as of 2nd January 2017 for UK publication.

Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi

Effia Otcher and Esi are sisters, unaware of each other’s existence. In 1775, Effia’s mother, who beats her and is manipulative, conspires to marry her to one of the white slave traders. Effia goes to live with him in Cape Coast Castle, unaware that Esi is in the dungeon, packed tight with other women – alive and dead – waiting to be shipped to America. Gyasi then follows the two women’s timelines through to the present day. The story alternates between West Africa and America, each chapter told by one of the offspring of the previous character in that branch of the family tree and becoming a guide to the creation of black as a race. It’s an incredible piece of work. If you only read one book in 2017, make it this one.

Published 5th January 2017 by Viking

Homesick for Another World – Ottessa Moshfegh

If you thought the title character in Eileen was despicable, wait until you meet those who populate Moshfegh’s first short story collection. From a teacher who spends her summer break slumming it with drug addicts to the old white dude who tries to hit on his young neighbour to the girl who’s convinced she needs to kill a particular person in order to go to a better place, all of Moshfegh’s characters are unlikeable in some way. But that’s also because they’re real, their lives like ours. And that’s the beauty of her work. This is a brilliant collection; Moshfegh’s rapidly establishing herself as one of the best writers of her generation.

Published 12th January 2017 by Jonathan Cape

First Love – Gwendoline Riley

Neve, a writer in her mid-thirties, is married to Edwyn, an older man. She documents their turbulent relationship alongside an earlier reacquaintance with an ex-boyfriend and the relationships she had with her mother and father. All are manipulative and abusive in different ways and to varying degrees. Riley’s writing is razor sharp. She places the reader in Neve’s position and it never feels less than real. Packs a literal and metaphorical punch, leaving space for interpretation and discussion.

Published 2nd February 2017 by Granta

 

The End We Start From – Megan Hunter

As the sea-level rises around the UK, a woman gives birth to a boy her and her husband name Z. They leave for the mountains where her husband, R, grew up. Before long, queues are forming for food and basics and the family starts to disintegrate as R mistrusts the authorities and the unnamed narrator wants to protect Z. Taut, beautifully written, this tense novella will keep you gripped. I read it in one sitting and returned to it the following day.

Published 18th May 2017 by Picador

 

Little Deaths – Emma Flint

Queens, NYC, 1965. Ruth Malone’s in a bitter custody battle with her ex-husband when her two children Frankie, five, and Cindy, four, go missing from her apartment and are later found murdered. When the police discover Malone drinks, dates and takes care of herself they’re determined to pin the murders on her. A page-turner which explores patriarchal attitudes to women who don’t play the angel. Rage-inducing but gripping.

Published 12th January 2017 by Picador. 

 

Stay With Me – Ayòbámi Adébáyò

When Yejide fails to conceive, her husband, Akin, is convinced by his mother-in-law to take a second wife who will deliver the grandson she so desperately desires. Yejide is horrified at becoming a first wife and Akin feels little better about the arrangement but it will change both of their lives and their marriage for better and for worse. Told from alternating points of view Adébáyò explores the effect of patriarchal society on women and men with thriller-like pace and twists. Gripping and thoughtful.

Published 2nd March 2017 by Canongate.

Take Courage: Anne Brontë and the Art of Life – Samantha Ellis

If you enjoyed the BBC’s To Walk Invisible over Christmas, or can only name two of the Brontë sisters and their work, or have long been a fan of Anne and are glad someone else gets it, then Samantha Ellis’ investigation into who Anne Brontë was, her work and why we know so little about her is one for you. Ellis examines Anne through those who were closest to her and her two novels Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. The Anne Brontë reassessment/revival begins here.

Published 12th January 2017 by Chatto & Windus

 

Difficult Women – Roxane Gay

Third mention for the ‘p’ word but the women in Roxane Gay’s short story collection are only difficult because they break the rules the patriarchy imposes on them. Often they’re punished for it though – from the sisters who are kidnapped to the stripper followed home by a client – and question their worth to society. Written in clear, brutal prose, Gay shows how race, class, sexuality and gender affect average women every single day.

Published 3rd January by Corsair

 

The Things We Thought We Knew – Mahsuda Snaith

Ravine Roy has chronic pain syndrome and hasn’t left her mother’s council flat since her best friend, Marianne, disappeared ten years ago. Now she’s eighteen, her mum’s determined to get her out, starting with voting in the General Election. But Ravine’s got other things to worry about such as writing to Marianne, wondering who her mother’s companion is, and the noises coming from the unoccupied flat next door. If you loved The Trouble with Goats and Sheep or My Name Is Leon, The Things We Thought We Knew is your summer 2017 read.

Published 15th June 2017 by Doubleday

See What I Have Done – Sarah Schmidt

Schmidt takes the infamous case of Lizzie Borden and explores what might have happened on the days surrounding the murder of Borden’s father and stepmother. The narrative moves between Lizzie, her sister Emma, the maid Bridget and a young man called Benjamin, unknown to all but the Borden’s Uncle John, their late-mother’s brother. Schmidt creates a claustrophobic atmosphere placing the reader in the centre of a house stifling with heat and tensions. Gripping.

Published 2nd May by Tinder Press

In the Media: December 2016

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

Post-election coverage is still top of the tree this fortnight:

• Lauren Duca, ‘Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America‘ in Teen Vogue
• Jennifer Gonnerman, ‘Fighting for the Poor Under Trump‘ in The New Yorker
• Molly Ball, ‘President Trump’s Perpetual Campaign‘ in The Atlantic
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ‘Now Is the Time to Talk About What We Are Actually Talking About‘ in The New Yorker
• Barbara Robidoux, ‘Walk On‘ on The Rumpus
• Hadley Freeman, ‘“Don’t play identity politics!” The primal scream of the straight white male‘ in The Guardian
• Masha Gessen, ‘Trump: The Choice We Face‘ in The New York Review of Books
• Gabrielle Bellot, ‘Finding Empathy in the Face of Hate‘ on Literary Hub
• Alison Stine, ‘Wolves‘ on The Rumpus

The other big story has been the revelation that Maria Schneider was raped in Last Tango in Paris:

• Sali Hughes, ‘The callous abuse of Maria Schneider, and the impunity of Hollywood men‘ on The Pool
• Suzanne Moore, ‘Last Tango’s abuse reveals the broken promise of the 1970s sexual revolution‘ in The Guardian
• Helen Lewis, ‘Maria Schneider’s story is no surprise – Hollywood has always treated women as commodities‘ in the New Statesman
• Jessica Tovey, ‘Bertolucci’s justification for the Last Tango rape scene is bogus. It’s called ‘acting’ for a reason‘ in The Guardian

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Rave Sashayed, On men writing women on but alas! the creature grows degenerate
• Sarah Perry, ‘One day I found myself reciting the opening of the novel. I knew the crisis had come’ in The Guardian
• Zadie Smith, ‘On Optimism and Despair‘ in The New York Review of Books
• G X Todd, ‘Insecurity, fear, frustration and helplessness‘ in The Bookseller
• Amanda Nadelberg, ‘How Do We Pay the Poets?‘ on Literary Hub
• Jesmyn Ward, ‘This Was The Year America Finally Saw The South‘ on Buzzfeed
• Kelly Faircloth, ‘The Sweet, Savage Sexual Revolution That Set the Romance Novel Free‘ on Jezebel
• Ellena Savage, ‘From Hemingway to Kathy Acker: Making Art from the Outside‘ on Literary Hub
• Amanda Michalopoulou, ‘Divided times: how literature teaches us to understand “the other”‘ in The Guardian
• Lamorna Ash, ‘Never mind the typography‘ in The TLS
• Marcy Dermansky, ‘For Writers who Are Also the Mothers of Small Children‘ on Literary Hub
• Chantal Braganza, ‘A User’s Guide to Zadie Smith‘ on Hazlitt
• Miriam Toews, ‘How Pacifism Can Lead to Violence and Conflict‘ on Literary Hub
• Nicole Jankowski, ‘Ernest Hemingway and Me: Reflections of an Insomniac Writer‘ on Catapult
• Katharine Noel, ‘Where Is All the Sibling Literature for Adults?‘ on Literary Hub
• Michael Denneny, ‘Ntozake Shange: On a Brilliant Balance of Anger and Poetry‘ on Literary Hub
• Rafia Zakaria, ‘A Feminist Thoreau‘ on Literary Hub
• Dan Chiasson, ‘Emily Dickinson’s Singular Scrap Poetry‘ in The New Yorker
• Petina Gappah, ‘I was a lawyer, but I forced myself to write before I went to work’ in The Guardian
• Clare Sestanovich, ‘Storytelling vs. Oversharing in the Age of Snapchat: On the Work of Rachel Cusk, Claire Louise-Bennett, and Eimear McBride‘ on Literary Hub
• Sarah Franklin, ‘Lose yourself in the microworld of the short story‘ on The Pool

 

Personal essays/memoir:

• Courtney Tenz, ‘Integration Class: On Immigrating to Germany‘ on Catapult
• Lisbeth Zornig Andersen, ‘When Denmark Criminalised Kindness‘ in Granta
• Megan Cummins, ‘Plunge‘ on Guernica
• Jacklyn Janeksela, ‘lane-gweedj‘ on [Pank]
• Antonia Honeywell’s Advent Calendar on her blog
• Yemisi Aribsala ‘Kanda for Christmas‘ on The Writes of Woman
• Linda Wells, ‘Spas Aren’t Only About Beauty, Vanity, or Fun. They’re Also About Grief.‘ on The Cut
• Maureen McCauley Evans, ‘A New Light: How My Daughter’s Pregnancy Made Me Rethink Adoption‘ on Catapult
• Amy Beth Wright, ‘A Separate Dream: Faith, Family, and Knowing When to Let Go‘ on Catapult
• Helena Fitzgerald, ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane: On Life in Airports and Coming Home‘ on Catapult
• Jennifer Kabat, ‘The Fairytale‘ on Granta
• Sarah Weinman, ‘The Year in Addition and Subtraction‘ in Hazlitt
• Kim Fu, ‘The Year in Hyphenates‘ in Hazlitt
• Meg Elison, ‘On Decades of Diaries: Intimate, Profane, Honest‘ on Literary Hub
• Christine Sneed, ‘“It’s very easy to marry, but not so easy to unmarry a person”‘ on The Pool
• Various, ‘Conversations with grandma: ‘When are you going to get married?’‘ in The Guardian
• Anonymous, ‘The Discovery‘ on Finally Knowing Me

Feminism:

• Sirin Kale, ‘The Irish Government Is Seizing an Increasing Number of Abortion Pills‘ on Broadly
• Alanna Evans, ‘One Delightfully Clever & Slightly Shakespearean Way to Fight Trolls‘ on Flare
• Soraya Chemaly, ‘How white supremacist hatred drives acts of violence against powerful women‘ on Salon
• Wanu Udobang, ‘Remembering to Scream‘ on Brittle Paper
• Pearl Osibu, ‘The Unwomanly Feminist‘ on Brittle Paper
• Paris Lees, ‘Fears around gender-neutral toilets are all in the mind‘ in The Guardian
• Various, ‘Four female writers assess the feminist credentials of classic Disney princess films‘ in Stylist
• Ashley Weatherford, ‘The Irrational History of Hating Stretch Marks‘ in The Cut
• Margaret Talbot, ‘The Attorney Fighting Revenge Porn‘ in The New Yorker
• Laura Craik, ‘“It’s OK to allow women to look sexy without baring a breast”‘ on The Pool

Society and Politics:

• Rosalind Adams, ‘Intake: Locked On The Psych Ward‘ on Buzzfeed
• Samira Shackle, ‘40 years ago, the “strikers in saris” were smashing the stereotype of submissive Asian women‘ on The Pool
• Samira Shackle, ‘Muslim women are facing discrimination – and broad reports about “integration” won’t help that‘ on The Pool
• Caroline O’Donoghue, ‘Is it OK to have a single-use friendship?‘ on The Pool
• Tele Ogunyemi, ‘We are not “belligerent,” “dark” or “bitter”‘ on Media Diversified
• Marina Hyde, ‘So many lowlights from the life of Zac Goldsmith – so hard to choose‘ in The Guardian
• Erika Hayasaki, ‘Traces of Times Lost‘ in The Atlantic

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

• Leslie Bennetts, ‘Judge Me, Rank Me, Insult Me, Reject Me: The Contradictions, Cruelty and Genius of Joan Rivers‘ on Lenny

The interviews/profiles:

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in The Cut and The New York Times
• Ali Smith on the Penguin Blog
• Brit Bennett on Electric Literature
• Eileen Myles, Ruth Ozeki, Porochista Khakpour, Anna March and Alexandra Kleeman on Writing the Body on Literary Hub
• Imbolo Mbue on The Rumpus
• Jessie Greengrass on The Writes of Woman
• Val McDermid on Literary Hub
• Eimear McBride in The TLS
• Jia Tolentino on Catapult
• Danielle Dutton on The Millions
• Mary Gaitskill on The Pool
• Zadie Smith in the New Statesman
• Mary Wisniewski on Electric Literature
• Henrietta Rose-Innes on Electric Literature
• Elizabeth Gilbert in The Cut
• Yemisi Aribisala on The Tiger Tales, Chukus and Kitchen Butterfly
• Hao Jingfang in The New York Times
• Erin Wunker on Room
• Heather Phillipson in The Guardian
• Sarah Perry on Waterstones’ 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
• 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