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• Claire Armistead, ‘Is Hilary Mantel’s view of historical fiction out of date?‘ in The Guardian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: October 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.

A woman didn’t win The Man Booker Prize this year but there was still some interesting coverage of the prize and the shortlisted writers:

• Deborah Levy interviewed in the New Statesman
• Marta Bausells, ‘The Rise of the Small Press on the Man Booker Shortlist‘ on Literary Hub
• Ottessa Moshfegh interviewed on the Penguin Blog and in The New Yorker
• ‘How to write a Man Booker novel: six shortlisted authors share their secrets‘ in The Guardian
• Marta Bausells, ‘Inside the World of Judging the Man Booker Prize‘ on Literary Hub

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Zadie Smith, ‘Dance lessons for writers‘ in The Guardian
• Dave McKenna, ‘The Writer Who Was Too Strong To Live‘ on Deadspin
• Jane Bernstein, ‘How I Helped Tell a Soldier’s Story‘ on Literary Hub
• Emily St. John Mandel, ‘The Gone Girl With The Dragon Tattoo On The Train‘ onFiveThirtyEight
• Megan Marshall, ‘Elizabeth and Alice‘ in The New Yorker
• Rachel Vorona Cote, ‘Are You an Anne Shirley or an Emily Starr?‘ on Literary Hub
• Seo Hee Im, ‘Sex, violence and The Vegetarian: the brutality of Han Kang’s Booker winner‘ in The Guardian
• Sara Nović, ‘Who Can Speak for the Deaf Community‘ on Literary Hub
• Rachael Nevins, ‘Fall to Pieces: On Elena Ferrante and My Own Frantumaglia‘ on Hazlitt
• Maddie Rodriguez ‘Anne Brontë, Anger, and the Resonance of Assault in the Tenant of Wildfell Hall‘ on BookRiot
• Shelley DeWees, ‘The Publisher Who Rejected Jane Austen‘ on Literary Hub
• Eleanor Brown, ‘‘I like the way he kisses my hand’: My grandmother’s life in jazz age Paris‘ in The Guardian
• M.L. Stedman, ‘On First Seeing Your Novel on the Big Screen‘ on Literary Hub
• Chloe Caldwell, ‘What I Think of the Fact That You Keep Asking Me What My Family Thinks of My Writing‘ on Catapult
• Sarah Schulman, ‘White Writer‘ in The New Yorker
• Sarah Hughes, ‘Shirley Jackson: the US queen of gothic horror claims her literary crown‘ in The Observer
• Ali Smith, ‘Ali Smith on the prime of pop artist Pauline Boty‘ in The Guardian
• Leah Schnelbach, ‘Imaginative Anthropology: In Celebration of Ursula K. Le Guin‘ on Tor.Com
• Nneka Okona, ‘On Travel Memoirs by Black Women Writers‘ on Literary Hub
• James Lasdun, ‘How Patricia Highsmith’s Mr Ripley Rises from Genre to Myth‘ on Literary Hub
• Wendy Jones, ‘What was really going on with English women?‘ in The Guardian
• MariNaomi, ‘The Making of a Comics Memoir‘ on Catapult
• Margaret Drabble, ‘I am not afraid of death. I worry about living’ in The Guardian
• Meg Elison, ‘If Women Wrote Men the Way Men Write Women‘ on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

Personal essays/memoir:

• Sarah Thomas, ‘Inheritance and Time Travel‘ on Catapult
• Ciara O’Rourke, ‘The Other Sister‘ in Seattle Met
• Michelle Tea, ‘A Walking Tour Of The Places Where I Hit Rock Bottom‘ on Buzzfeed
• Dianca Potts, ‘Hallowed Hell House‘ on Lenny
• Alyssa Martino, ‘Vacancies‘ on Catapult
• Eli Goldstone, ‘Bad Dreams‘ on Granta
• Jodi Ettenberg, ‘Learning to Cope With Chronic Pain (And Why I’m Establishing a Home Base)‘ on Legal Nomads
• Mila Jaroniec, ‘Imprecise Magic‘ on Lenny
• Stephanie Land, ‘The Love of a Thousand Muskoxen: Grieving a Love Lost to Time and Sickness‘ on Longreads
• Sonia Weiser, ‘Scrabble With My Mum‘ on Catapult
• Nimko Ali, ‘What does it feel like to flee war as young child?‘ on The Pool
• Kelsey McKinney, ‘The Art of the Box Score‘ on Hazlitt
• Melissa Matthewson, ‘On Coupling: An Inventory‘ in Guernica
• Nadja Spiegelman, ‘When Beauty Makes You Vulnerable‘ on The Cut
• Emily Alford, ‘How Makeup Helped Me Reclaim My Face‘ on Buzzfeed
• Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers, ‘Learning to Embrace Guanxi: On Living Communally in China‘ on Literary Hub
• Niina Pollari, ‘Minor Gains‘ on Catapult
• Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, ‘On Being the Media’s Token Muslim Girl‘ on The Cut
• Lily Dunn, ‘The Fog and the Sea‘ on Granta
• Sonya Chung, ‘How I Learned That Beauty Doesn’t Have To Hurt‘ on Buzzfeed
• JD Ho, ‘Vegetables for a Dead President‘ on Catapult
• Rushaa Louise Hamid, ‘How I Found Myself When My Skin Changed Its Identity‘ on Buzzfeed

Feminism:

• Bibi Lynch, ‘Do not brand me a failure. I’m a survivor. All unhappily childless people are’ in The Guardian
• Heather Skyler, ‘The Boy Who Groped Me and the Flute Case That Saved Me‘ on Catapult
• Liz Meriwether, ‘Laughing Until We Cry: Conversations About Getting Flashed, Grabbed, and Groped‘ on The Cut
• Rachel Klein, ‘When the Body Breaks its Silence‘ on Catapult
• Andrea Bennett, ‘Chain Reaction‘ on Masionneuve
• Lynn Enright, ‘Why does it feel awkward to admit you’re on a diet?‘ on The Pool
• Sophie Wilkinson, ‘Addressing the toxic combination of misogyny and homophobia‘ on The Pool
• Laurie Penny, ‘Fear of a Feminist Future‘ on The Baffler
• Daisy Buchanan, ‘When women are surrounded by misogyny, they are going to internalise it‘ on The Pool

Society and Politics:

• Molly Ball, ‘Trump’s Graying Army‘ on The Atlantic
• Emma Bracy, ‘We Are Always Defined From a Distance‘ on Hazlitt
• Gaby Hinsliff, ‘Are we now persecuted for speaking up for the vulnerable?‘ on The Pool
• Ijeoma Oluo, ‘I’m not ready for the Obama era to end‘ in The Guardian
• Eimear McBride, ‘Brexit has disfigured the tolerant Britain I’ve known‘ in The Guardian
• Alex Wagner, ‘Marriage After Trump‘ on The Atlantic
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Gloria Steinem and Rashida Jones, ‘To the First Lady, With Love‘ in The New York Times
• Molly Ball, ‘In Ferguson, the Seeds of Trump’s Defeat‘ in The Atlantic

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

• Gabrielle Bellot, ‘Hayao Miyazaki and the Art of Being a Woman‘ on The Atlantic

The interviews/profiles:

• Naomi Alderman on The Writes of Woman and in The Guardian
• Vanessa Hua in The Los Angeles Review of Books
• Belle Boggs and Monica Youn on Literary Hub
• Toni Morrison on Literary Hub
• Emma Donoghue on Lenny
• Emily Witt on Literary Hub
• Therese Oneill on Salon
• Larissa Pham on Electric Literature
• Jess Kidd on Jo Hogan Writes
• Irenosen Okojie in 3:am Magazine
• Hannah Hart on Hello Giggles
• Claudia Rankine in The Guardian
• Joanna Kavenna on Literary Hub
• Britt Bennett on The Rumpus
• Zadie Smith in The New York Times

The regular columnists:

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

In the Media: October 2016, Part One

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

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

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

Photograph by Kate Neil

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

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

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

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

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

Personal essays/memoir:

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

Feminism:

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

Society and Politics:

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

The interviews/profiles:

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

The regular columnists:

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

In the Media, June 2016, Part One

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

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

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

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

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

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

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

Personal essays/memoir:

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

Feminism:

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

Society and Politics:

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

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

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

The interviews/profiles:

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

The regular columnists:

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

In the Media: 22nd March 2015

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

The big news this week is that Kath Viner became the first woman appointed to the role of editor-in-chief at The Guardian in its 194 year history. The first woman to edit a UK broadsheet and only the second EIC of The Guardian to have attended a (selective) state school.

Unfortunately, the other trend in articles this week have been about the abuse women have suffered from a variety of sources; Heidi Stevens wrote in the Chicago Tribune ‘Hate mail lesson: Uncombed hair threatens the natural order‘; Sarah Xerta wrote ‘The Brick Wall: The Intersection of Patriarchy, Privilege, Anger, and Language‘ on VIDA; Juliet Annan ‘is a Lazy Feminist‘ in publishing on the Penguin Blog; Sara Pascoe wrote ‘The hymen remains an evolutionary mystery – and the focus of the oppression of women’s sexuality‘ in The Guardian; Katie McDonough wrote ‘If you’re shocked by this Penn State frat’s nude photo ring, you’re not paying attention‘ on Salon; Jessie Burton took ‘Speakers’ Corner‘ on Hunger TV; Claire Byrne wrote, ‘One sordid, gross and offensive comment must have been thought up while he sat there scratching himself in his grey fading jocks. I wonder what makes people think it’s acceptable to make comments like that?‘ in the Irish Independent, and Ashley Judd wrote, ‘Forget Your Team: Your Online Violence Toward Girls and Women Is What Can Kiss My Ass‘ on Mic.

And there’s been a number of articles about race; Rebecca Carroll wrote ‘Calling out one racist doesn’t make white people any less complicit in supremacy‘ in The Guardian; Jia Tolentino wrote ‘How to Talk About Race With Your Starbucks Barista: A Guide‘ in Jezebel; Maya Goodfellow wrote, ‘Climate change is easier to ignore because right now it’s people of colour who suffer the most‘ on Media Diversified; Vulture interviewed Claudia Rankine on ‘Serena, Indian Wells, and Race‘ and KCRW’s Bookworm asked her about writing the racial ‘other’.

This week’s Harper Lee news: To Kill a Mockingbird was named #78 on The Guardian list of The 100 Best Novels; Casey N. Cep reported on ‘Harper Lee’s Abandoned True-Crime Novel‘ in The New Yorker, and Jonathon Sturgeon asked ‘Is It Time to Get Hopeful About Harper Lee?‘ on Flavorwire.

And prizes this week went to Louise O’Neill who won the inaugural YA Book Prize and Louise Erdrich won the Library of Congress Award.

The best of the rest articles/essays:

• Mary Chris Escobar, ‘In Defence of Fluff‘ on Women Writers, Women’s Books
• Lizzy Kremer, ‘Let’s All Fall in Love: Reading and Romance‘ on Publishing for Humans
• Margaret Dilloway, ‘on Disobedient and Difficult Female Characters‘ on Read Her Like an Open Book
• Andrea Calabretta, ‘Land of Fire and Ice‘ in Litro
• Bryce R. Covert, ‘When Men Want Kids — and Women Aren’t So Sure‘ in The Cut
• Chika Unigwe, ‘The Transformation of Mama Paulina‘ in Guernica
• Habibe Jafarian, ‘How to Be a Woman in Tehran‘ (tr. Salar Abdoh) in Guernica
• Melissa Harrison, ‘Rivertones 3‘ (two songs to accompany her new novel At Hawthorn Time on Caught By the River
• The Morning News Tournament of Books An Untamed State vs Station Eleven
• Rachel Brownson, ‘The Resurrection of the Body: On Family, Mental Illness, and Grief‘ in The Toast
• Shonda Rhimes at The Human Rights Campaign Gala in Los Angeles, 2015 on Medium
• Sarah Perry, ‘Sherlock’s swansong: the ideal Holmes expedition‘ in The Guardian
• Laura Sook Duncombe, ‘Literary Ladies Cage Fight: Winter of Our Discontent‘ in The Butter
• Sara Alaica, ‘Over the Mountains‘ in Vela
• Andre Gerard, ‘Names, Texts and WWI in To the Lighthouse‘ in Berfois
• Andre Gerard, ‘The Odyssey, The Times and Howard’s End in To the Lighthouse‘ in Berfois
• Andre Gerard, ‘Virgil, Tolstoy and War in To the Lighthouse‘ in Berfois
• Zadie Smith, ‘Yates Lane, NW8‘ in Five Dials
• Lynn Melnick, ‘First Loves‘ on Poetry Foundation
• Rita Dove, ‘Homage to Toni Morrison‘ on Critical Mass
• Brigid Schulte, ‘Why time is a feminist issue‘ on Daily Life
• Emily Drabble, ‘Carnegie medal and Kate Greenaway 2015 shortlists announced‘ in The Guardian
• Catharine Morris, ‘Ali Smith at the Wapping Project‘ on the TLS Blog
• Caroline Criado-Perez, ‘If the UK government doesn’t protect exploited domestic workers, it is complicit in slavery‘ in the New Statesman
• Roopa Farooki, ‘Making Time to Write‘ on the Tinder Press Blog
• Elaine Feeney, ‘Untitled‘ (on what it’s like to die) on The Bogman’s Cannon
• Rafi Schwartz, ‘Male Science-Fiction Authors Discuss The Women Writers Who Influenced Them‘ on Good
• Lorna Bradbury, ‘Picture books are not just for babies‘ in the Telegraph
• Thea Lenarduzzi, ‘When Virginia found her Rachel?‘ on the TLS Blog
• Julie Zeilinger, ‘This Author Is Exposing the Sexist Double Standard in Children’s Literature‘ on Mic
• Emma Hogan, ‘The Sweet Sting of Muriel Spark‘ on Intelligent Life
• Sari Botton, ‘Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep 10 Years Later‘ on Longreads
• Heather Havrilesky, ‘Like a Prayer‘ in Aeon
• Jeanette Winterson, ‘on The Waves‘ on the Penguin Blog
• Elif Shafak, ‘As storytellers, we speak for pluralism and democracy‘ in The Observer

• Liz Blocker, ‘Things We Don’t Talk About: On Coming Out to My Family‘ on The Toast
• Jaki McCarrick, ‘The Genesis of Belfast Girls‘ on CloudNine
• Deborah Smith, ‘Writing Against the Grain: Contemporary Korean Women to Watch‘ on For Books’ Sake
• Leslie Jamison, ‘Enough About Me‘ in The Atlantic
• Allison Williams, ‘Women and the Global Imagination: Sweet Time‘ on Prairie Scooner
• Anna Ross, ‘Report from the Field: I Don’t Know How She Does It‘ on VIDA
• Ilana Masad, ‘On Hebrew and Living in Gendered Language‘ in The Toast
• Leesa Cross-Smith, ‘Why A Well-Written Story May Be Rejected, Or, Every Editor Has Their Things‘ on The Review Review
• Leesa Cross-Smith, ‘First Tastes and Endeavors‘ on Real Pants
• Tania James, ‘What Writers Can Gain From Seeing the World Through Different Eyes‘ in The Atlantic
• Kim Phillips-Fein, ‘Why Workers Won’t Unite‘ in The Atlantic
• Anne Hull, ‘For Hardee’s workers, it’s not a parable, it’s a job‘ in The Washington Post
• Ainehi Edoro, ‘Why Zadie Smith Tops Adichie’s List of Women Who Write Well and Dress Well‘ on Brittle Paper
• April Bernard, ‘Laura’s World‘ (on Laura Ingalls Wilder) in the New York Review of Books
• Elizabeth Mills, ‘Liminal Space, or: Depression, Transitioning, and What’s in Between‘ in The Toast
• Ashley Ford, ‘Disrupting Domesticity: Take Care‘ in The Butter
• Aeman Ansari, ‘Origin Story‘ on Hazlitt
• Sophie Gilbert, ‘Why Are Art Heists So Fascinating?‘ in The Atlantic
• Jessie Burton, ‘A Week in the Life of the Novelist‘ in the Wall Street Journal
• Hadley Freeman, ‘I had anorexia – but not because I wanted to look like a fashion model‘ in The Guardian
• Harriet Alida Lye, ‘The New Occupation of Paris‘ in Vice
• Nicole Cliffe, ‘Trapped in the Stairwell: My Birth Story‘ in The Toast
• Felicity Cloake, ‘So hot right now: the peppers that prove there’s a perv in all of us‘ in the New Statesman
• Sady Doyle, ‘Season of the witch: why young women are flocking to the ancient craft‘ in The Guardian
• Alice Hoffman, ‘My inspiration: Mary Poppins‘ in The Guardian
• Tracey Thorn, ‘There’s no magic to raising twins – I just had to find my own brand of baby care‘ in the New Statesman
• Jessica Levine, ‘Living Time, Writing Time: Narrating the Fourth Dimension in Fiction‘ on Bloom
• Susan Pinker, ‘Why face-to-face contact matters in our digital age‘ in The Guardian
• Bianca Stone, ‘The House With Feet: The Dire Importance of Ruth Stone’s Bequest‘ on VIDA
• Jonathon Sturgeon, ‘Zoella’s Clockwork Novels: Fanfiction, Ghostwriters, and the Bizarre, Automated Future of Publishing‘ on Flavorwire
• Rebecca Scherm, ‘New Genres: The Worm in the Apple‘ on Electric Literature
• Alison Flood, ‘How come the romantic novel of the year is a work of Young Adult fiction?‘ in The Guardian
• Gabrielle Glaser, ‘The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous‘ in The Atlantic
• Rebecca Mead, ‘Sole Cycle‘ in The New Yorker
• Kate Garrett, ‘Why We Do Poetry‘ on Pankhearst
• Robin Rinaldi, ‘Then They Took Off Their Clothes and Did That Thing‘ on Book Keeping
• Judith Thurman, ‘Doll’s Play‘ in The New Yorker
• Monique Rivalland and Louise France, ‘i’m a teen, there 4 i tweet‘ in The Times
• Edith Hall, ‘Challenging the Classical Conservatives‘ on Edithorial
• Margaret Atwood, ‘Game of Thrones: “Real people, every murderous one”‘ in The Observer
• Moira Redmond, ‘Judging a book by its title: when books don’t live up to their names‘ in The Guardian
• Rebecca Mascull and Louise Walters, ‘Moon Tiger discussion‘ on Rebecca Mascull’s blog
• Eve Makis, ‘on Cyprus‘ on Isabel Costello’s Literary Sofa
• Judith Shulevitz, ‘In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas‘ in The New York Times
• Sasha Garwood, ‘Trigger warning: in which intent and outcome are so rarely coincident‘ on The F Word

The interviews:

• Maggie Nelson in Guernica
• Laxmi Narayan Tripathi in Guernica
• Caitlin and Caz Moran on The Debrief
• Rachel Cusk on Foxed Quarterly
• Miranda July in The Scotsman
• Laura Munson on Blogcritics
• Kim Gordon in The NME and on It’s Nice That
• Robin Rinaldi on Salon
• Kirsty Gunn and Deborah Levy on the LRB Bookshop Podcast
• Emma Healey in Woman
• Kate Forsyth on New Australian Women Writers Challenge Blog
• Azar Nafisi in the New Humanist
• Lauren Olivier in The Guardian and on the Huffington Post
• Zen Cho and Stephanie Feldman on Electric Literature
• PP Wong on This Is Writing
• Naja Marie Aidt on Maisonneuve
• Eula Bliss and Kate Hamer on The Guardian Books’ Podcast
• Lucy Knisley on Publishers Weekly
• Polly Teale on Northern Soul

If you want some fiction/poetry to read:

• ‘Andromeda‘ by Sam Mills in Litro
• ‘Calypso in Therapy‘ by Louise Palfreyman in Litro
• ‘The Tikbalang‘ by Bethany W. Pope in Litro
• ‘Petrification‘ by Ruth Brandt in Litro
• ‘Fimbulwinter‘ by Francoise Harvey in Litro
• ‘Arcadia, Mars‘ by Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers in Guernica
• ‘Subcortical‘ by Lee Conell in Guernica
• ‘An Optical Illusion‘ by Eimear Ryan on Long Story, Short
• ‘Postal Worker and Housewife‘ by Nellie Hermann on Blunderbuss
• An extract from The Holiday by Nell Osbourne on Goldfish
• ‘Caterpillars‘ by Hallie Bateman on Blunderbuss
• ‘The Slanted Life of Emily Dickinson‘ by Rosanna Bruno
• ‘Erasure Methods‘ by Annie Ostlund on Electric Literature
• ‘The Matter of Seggri‘ by Ursula K. Le Guin on poliscifi
• ‘Initiation‘ by Kamilah Aisha Moon in The Offing
• ‘I looked for you, I called your name‘ by Laura Van Den Berg on Bookanista
• ‘Routine‘ by Arike Oke in Litro
• ‘A-Z of the Death Drive‘ by Deborah Levy in Five Dials
• ‘Talking With the Dead‘ by Claire Fuller on her blog
• ‘Tra le righe/Between the Lines‘ by Mati Colarossi (tr. Mati Colarossi) on Parallel Texts

Or some non-fiction:

• A new introduction to The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf on the Penguin Blog
• An extract from Ghettoside by Jill Leovy
• ‘Escape from New York‘ by Ellen Willis from The Essential Ellen Willis on The Village Voice

The lists:

• 12 Super Short Stories You Can Read in a Flash on the Huffington Post
• Read Her Now: Five Women to Translate in 2015 on All Wrongs Reversed
• Five things we learnt… from Caitlin Moran at WOW on the Southbank Centre
• How Do You Get Over Someone? 15 Books to Get You Through a Breakup With Your Dignity Intact on Bustle
• 3 New Books to Read If You Loved The Girl on the Train in Glamour
• From Zadie Smith To Helen Oyeyemi And Emily Brontë, Bestselling Female Authors Who Nailed Their Biggest Hit Novel Under The Age Of 30 in Stylist
• 7 YA Reads That Will Sweep You Up in Politics on the Huffington Post
• 15+ Top Indian Women Authors Whose Books Should Be On Your Summer Reading List on Polka Cafe
• 10 Best Coming-of-Age Books You’ve Never Read on Publishers Weekly
• 17 Things We Just Learned About Elena Ferrante From Her Paris Review Interview on Vulture
• 10 Poets of Colour we Discovered (or Rediscovered) in 2014 on Media Diversified
• Spring Books Guide: 22 Novels, Memoirs, and Collections We Can’t Wait to Read in Vogue
• Kat Brown’s How to write a dystopian YA novel in 10 easy steps in the Telegraph
• IRL: Nonfiction to Read if You Loved AMERICANAH on BookRiot

In the Media: 8th March 2015

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

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

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

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

The best of the rest articles/essays:

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

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

The interviews:

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

If you want some fiction/poetry to read:

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

Or some non-fiction:

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

The lists:

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

In the Media: 14th December 2014

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

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

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

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

The best of the rest articles/essays:

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

The interviews:

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

If you want some fiction or poetry to read:

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

Or some non-fiction:

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

And the lists:

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

In the Media: 7th December 2014

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

This week brought the news that the police involved in the deaths of Mike Brown and Eric Garner would not stand trial. Reaction came from many people. Janee Woods writes, ‘A Different Kind of Justice‘ in Guernica; Roxane Gay, ‘What he St Louis Rams know about Ferguson is a righteous glimpse of the way forward‘ in The Guardian; Mallory Ortberg, ‘Eric Garner’s Killer Won’t Be Indicted‘ on The Toast.

It’s fitting that Claudia Rankine’s Citizen was published recently. Here it’s discussed in The New York Times and on PBS.

It’s that time of year; the round-ups started weeks ago but this week they’ve proved impossible to ignore. First up is Joanna Walsh, creator of #ReadWomen2014 on the Shakespeare and Company blog and Sinéad Gleeson in The Irish Times. While The Millions do fantastic ‘A Year in Reading’ round-ups. Here’s Haley Mlotek, Karen Joy Fowler, Emily Gould, Laura van den Berg, Celeste Ng and Lydia Kiesling. Huffington Post has its ‘Best Books of 2014‘; Electric Literature asks ‘Was 2014 the Year of the Debut?‘; ‘Three million voters reveal the books of 2014‘ on Stylist; ‘The 24 Best Fiction Books of 2014‘ on Buzzfeed along with ‘32 of the Most Beautiful Book Covers of 2014‘; The Independent has ‘The best debuts‘ The New York Times has ‘The 10 Best Books of 2014‘; Bustle has ‘10 Female Authors That Ruled 2014‘, while Slate has ‘The 22 Best Lines of 2014‘, ‘27 Books You Shouldn’t Have Overlooked in 2014‘ and an all-female, yes, you read that correctly, an all-female – by choice not design – ‘Best Books of 2014‘.

Ayelet Waldman took to Twitter to comment on her non-inclusion in The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2014. You can read about it in The Guardian and Erin Keane responds on Salon. While Laura Miller tells us ‘What I learned from reading two decades worth of NYT notable books lists‘ also on Salon.

The best of the rest articles/essays:

• Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, ‘African Books for Western Eyes‘ on The New York Times
• Emily Nurenberger, ‘On Chick Lit‘ on her blog
• Zoe Todd, ‘An Indigenous Feminist’s Take on the Ontological Turn: ”ontology is just another word for colonialism‘ on her blog
• ‘Snapshots from a Life: Egyptian Novelist Radwa Ashour, 1946-2014‘ on Arablit
• Julie Naughton, ‘In Loving Color: Diversity in Romance Publishing, 2014‘ in Publisher’s Weekly
• Marie Hansen, ‘Reconciling My Feminism With My Beauty Mag Obsession‘ on Huffington Post
• Elif Shafak on why she writes in English and Turkish on English Pen
• Sarah Weinman, ‘The Real Lolita‘ in Hazlitt
• Rohan Maitzen, ‘Sex, Style and Sewage Farms: Winifred Holtby and Virginia Woolf‘ in 3:am Magazine
• Tamzin Baker, ‘La Milonguera‘ on Guernica
• Carole DeSanti asks ‘Why Is American book publishing so white?‘ in The Guardian (here is your ‘don’t read the comments’ warning)
• Julie R. Enszer, celebrates ‘Leslie Feinberg, Transgender Warrior‘ on The Butter
• Anne Lamott on forgiveness on Salon
• Sadie Stein ‘Angry Birds‘ in The Paris Review
• Alison Willmore, ‘Reece Witherson Plays the Year’s Most Satisfying Female Character in Wild‘ on Buzzfeed
• Cindy Lamothe, ‘Fireworks in June‘ on Guernica
• Jenn Lyons, ‘I Hate…Strong Female Characters‘ on Rewriting Mary Sue
• An all-female issue of The Critical Flame
• Kathryn Schulz, ‘Talking to Cheryl Strayed About What Made Wild Work‘ on Vulture
• Roxane Gay, ‘Our Stories‘ on The Butter
• Preeti Singh, ‘Are India’s young adults ready for LGBT literature?‘ on Mid-day
• Dan Chiasson on Olena Kalytiak Davis in The New Yorker
• Alexandra Kleeman on Fruitarians in The Guardian
• Alison Phipps, ‘The Dark Side of the Impact Agenda’ in THE
• Mary-Lan Tan on being nominated for the Bad Sex in Fiction award (YouTube)
• Jacqueline Wright, ‘What Kind of Girl‘ on Lena Dunham in Standard Issue
• Rebekah Frumkin, ‘The Abyss‘ in Granta
• Marina Benjamin on selfies on Various Small Fires
• An interestingly structured review of Valeria Luiselli’s Faces in the Crowd on Open Letters Monthly
• Ann Leckie, ‘What Makes Me Happy‘ in The Guardian
• Jill Lepore, ‘Wonder Woman: the feminist‘ in The Guardian
• Megham Daum on personal essays on Salon
• Robert MacFarlane on Nan Shepherd on the BBC (iPlayer available until Tuesday 9th)
• ‘The End of Alt Lit‘ on VIDA, includes interviews with Alexandra Naughton, Diane Marie and Lizzy Yizzil
• A Small Sampling of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Prescient Wisdom and Where To Find It on Electric Literature

The interviews:

• Herta Müller in The Paris Review
• Jessie Burton in The Guardian and on the BBC
• A round table discussion, including Jennifer Bartlett and Jillian Weise on ‘Disability and Poetry‘ on Poetry Foundation
• Jane Stubbs in Nudge
• Trisha Ashley on Tara Ford’s blog
• Meghan Daum (at 11.53) on The Gist on Slate and on bookforum
• Lydia Davis interviewing Dan Gunn (her questions are interesting) on Music and Literature
• Jane Smiley on The Guardian books podcast
• Jacqueline Woodson on Publishers Weekly
• Elif Shafak in The Guardian
• Samantha Norman on Shiny New Books

If you want some fiction/poetry to read:

• Three short pieces by Livia Franchini in The Quietus
• ‘Hopper’s Women‘ by Emily Carroll
• ‘My Father’s Poison‘ by Carrie Shippers on AGNI Online
• An extract from Butterflies in November by Audur Ava Ólafsdóttir (translated by Brian Fitzgibbon) on Guernica
• ‘Nostalgia‘ by Carol Ann Duffy in The TLS
• ‘Come Make Love With Us‘ by Cari Luna in Midnight Breakfast
• ‘Lost Love Lounge‘ by Cassie Pruyn on AGNI Online
• ‘A Mexican Fairytale‘ by Leonora Carrington on Weird Fiction Review
• An extract from The Affairs of Others by Amy Grace Lloyd on One Book Lane
• ‘The Lie Tree‘ by Jules Archer on The Toast
• ‘Grandfather’s Loop‘ by Marianne Morris on The Literateur
• ‘Grass‘ by Christina Sanders in Litro

The lists:

• The Best Dystopian Novels Everyone Should Read on Huffington Post
• 5 Great Books to Read in December on Buzzfeed
• 30 Women Novelists You Should Know #17: Laura McBride (read the whole series for far, it’s great) on Lynn Kanter’s blog
• 25 Genre Novels that Should Be Classics on Flavorwire (although that’s the strangest definition of genre novel I’ve ever seen, how about ‘books’ instead?)
• 35 Susan Sontag Quotes on Art, Writing and Life on Flavorwire
• 10 Great Books to Read Based on Your Favorite New Movies on Huffington Post
• Pictures from the TV adaptation of The Casual Vacancy in The Guardian

And the things I’ve most enjoyed reading this week:

• Tim Adams interviews Jenny Diski in The Observer
• Stephanie Feldman, ‘Great Local Moms in History‘ on The Toast (written after a profile of her focused on her being a mother)
• Rebecca Solnit, ‘Las Vegas and the Global Casino We Call Wall Street‘ on Guernica
• Adelle Waldman, ‘An Answer to the Novel’s Detractors‘ in The New Yorker
• Mallory Ortberg, ‘The Fictional Spinster Classification Index‘ on The Toast
• Sarah Perry interviewed on You Wrote the Book!

In the Media: 23rd November 2014

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

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

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

The best of the rest articles/essays:

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

The interviews:

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

If you want some fiction/poetry to read:

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

The lists:

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

And the best things I’ve read this week:

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