All six finanlists in this year's National Short Story Competition are female. I will never have a story published in MSLexiaMagazine and I will never be allowed enter for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Why does having a penis bar me from all these literary endeavours?
Perhaps I do a literary 'Tootsie'.
4 comments:
In an ideal world, it wouldn't make any difference, but it is an attempt to redress the balance.
There have been studies done that show that women's books get less critical attention in the press, than men''s for instance, and there was a recent furore over a Publisher's Weekly list of the ten best books of the year - all by male writers.
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6704595.html
When it comes to short story competitions though, the majority are judged purely on the story - with no names on manuscripts that has to be purely a question of the merit of the story, and the readers' tastes.randomcat.
Fair comment. I was attempting to provoke a discussion and not to wave a male chauvinist flag. I must look at the references later.
I'm never sure really whether it is a good idea or not, though. It does seem to suggest that there is some kind of innate difference between men's writing and women's writing, and I am not at all sure there is.
There's an old story about science fiction where someone (sorry, can't recall who) claimed that women can't write good hard sceince fiction - that they only write the fluffy stuff. The writer of the original article used James Tiptree Junior as an example - good hard science fiction, good male writer. Except that James Tiptree Junior was the pen name of Alice Sheldon...
Do you think it's possible to tell the gender of a writer without any clues other than the writing?
I wouldn't like to generalise about women's writing - or men's for that matter. Some women do write about the 'softer issues' but some men do as well. I don't think Zadie Smith's or Liz Jensen's writing - both of whom I'm reading at the moment is especially recognisable as female. I'm sure there is still discrimination against works from women, although with the majority of readers of fiction (and probably poetry too) being female, things are not too bad, if you manage to get published...
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