Something Rhymed Literary Salons

Over the last month I’ve been attending a series of literary salons in Central London examining the problem of gender inequality in the literary world and attempting to come up with practical, positive solutions. The salons were run by the talented and generous Emma Claire Sweeney and Emily Midorikawa of Something Rhymed, a blog celebrating female literary friendship. As gender inequality is a topic which I think many female writers are interested in, I thought I’d type up my notes from the salons and share them with you.


The starting point for the discussions was the VIDA count, which has consistently shown a striking imbalance amongst the rates of publication for male and female writers at the major literary publications. For those who don’t know, VIDA is an organisation representing women in the literary arts which seeks to examine, publicise and address gender (and other) imbalances in the literary world.




Salon One: VIDA Count

Michael Caines spoke about unequal representation for female reviewers. Caines speculated that one of the reasons women are poorly represented is due to editors already having a ready pool of tried and tested male journalists at their disposal. He said that we don’t just need more female fiction reviewers but more female reviewers across all categories–women tend to be given the “lighter” stuff whereas men are given more serious subjects, such as politics.

BBC presenter and writer, Harriett Gilbert spoke of her experience, saying that literary editors are far more likely to be women—hers are nearly all female. However, they still tend to choose books by male writers. Her theory is that while women are happy to read books by men and immerse themselves in the male experience, the reverse is not true (this is something that several panellists commented upon over the course of the salons). She believes the problem has far deeper roots than the publishing industry, going all the way back to childhood. After all, it’s easier for a girl to be a tomboy than for a boy to be the reverse. She thinks this is why JK Rowling disguised her sex when writing the Harry Potter books, so that boys could safely walk around with her books. Because of this situation editors need to ferret out the women writers, and women writers should be proactive in seeking reviewing roles. However, alternatives to traditional media should also be considered as publishers are now seeking a variety of publicity and print media is on its way out.






pic 1, morguefile


Salon Two:  So-called Women’s Issues

The second salon analysed why books about women and so-called women’s issues are so often devalued by the literary establishment. Why is it that the experiences, and perspectives, of women are seen as less than that of men? Is this because women have, traditionally, written about the home and family whereas men, as per their historical life roles, have explored, experienced and thus written about the wider world? Why is one experience seen as valid and not the other? Is this the reason for devaluing women’s literature, or is there another reason?

The journalist and literary critic, Arifa Akbar (formerly of The Independent) said that while the idea of women’s fiction is a helpful category, it is also a trap. It means you can be pushed to the side-lines easier. Margaret Atwood suddenly becomes women’s fiction. When women read men’s writing we universalise it, but the reverse doesn’t happen. Conversely, the domestic novel is only domestic when a woman writes it, not when Philip Roth or Karl Ove Knausgård write it. She said that editors need to be very aware and give equal space to women writers—she was unsure if these editors were indeed conscious of not doing so—and that women writers have a duty to make them mindful of this.





Red Books

Salon Three: Genuine Change


Varaidzo, arts and culture editor at gal-dem (an online magazine produced by women of colour), said she’s been quite critical as to the lack of scope in the British publishing industry. But, in some ways, she’s on the opposite side of the panel as her own journey was relatively easy. She attributed this to her growing up during the time of the internet and being able to navigate that space and talk to the people she wanted to fairly easily. Regarding the topic of education and children’s books, she noted that very few children’s authors manage to transcend gender—the boys go out and do things while the girls are introspective.

Orange Prize shortlisted novelist, Jill Dawson said the issue is as much about sexuality, class etc as it is about gender. She said that working class women need more literary role models (currently the women represented in mainstream publishing are mostly from the Oxbridge educated class). As a young woman, she read a lot of African-American women as their writing spoke to her in a way Martin Amis’s writing did not. What interested her was that they had a unique vernacular and voice. They too were struggling (Maya Angelou for example), and their words continued to influence Jill when she became a young, single mother. She encouraged people to think about who and what they’re reading as changing our reading habits and reading more widely is one way of changing the literary landscape.

Former Booker Prize judge and Costa Award shortlisted novelist, Louise Doughty spoke to the benefits of the internet age being that publications can be crowdfunded, there is online publishing, websites etc. For example, VIDA came out of the work of one person. The opportunities for writers now are small but multiple, and while not all ventures will be successful, some will be. While publishers are desperate for new voices, at the same time their (conservative minded) sales and marketing teams are at their backs. These people can only go on what is already selling and are therefore always chasing last year’s successes and unwilling to take risks on new voices.

Melanie Abrahams, the founder of Renaissance One, a literary event company committed to diversity in the arts, said that while there may be a lot of noise made about a title online, that doesn’t necessarily equate to a lot of sales. Traditional publishing has changed very little over the years and the internet doesn’t affect that. She claimed to know a lot of writers who are successful and don’t use social media at all. (I have to admit that this surprised me as I thought even big name writers were expected to use social media these days.)

During the discussion, an audience member who was a professor at both Goldsmiths and New York University spoke to the fact that she was able to choose her own readings for her students at NYU, but at Goldsmiths she had to teach a pre-devised syllabus. The Art of the Novel course, for instance, included only one or two female authors.(Hearing this I felt grateful that my reading list for my MLitt at University of Glasgow was mostly women and, during the second semester, our professor hand-picked a selection of novels which she thought would be of most use to us, having by then gotten to know our writing tastes and styles.)






What do you think? Are you a woman writer, or do you work in publishing? If so, what has your experience been? Regardless, do you have an idea for accelerating change? I’d love to hear so please leave a comment below.



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