AWP and SXSW have come and gone (or maybe FXFU for the antiestablishment types). The expense reports have been turned in, the hangovers have passed but the headaches remain. I am speaking of course about the ongoing underrepresentation of women writers. I first covered the blog-war between Teddy Wayne and Jennifer Weiner on my own blog back in January. Since then Wayne seems to have backed down (presumably because the evidence is not on his side) but Weiner is keeping up the good fight with her most recent blog post wherein she gives a nod to 2011 count. At the [Read more...]

Whenever VIDA publishes a Count, or shares its pie charts, readers observe that men and women submit to magazines, journals, and publishing houses at different rates, and that this might inform the gender ratios we observe. While it makes sense to wonder about what’s going on behind the scenes, I’d like to offer a few notes on why submissions numbers don’t actually hold the answers we’re all looking for.   1. Some editors seem quite pleased when the ratio of women to men published turns out to reflect the gender stats in their submission pool. Why? In these numbers conversations, we often [Read more...]

The Atlantic Monthly Boston Review Granta Harper’s Magazine London Review of Books The New Republic The New York Review of Books The New Yorker The New York Times Book Review Poetry The Threepenny Review     The Times Literary Supplement the Paris Review The Nation

Our most recent count examines the contents of the Best American anthologies in poetry, fiction, and essays. When we released our 2010 Count back in February, a common response from our readers was a request for more information about the data behind our pie charts. With that in mind, we have expanded our presentation to include the tables shown below, which are based on the spreadsheets we use to generate our Count pie charts. We think these tables better represent the data, and reveal more of the complex set of questions and issues raised by it.

“Numbers don’t lie.” “What counts is the bottom line.” Such sayings sound definitive, like the dead-end of a boring story. But as these facts come to light–no longer imagined or guessed at–so does the truth of publishing disparities, the unfortunate footing from which we can begin to change the face of publishing. We are no longer guessing if the world is flat or round; we are wondering how to get from point A to B now that the rules of navigation are public and much clearer. Questions long denied will lead us to new awareness, to challenge current publishing practices, [Read more...]

From Publishers Weekly: “This year we took our annual slugfest to the pub underneath our new office and came up with a list of the year’s top 100 books that could be our best ever.” VIDA takes a look at the outcome of PW’s “slugfest” and considers the results in light of last year’s breakdown. Cheers!

This month we take a look at the Academy Awards given between 1995 – 2010. While we were pleased to find a number of the Academy prizes reflected a gender-balance, the few that reflected what should be the “old” balance, presented new questions to consider.