This Report from the Field is a republication of Kolleen Carney’s personal blog post at https://kolleencarney.com/2017/08/24/82317-pt-2/amp/ regarding the developing controversy...
Centuries pass, yet Russia continues to weave its myths. Traditional Russian folklore is simultaneously bleak yet enchantingly surreal—full of stories...
The following is an adaptation of the presentation “Open-Wide Translation: Centering Intersectional Feminist, Accessible Translating Across Platforms,” given at the...
What it doesn’t feel like: A constant, inherent, unerring wrongness—marrow-deep and strangling like mis-delivered chromosomes tied around my neck. A...
Black Napkin Press is “committed to disrupting the heteronormative white-cis-male-centric publishing industry by publishing and promoting the work of...
Artists have declared their dissent from Trump. #WritersResist, #ArtAfterTrump, and #J20ArtStrike are a sample of many anti-Trump events organized by...
HYSTERIA, a new anthology about writing the female body from Lucky Bastard Press (http://www.luckybastardpress.com/our-books.html), is a collection of poetry, microfiction,...
Jane Hirshfield speaks with poet Leslie McGrath about what it means to be women-poets of their generation. The two met in 2004 at the Bennington Writing Seminars, when Hirshfield was McGrath’s teacher.
We’ve arrived with the numbers for the Best American series, interested to see how women fare on the “Best American” front. Parity has eluded us again. Moreover, your work has appeared, at some point, in these anthologies, and now you’re playing for Team VIDA! While our goals are to point out imbalances, query and explore the implied bias, I’m wondering if you all feel a little conflicted, as though you’re biting the proverbial hand that feeds or, at least, has praised you? (more...)
The writing felt timid to me, overly concerned with explaining myself and my family to an audience I was told to imagine as ignorant about Iran but open-minded and eager to learn. What was never said was that this presumed audience was white and middle class. I was supposed to write for this demographic because they buy the most books.
A feminine academe could bring the poetry calling and practice back to the source, and explore the feminine history of this literary outrider world. And it’s happening already.
In the previous fifteen years, The Academy of American Poet’s prizes went to forty-one men and thirty-nine women. These numbers may seem reassuring, but keep in mind that they are not representative of an overall balance in individual prizes.
When I was asked to write this essay and explore what it means to be a woman who writes for the theatre in the 20th and 21st centuries, I wrestled long and hard with the subject of a) being a woman who writes and b) a woman who writes for the theatre. Are they different things? Should they be?
I do not believe that apparent authoritative literary voices of validation would ever make such a grand claim about a novel written by a woman. I say this because I believe there are many novels by women that are about the same sort of world as presented in Freedom. Sadly, the culture usually calls these books domestic or family sagas.
"I would hope that all readers, writers, and editors who agree that the disparity is, in fact, unfair, will join the discussion and help us to move toward ways to support and encourage the work of more women writers."
"I talk to a lot of attendees––strangers, colleagues, and friends––about which events standout and which events they think didn’t work particularly well. Ultimately, the AWP conference has very little to do with what I think anyway; what matters is what the AWP members and the conference attendees think. Though I don’t get to see much of the conference, I feel very lucky to be able to honestly say I love my job."
"I convinced myself that I was exceptional, that anyone could see my good grades were well earned, my talent apparent. I now know this kind of rationalization has another name: in this case a big, self-justifying pile of it. Because the fact is many of my classmates were rightfully disturbed by my special status."
"The self-defining ways we discuss female sexuality in the lesbian-queer world might help transform how female sexuality is explored in all women's creative nonfiction, and might be of use to any woman in search of a smart, witty rethinking of erotic expression. I say this as a challenge to myself, as well as to all CNF writers and their publishers."
"I actually think there could be another kind of anthem, a more complicated and nebulous anthem that nonetheless loses none of its riot or exuberance, and I love the idea of a gynocentric anthem: I’ve been really interesting in reading and writing such poems."
Adichie herself writes about Africa, or, about Africa in America. A conflagration of geographies that she subtly and heroically describes. New subjects in the here and now.
When I was informed that my baby would arrive on February 27th of 2009, I wrote it down in my calendar.... I was in fact preoccupied with another deadline: my application for the James Merrill House residency, which was due on January 15th. So when I landed in the hospital on January 3rd because my water broke...
