From Sally Rooney to Raven Leilani, female novelists have captured the literary zeitgeist, with more buzz, prizes and bestsellers than men. But is this cultural shift something to celebrate or rectify?In March, Vintage, one of the UK’s largest literary fiction divisions, announced the five debut novelists it would be championing this year: Megan Nolan, Pip Williams, Ailsa McFarlane, Jo Hamya and Vera Kurian.All five of them are women. But you could be forgiven for not noticing it, so commonplace are female-dominated lists in 2021. Over the past 12 months, almost all of the buzz in fiction has been around young women: Patricia Lockwood, Yaa Gyasi, Raven Leilani, Avni Doshi, Lauren Oyler. Ask a novelist of any gender who they are reading and they will almost certainly mention one of Rachel Cusk, Ottessa Moshfegh, Rachel Kushner, Gwendoline Riley, Monique Roffey or Maria Stepanova. Or they will be finding new resonances in Anita Brookner, Zora Neale Hurston, Natalia Ginzburg, Octavia Butler, Ivy Compton-Burnett. The energy, as anyone in the publishing world will tell you, is with women.It’s only relatively recently that fiction written by a woman about intimate subjects like sex has been classed as literary fictionClass is the dirty secret of publishing. Working-class male writers are now expected to answer for a past that isn’t oursMen think that to be allowed a place at the table, they need to have the right views and be these nice guysWhy wasn’t there uproar in the media... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2021-05-16 06:00:48 UTC ]
BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and disabled authors are writing some of the most thought-provoking, original, and memorable literary fiction works. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2025-04-14 11:45:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel literature laureate and a giant of Latin American letters for decades, has died, his son said Sunday. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2025-04-14 02:33:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Crystal Maldonado, Julie Murphy, and other authors discuss the importance of joyful representation. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2025-04-11 04:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Influential novelists are imagining what women’s lives might look like without the demands of partners and children. Continue reading at The Atlantic
[ The Atlantic | 2025-04-04 12:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Mohr, who translated such German novelists as Alina Bronsky, chronicled the Berlin music scene in a 2018 book, and helped bring to life a number of musicians’ memoirs, died at his home in Brooklyn on March 31. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2025-04-01 04:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Mohr, who translated such German novelists as Alina Bronsky, chronicled the Berlin music scene in a 2018 book, and helped bring to life a number of musicians’ memoirs, died at his home in Brooklyn on March 31. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2025-04-01 04:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Booksellers take stand against influence of conservative billionaire by limiting orders of his company’s books and placing them on lower shelvesA conservative Catholic billionaire and media owner is facing an independent bookshop rebellion in France over his influence in the publishing... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2025-03-22 06:00:42 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Two Dollar Radio has been quietly rocking the publishing world since its inception in 2005. The Ohio-based indie publisher and “family outfit” turns twenty this year, and we at Lit Hub want to extend a hearty happy birthday. In a literary landscape that’s often knocked for a fear of risk-taking,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2025-03-14 18:01:37 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Climate change is conspicuously absent from most realist, literary fiction set in the present day. Hurricanes, wildfires, floods, droughts and other natural disasters are part of our daily lives, yet they’re absent, save for brief mentions of a news clip for a college protest from much of our... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2025-03-04 12:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
This week on The Lit Hub Podcast: How the publishing world can respond to Trump, and “What energizes you?” | Lit Hub Radio “When in doubt, leave the reaction out.” Eric Puchner on how to be funny when writing a novel. | Lit Hub Craft Ted Hamm on how Jimmy Breslin and Langston Hughes each […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2025-02-21 11:30:16 UTC ]
More news stories like this
“You see, but you do not observe.” –Sherlock Holmes, “A Scandal in Bohemia” * It all started with a book that made me curious. I was on a house call in Georgetown, invited to browse the personal book collection of a woman who used to be a professional rare book dealer like me. I spent […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2025-02-19 10:58:39 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Sophie Lewis chronicles the rise and fall of #girlboss feminism: “The funeral for ‘trickle-down feminism,’ eerily, keeps repeating itself, suggesting that, every time we report that the girlboss is dead, we’re being wishful.” | Lit Hub Criticism Rebecca Romney on unearthing a legacy of... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2025-02-18 11:30:57 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Out of 1,100 submissions, writer Giada Scodellaro’s Ruins, Child has won the 2024 Novel Prize, and will be published early next year. The Novel Prize is awarded biennially to an unpublished work of literary fiction and “rewards novels that explore and expand the possibilities of the form, and... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2025-02-13 18:21:05 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Regular bookstores might be dying—but bookstores dedicated to romance novels are thriving thanks to TikTok and a desire for third places. Throughout Harvard Square, there are many bookshop brimming with the latest literary fiction and intellectual memoirs, patronized by scholarly types. But in... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2025-02-13 10:30:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
1. Check the cover for clues. Literary fiction will have the title in Helvetica along with amorphous shapes in shades of that year’s Pantone color. Genre fiction will have a little cutout showing the face of either a wizard or a rakish duke. It opens to reveal the whole picture, and they’re... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2025-02-07 12:15:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
This week, the book-reading internet was apparently in a mild uproar over six redesigns of Jane Austen novels, which will be published—with new introductions from popular contemporary YA romance novelists like Ali Hazelwood and Tessa Bailey—by Puffin, Penguin UK’s children’s imprint, in March.... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2025-02-04 14:47:27 UTC ]
More news stories like this
I purposely avoided reading the works of other Palestinian American novelists making their ways into the world as I wrote Too Soon. When I looked up, I saw my book would be a part of a literary wave I had no idea I was riding, an artistic movement, that felt particular to the Palestinian... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2025-01-22 09:59:55 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Richard Osman and Kate Mosse say plan to mine artistic works for data would destroy creative fieldsKate Mosse and Richard Osman have hit back at Labour’s plan to give artificial intelligence companies broad freedoms to mine artistic works for data, saying it could destroy growth in creative... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2025-01-14 17:52:02 UTC ]
More news stories like this
The average income for a writer is now £7,000. For our sake and the country’s, we need financial assistanceThis week will be like A-level results week for authors, but with added economic jeopardy. For a good whack of the 100,000 writers and translators in the UK, finding out how many books they... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2025-01-05 08:00:15 UTC ]
More news stories like this