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 ]
Welcome back to the 90s. (And, I guess, the early 2000s.) As Variety reports, there is officially a fourth Matrix film in the works, with Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss back in the saddle as Neo and Trinity. Lana Wachowski will direct; she also wrote the script with novelists Aleksandar Hemon... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-08-20 20:44:00 UTC ]
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The internet search histories of novelists can be quite disturbing. Writer Kathleen Valenti shares the methodology behind web searches for her newest medical mystery. The post The Writer’s Alibi: My Terrible, Dreadful, Hope-the-FBI-Doesn’t-Look-at-This Search History by Kathleen Valenti appeared... Continue reading at Writer's Digest
[ Writer's Digest | 2019-08-20 14:00:45 UTC ]
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The fake author who fooled the publishing world is brought back to life in a diverting tale that treads familiar ground“Sometimes, a lie’s more truth than the truth,” drawls author JT Leroy, speaking down a crackling telephone line. This straightforward dramatisation of Savannah Knoop’s 2008... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-08-18 07:00:10 UTC ]
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When I first joined a workshop in 1994, American literary fiction was dominated by and continually lauded a “quiet” kind of writer, one often influenced by J.D. Salinger, Ernest Hemingway, or Raymond Carver. I loved literary fiction—I’d been reading, writing, and submitting it since high school.... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-16 11:00:22 UTC ]
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SCIENCE FICTION HAS BEEN mapping the topography of a yawning postcapitalism since the cyberpunk movement of the 1980s, a laborious undertaking still ongoing in the 21st century. Before cyberpunk, Deleuze and Guattari pointed the way in their books on capitalism and schizophrenia; after... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-08-03 12:30:19 UTC ]
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Hachette has announced seven people are leaving its HR department to be replaced by new appointments, mainly from outside the publishing world, in a major shake-up. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-08-01 14:50:21 UTC ]
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During one of my first open mics in New York City, the comic running the mic tapped me on the elbow after my set and said, “Hey, you’re funny!” She sounded surprised. I was, too. Being funny wasn’t my main goal. I was there to spy on comics, trying to experience the highs and lows […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-07-31 08:49:06 UTC ]
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Writing literary fiction stories? Forget what you’ve learned about complex characters and earned endings. What you really need is to include the required tropes. To help you out, we’ve created this handy checklist. Literary Fiction Trope Checklist _____ 1. Starts with character waking up _____... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-07-26 11:00:50 UTC ]
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Literary agents are gatekeepers of the publishing industry. Find literary fiction literary agents open to submissions in this post. List will be updated regularly. The post Literary Fiction Literary Agents Open to Submissions by Robert Lee Brewer appeared first on Writer's Digest. Continue reading at Writer's Digest
[ Writer's Digest | 2019-07-26 11:00:18 UTC ]
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It’s a cliché among authors that we write the books we wish existed, but two of the many reasons I set out to write The Lager Queen of Minnesota was because I wanted to read literary fiction set in a brewery, and frankly, I also wanted a reason to bum around the country researching contemporary... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-07-19 11:00:19 UTC ]
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The Spanish philosopher and poet George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” As a genre, historical fiction allows us to shuttle back in time to stand in the shoes, clogs, chopines, and go-go boots of people—real and imagined—to consider the... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-07-15 11:00:13 UTC ]
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As publishers vie to persuade us to pack their titles for the holidays, we chart the evolution of the ’beach read’Summer reads, beach reads, holiday reads … at this time of year, the publishing world works itself into a sweat trying to force its novels into our carry-on luggage, or over the... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-07-14 07:00:23 UTC ]
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Businesses and public policy makers are tapping novelists to imagine the path forward. But how much stock should we put in the predictions of storytellers? Continue reading at Wired
[ Wired | 2019-07-12 13:00:00 UTC ]
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Cultural Cross Sections Margaret Randall Children’s choir at the 2014 La Matanza Book Fair / Photo by Mauro Rico / Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación / Flickr When good engineers or scientists emigrate, they are able to continue their work. Novelists... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2019-07-10 21:07:28 UTC ]
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Literary fiction is increasingly borrowing from the horror genre to explore the fears and anxieties of modern motherhood. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2019-07-06 09:00:14 UTC ]
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The New York Times invited Asian-American authors to choose photos from our archives and write short young-adult fiction inspired by them. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2019-06-28 17:18:37 UTC ]
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Juliet Escoria’s “Juliet the Maniac” sees the life of a bipolar teenager in gut-wrenching fragments. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2019-06-24 09:00:07 UTC ]
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Claire Adam has won the £10,000 Desmond Elliott Prize for first-time novelists with her "electrifying" debut Golden Child (Faber). Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-06-18 18:50:22 UTC ]
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The idea makes practically no sense at all. Full works of long-form literary fiction uploaded to ... Instagram? And specifically to Instagram Stories, a format known for its fast and fleeting posts about nights on the town and outfits of the day? But the New York Public Library pulled it off,... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2019-06-14 20:20:07 UTC ]
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TaleFlick, a company that fosters relationships between Hollywood and the publishing world, has just launched “The Marketplace,” an online platform where producers, publishers, agents, and writers can connect. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-06-12 04:00:00 UTC ]
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