Roundup
Late Afternoon Links
The Pen American Center has announced the 2011 award winners. I was particularly pleased to see Danielle Evans win the fiction prize for Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self.
Stacy May Fowles suggests that one way to address the gender imbalance in literary publishing is for men to stop submitting to those magazines who have serious gender imabalances among their contributors until those magazines rectify the disparity. I disagree with the suggestion because the responsibility belongs to editors, not writers, but her argument is interesting.
At the Texas Observer, Brad Green’s story, “Fixing Miss Fritz,” is worth a read or three.
Glenn Beck has something of a literary career and Laurie Winer offers some insight on that career, such as it may be.
In this interview, Dinty Moore talks about what he looks for in submissions and other things.
Tags: Danielle Evans, Dinty Moore, PEN America
How to Suffocate Your Own Fool Self = nice title
Even nicer book. Check it out.
I think I will, thx. Btw, I notice the title is actually “Before You Suffocate….”
Argh. Thanks so much for pointing that out. I have no idea where that came from.
maybe (and I’m being semi-serious here) men should stop submitting for like a year. like all men everywhere stop submitting to anywhere for a year. take their time, write some really good stuff, revise it, distance themselves from the whole publishing mindset. I don’t know if there’s any actual harm for a person if they just don’t submit for a year. is there some sort of requirement for creative writing students or teachers to publish so often or something maybe? otherwise there’s no reason all men couldn’t just quit for a year as a statement or whatever. like “2012, the Year With No Men” or something.
of course there’s no way to actually convince any men to do that. there’s no way to actually convince men to do what Fowles suggests either though, I guess, except asking them to do it and seeing if they do. and the idea of all men quitting for 1 year is more interesting to me than all men quitting specific magazines (although they are both interesting and obviously Fowles’ suggestion is more reasonable). I guess mostly I just like the idea of there being a portion of literary history called “2012, the Year With No Men”
That Magicland prank is hilarious – proof that foxgoebbelsites, like Mussolini, have some good ideas, too.
That’s awesome news about Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Well-deserved too. By the way, thanks for writing about it, Roxane. You’re the reason I read it. :)
Maybe instead of asking their male lessers not to do something, like-minded women writers need to take action and band together, declare a name and promote themselves. It worked for the Surrealists, Beats, and Oulipians (to name a few), didn’t it?
maybe, but I think the problem here is that there is already a name for them, and unfortunately that name is “women”. what I mean is that it’s not any particular subset of women writers that isn’t being represented, it’s all of them together.
on the other hand I’m replying to you after waking up in the middle of the night and seeing the comment, so I have no idea if I’m making any sense at all.