Today I did my grocery shopping and ran into a girl (well, woman by now, but I have known her since we were four) I had been friends with in kindergarten and primary school. We later went to different secondary schools, but since we continued to live in the same neighbourhood I still see her on occasion. So we chat, I ask her about her kid, etc… when someone walks by pushing shopping cart and says “Good morning”. We both turn around and guess what? It’s our old primary school teacher. Talk about weird coincidence.
I also have two links, both related to women, books and writing:
Foz Meadows points out this great post by British academic and writer Rosy Thornton about how her books were given stereotypical chick lit covers, even though they were anything but, and how she is not taken seriously as a writer and academic, because she dares to write about women and issues affecting women.
At the Book View Café, Nancy Jane Moore asks whether women dominated the SFF awards this year and whether that’s an outlier or a trend towards more diversity in the SFF genre.
sending...
I sympathize with the academic who feels stigmatized at work because of her books, but I have a feeling that if her publisher gave them more somber covers she might now be complaining that they didn’t sell. If there’s something to complain about here (I mean besides with her fellow faculty members) isn’t it with the readers rather than the publisher? I know many women who read a lot but refuse to read anything that’s the slightest bit “depressing,” and so it’s not a surprise that publishers play up the light, romantic, cheerful side of a novel instead of its more serious elements.
Sales are another issue and the cheery chick lit style covers may indeed have increased sales. On the other hand, UK publishers slap chick lit style covers on pretty much anything written by women, so if you’re in the mood for a nice romantic comedy, you have to double check that you don’t end up with a serious memoir about divorce and breast cancer instead, because both are likely to have similar chick lit style covers.