This morning, my inbox at Goodreads
yields
this little gem:
| from: | 
Jessica Donaghy
|
|
|---|---|---|
| to: | 
Beverly Akerman
|
|
| subject: | Lionel Shriver | |
| message: | We selected your question!
You can read the full interview here: http://www.goodreads.com/interviews/show... Thanks for participating! Jessica |
My response?
Pure valley girl*:
OH WOW!
(*St. Lawrence Valley, that is...
not a lick a silicon in these hills a mine)
Yes, possums, my qqquestion??? was selected
to be put to
the brilliant,
the ballsy
(the ovariesy? not to be confused
with the over easy ....but I digress),
the incandescent and
INCOMPARABLE
Find the entire Goodreads interview here.
The snippet with my question & Ms. Shriver's answer:
"GR: Goodreads Author Beverly Akerman asks, "What can we do to help make sure women writers and the tastes of women readers are not systematically discounted and disparaged?"
LS: One of the bizarre things about recent times and this whole phenomenon of "most fiction readers are women" is that we have somehow flipped that around to being insulting to women. "Oh, those women, they just have a bunch of time on their hands?" In the olden days, literature was a man's pursuit, and women shouldn't worry their pretty little heads about it. It was about serious, philosophical issues and grand drama, and literature was a man's world and a man's concern. And now that it is a woman's world and a woman's concern, it's considered kind of pathetic. Nobody in publishing ever says that, but there is definitely an element of condescension going on here. I am also insulted by the way publishers feel they have to package fiction now. It all has to be girlified. It has to have women on the front, which defies the statistics that women don't have to read about women—women are interested in reading about everybody. I'm in despair about what we can do. And the other problem is, the really heavy hitters—and this is worse in the U.S. than here in the UK— the writers who are trotted out as the voices of their generation are always men, and I don't know how to crack that. That nonsense The New York Times Book Review did with Franzen? They'd never do that with a female author. I'm at a loss. All I know to do is to write the best books I can. And women readers need to get it across to publishing companies that they don't want to be patronized—they don't want to be patronized in packaging, and they don't want to be patronized in content."
***
Thank you, Lionel Shriver! Keep on speaking truth to power: we women make up the majority of readers and writers. We are the publicists and the interns, the reviewers and the book store employees.
WOMEN ARE PUBLISHING:
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE!
IF YOU'RE A PUBLISHER WHO WANTS TO HAVE A FUTURE, REMEMBER THIS!
STOP DISCOUNTING US,
OUR HOPES, DESIRES, & CONCERNS.
Fifty Shades of Grey is just the latest example...
WE ARE THE MARKET!
ignore/talk down to/diminish us
at your peril.
We won't be ignored or marginalized.
We vote with our Kindles, and Kobos, iPads, Androids...etc.
Speaking of which:
where
is the
FEMDROID?!(;-)
Here's hoping we can work this out,
as we always have...and to everyone's
mutual advantage.
 |
| The Meaning of Children on Amazon.com |
"Emotional and tightly written, with a resistance to the happy ending, and the idea there is often something or someone waiting for the small mistake."
~TWUC Short Prose Competition Jury, commenting on
"The Mysteries," a short story from The Meaning of Children
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