I heard an American author speak yesterday and she made the point that papers such as the New York Times critique male authors four times more than they critique a female author. The same male author may have three articles written about his book whereas a female author may struggle to be represented at all. She said that a similar style of novel may be called a 'literary novel' if written by a man and 'women's literature' if written by a woman.
Wow! Not only do I have to spend the rest of my days honing my craft I also have to deal with an in-built bias against women's writers.
Wow! Not only do I have to spend the rest of my days honing my craft I also have to deal with an in-built bias against women's writers.
Or use a pen name that sounds like a man's name, like women did back in the day. Sad that this is the case in 2012!
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Susan: I've been waiting for the station to put up the Podcast because I didn't get a chance to hear the whole interview and she was a wealth of information. I think it's possible to use a man's name and leave it at that but if one were wanting to make a career out of it and the talent was there, it's necessary to do a lot of touring around talking about the novel. I was really shocked at what she had to say. I certainly thought we would have got past that sort of thing by now too.
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