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Romance novels aren't typically bastions of gender diversity, but the new title Two Spirit Ranch does have an interesting premise: More »
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This shot of fantasy author Jim Hines's butt is funny, but it's also serious. Hines posed like the women on various fantasy covers as a way of showing how ridiculous — and sometimes painful — the poses would be in real life. He writes, More »
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When Colleen Houck had trouble getting an agent for her young adult novel Tiger's Curse, she decided to self-publish it. Now it's a bestseller that's being made into a film. More »
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Recently, we got the following email: More »
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Alexander Maksik's new novel You Deserve Nothing tells a steamy story about a student-teacher affair at an international school in Paris. Reviewers have called it a "bravura performance" and "rivetingly plotted" written with "dazzling clarity and philosophical rigor." But what they don't know, what Maksik has never mentioned, is that the story may be true.

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Anne McCaffrey, author of the famous "Dragonriders of Pern" series of fantasy novels, has died at the age of 85. She was one of the first fantasy authors to focus on female heroes, and she was the first woman to win the Hugo and the Nebula award, some of the sci-fi and fantasy communities highest honors. Here's the message her son Todd posted on Facebook announcing her death: More »
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If you're looking to read some sexy sexy prose, you probably shouldn't bother with Stephen King's latest novel 11.22.63, which the Literary Review nominated for the 2011 ‘Bad Sex in Fiction' Award for such titillating passages as this: "She was wearing jeans. The fabric whispered under my palm." Hot. More »
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Think of 30 Rock, first season, third episode. Jack the-Great-and-Powerful Donaghy is setting up Liz No-I-Don't-Need-Any-of-Your-Help-Especially-Not-with-Dating-which-I-Don't-Have-Time-for-because-I'm-All-About-My-Career-Thanks-a-Lot Lemon with his friend from out of town. Jack catches her in the hall and tells her the name of the fancy restaurant where he's set up the blind date. A pause. He takes in her typically casual attire [i.e. unglamorous sweatshirt and jeans]. "What are you going to wear?" he asks (as though he doesn't know). Exasperated with his overbearing behavior, Liz insists "I don't have time to change." Jack shakes his head gravely, "That won't do." He hands her cash and tells her to go to a women's clothing store during her lunch break. Liz grudgingly accepts and turns up looking elegant for a change. More »
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J.D. Bauer is an outspoken environmentalist who's written a young adult novel called Quest for Water. Incidentally, he's also a serial killer. More »
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Fantasy lovers rejoice — today is renowned writer Ursula Le Guin's eighty-third birthday. More »
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Last week the National Book Foundation announced its "5 Under 35," four of whom were women. Now it's announced the finalists for the prestigious National Book Award — and these include a lot of ladies too. More »
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Last year, four out of the National Book Foundations prestigious "5 under 35" were women. And this year, ladies lead the field again. More »
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A new book by the author of Where the Wild Things Are has parents upset over its supposedly scary content. But are moms and dads overestimating the dangers of a frightening read? More »
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Picking the best of all the exciting entries in the Jezebel (Very) Short Fiction Contest was difficult indeed — but at long last, we have a winner! Well, two winners, to be precise. More »
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When I was gifted a Kindle for my birthday this year, I did something that I admit, shamefully, I've never done in a bookstore: I perused titles in the "lesbian" category. After sifting through pages of poorly titled erotica, I stumbled across a terrible/AWESOME genre: lesbian romance. More »
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It was only a matter of time before the genius that is TV Tropes was rendered in graphical form. Now this handy chart lays out such "elements" of storytelling as the "jerk with a heart of gold" and "jumping the shark" — as well as more unusual ones like "epileptic trees." Use the chart to make your own fictional compounds — or break down artistic masterpieces like The Last Airbender. More »
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Want to show off your storytelling chops, and win some great books? Now's your chance to do both by entering our (very) short fiction contest. It's easy! More »
]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5803997&view=rss&microfeed=true Man Booker Prize judge Carmen Callil has resigned in protest after the other two judges decided to give the prize to Philip Roth. She says of Roth, "he goes on and on and on about the same subject in almost every single book. It's as though he's sitting on your face and you can't breathe." More »
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Reading an incredibly sad book is a peculiar experience — you're mad at the writer for making you feel this way, but at the same time you're hooked on each tear-jerking page. Habitual readers know this masochistic feeling well, and most reserve a special, melancholy place in their hearts for the saddest books they've ever read. More »
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In Diana Spechler's new novel Skinny, twenty-seven-year-old Gray Lachmann has been compulsively binge-eating since her father's death a year ago. A series of events, including her desperation to stop eating and gaining weight, leads her to take a summer job at a weight-loss camp. In the following excerpt, she is waiting to ride a roller coaster with her teenage campers, including Harriet, the heaviest kid at camp. More »
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Jennifer Egan just won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad. She is a woman. In an interview, she said some things about other women. Which can only mean one thing: catfight! More »
]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5794395&view=rss&microfeed=true Jennifer Egan has won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for her excellent novel A Visit From The Goon Squad. That's the second big award for her this year — maybe now maybe she can get her own picture in the paper. More »
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On Sunday Game Of Thrones, the TV show based on a series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin, premieres on HBO. In her New York Times review, Ginia Bellafante writes: More »
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Meg Wolitzer's new novel The Uncoupling imagines what would happen if a sex strike like the one in Lysistrata took place in modern-day suburbia. In the excerpt below, teacher Dory Lang is stricken by the no-sex spell, beginning a time of crisis and reevaluation that will affect the entire town. More »
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Jezebel writer Anna North's debut novel America Pacifica comes out May 18, but you can win a free advance copy ahead of time, plus one of these awesome jellyfish rings. More »
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We know women are underrepresented among the country's richest people. But it turns out that fictional women are paupers compared to their male counterparts as well. How come make-believe ladies aren't raking in bank? More »
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When an interviewer asked Hugo- and Macarthur-winning novelist Octavia Butler what she thought of her books being classed as science fiction, she said, "Really, it doesn't matter. A good story is a good story." In honor of Women's History Month, here is (some of) the story of Butler's life. More »
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Accomplished novelist Jennifer Egan won the National Book Critics Circle Award for her fascinating, innovative book A Visit From the Goon Squad. But one newspaper seemed more concerned with who didn't win: namely, Jonathan Franzen. More »
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The estate of Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien is suing to stop the publication of a novel in which he's a character. If they succeed, they could make it very difficult for fiction writers to include historical figures in their work. More »
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VIDA has counted up the female writers — and female-authored books reviewed at a variety of publications — and these charts detail their dismal results (dudes are in red). So what's behind this inequality? More »
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British writer Rowan Somerville has won the Literary Review's Bad Sex Writing prize for likening coitus to "a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect." Maybe the lady in question was wearing a sexy bug costume? More »
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Much of the past decade's popular young adult literature geared towards teen girls reads like a PG-13 version of Sex and the City. But Nini Simone's characters deal with crack-addicted mothers, runaway siblings, and teen pregnancy. More »
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The National Book Award finalists were just announced, and four of the five in fiction are women. Four of the National Book Foundations "5 under 35" are ladies too — maybe all that Franzenfreude is having an effect? More »
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Lapham's Quarterly has published an excerpt of erotica by Edith Wharton — and it's surprisingly racy. Check out the Wharton you didn't read in English class. More »
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Four of the National Book Foundation's "5 under 35" for 2010 are women (including Tiphanie Yanique, pictured). The list is also includes several writers of color, and three who published their books with small presses. Kudos! More »
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At their New Yorker Festival reading Friday, writers Zadie Smith and Michael Chabon demonstrated that writing across gender and class is not as hard as it seems. More »
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A new literary matchmaking service lets people hook up based on their book preferences. But is this just as superficial as anything else? More »
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A kerfuffle over Jonathan Franzen's new book has exposed a controversy in the literary world: to hear some writers tell it, women may get the money, but men get all the praise. Except when men get both. More »
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"Women are willing to buy books by male writers, but men seem much more reluctant to buy books by women," notes a (male) Atlantic writer. His solution: To read one female writer's novel for every one by a man. More »
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Because what if Marx and Engels had actually been...more than just fellow Dialectical Materialists? More »
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