“The camera,” Susan Sontag famously wrote, “is sold as a predatory weapon.” Violence, it seems, is inherent to the photograph, born out in the language of the medium itself: “to shoot” or “to capture’ linguistically conjures violence. But if Sontag is correct, and photography is inherently violent, then its subject…
Starting today, I’ll be writing a monthly roundup highlighting newish books that should be on your radar. The first installment includes two: Aura Xilonen’s impressive debut novel, The Gringo Champion, and Lauren Elkin’s enjoyable memoir/cultural history, Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Toyoko,…
When Beth Macy moved to Roanoke, Virginia nearly thirty years ago, a newspaper colleague told her about the best story in town, one that had then gone unwritten: in 1899, the Muse brothers, African American and albino, had been snatched from the tobacco fields of Truevine, Virginia by a promoter and exhibited in…
At an April 2 conference held at Boston University, literary journalist Gay Talese remarked to his audience that he could not name a single woman writer who inspired him. Wow guy!
Ne-Yo is so much of a gentleman that it's almost sickening. So courteous that it's corny. He's in a field of nasty singers and he's the old, randy R&B dude who parties responsibly. He still refers to you as a lady. He has an album titled Year of the Gentleman (still my favorite Ne-Yo album), and always looks like he's…
Last month, New York Times bestselling author Karen Abbott published a nonfiction book called Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy, with its subject four fascinating women who became spies during the Civil War—Belle Boyd, teenage rebel and "Secesh Cleopatra"; Emma Edmonds, dressed as a soldier, her nom de guerre "Frank";…
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.
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?
Writer Susan Orlean is generating a lot of discussion with this Tweet: "Is it just an accident there are so few female literary non-fiction writers? The focus necessary plus the travel & odd hours makes it tough."
