Editor of Prestigious Almost-All-Male Review Says We're Counting Wrong
Latest“The Count,” a tally of the female to male writers ratio in major review journals operated by VIDA: Women in The Literary Arts, is a necessary but immensely depressing read — not just because of the major gender disparity, but the way certain outlets have responded.
Last week’s Count featured a particularly extreme example, courtesy of the New York Review of Books, which ran 30 male contributors and two women in its latest issue — one of the worst instances in the last three years of the Count, and one that reeks of tokenism. VIDA’s founder Erin Belieu called out senior editor Robert Silvers in a letter: “At present, it appears that NYRoB believes women have little to add to our country’s literary conversation.”