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.

Last year, four out of the National Book Foundations prestigious "5 under 35" were women. And this year, ladies lead the field again.

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!

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.

After a post last month about the gender disparity in magazine publishing, which was followed by VIDA's much more thorough and ultimately conclusive study, I, perhaps naively, expected to see a comment or two from the publications about the roots of this imbalance. Then weeks passed, and, well, basically nothing. For…

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?

The kerfuffle over Jonathan Franzen's Freedom prompts one critic to ask, "Can a Woman Be a 'Great American Novelist?'" But maybe it's time to change how we think of greatness.

In And The Heart Says Whatever, Emily Gould set out to flout the traditions of many women's memoirs. Her book is the antithesis of personal growth narratives like Eat, Pray, Love — and she may like it that way.

Is 2009 the year of the female short story writer? Maybe, but some of the literary lionesses on this list have been at it a long time. We'd add Amy Hempel and Lydia Davis to make an even eight. [Guardian]

Despite hopeful stats from a few years ago, men now outnumber women in the blogosphere by two to one. So why don't more women blog? One blogger thinks it's because we're too sweet — but we have some other ideas.

A few weeks ago, I said I felt it was premature to assume that David Letterman's workplace affairs necessarily led to a hostile work environment, but if an employee came forward to say it did, I'd quit defending him.

Gawker readers will remember "book hot" author Marisha Pessl — according to a a recent VQR piece, even reviewers are now playing book-hot-or-not.