women writers

MY BEAUTIFUL NEW BOOK COVER!!!! and other news

/ lynnkanter / 5 Comments

HOV CoverAllow me to introduce you to the cover of my new novel. I love it!

The cover seems to evoke the feeling of the novel. To me, this is nothing short of miraculous. An artist read my stack of words and turned them into a simple, somber, striking image.

Many publishers don’t let authors have any say over the design of their book covers. I suspect this is why so many novels by women end up with covers that all but scream, “Don’t take me seriously!”

I hated the cover of my first novel, and when I told my otherwise very kind and generous publisher, she replied, “Thank you for your input.” The cover stayed.

If you can’t take the heat

This time around, I got to collaborate with the publisher and the designer to figure out what we wanted the cover to communicate. And by collaborate, I mean something akin to me telling an expert chef, “I’d like you to make a dish that has some peas and maybe a little salt” – and then feeling very accomplished when she produces a risotto.

It’s not exactly accurate to say that I had nothing to do with the cover. I bought the dog tags, and my partner Janet took the photo. And the textured surface you see in the background? That’s our kitchen floor.

But handing a chef some peas and a pot does not a risotto make. So hats off to the designer, and let’s move on from the kitchen metaphors.

Pre-pub challenges

My publisher has asked me to write “a short description that really gets at the heart of your book.” The trick is, I have to write it in various lengths: one sentence, 50 words, 100 words, 250 words, etc. This is very difficult to do. If you don’t believe me, try to describe one of your children in 50 words.

Rosalie will take my descriptions and rework them into compelling language to interest booksellers and librarians. She has also asked me to come up with a series of key words about my novel to use in search engines and library or distributor catalogs.

Some catalogs provide a drop-down menu with oddly limited choices. You can categorize your book as a war novel, for example, but not an anti-war novel. I fear readers who are in the mood for a big, macho war novel will be dismayed by Her Own Vietnam.

Break it to me gently

In other news, one of the writers we asked to write a blurb for my book has said no. But it was a very cordial no. She let us down easy.

Meanwhile, two more blurb requests are pending. Who wouldn’t want to blurb a book with such a gorgeous cover?

 

Reading Women Continued: H – Z

/ lynnkanter / 6 Comments
Read Women 2014 by Joanna Walsh

Read Women 2014 by Joanna Walsh

Continuing on the theme of reading women authors in 2014 – a mini-movement launched by the writer and illustrator Joanna Walsh – here are more selections my book group has read over the years. We read books by and about women.

Again, these books represent our collective decisions, not necessarily my personal recommendations. I’ve loved many, but not all, of them.

In a previous post, I listed authors from A – G. Scroll down to find it.

Here are authors from H – Z.

  • Haigh, Jennifer – Mrs. Kimble
  • Hamilton, Gabrielle – Blood, Bones & Butter
  • Hamilton, Jane – A Map of the World
  • Hamilton, Masha – The Camel Bookmobile
  • Harris, Joanne – Chocolat
  • Hazzard, Shirley – The Great Fire
  • Hegi, Ursula – Stones from the River
  • Heilbrun, Carol – Writing a Woman’s Life
  • Hulme, Keri – The Bone People
  • Hurston, Zora Neale – Their Eyes were Watching God
  • Huston, Nancy – Fault Lines
  • Jones, Ann – Looking for Lovedu
  • Karr, Mary – Lit
  • Kearns, Rosalie Morales – Virgins and Tricksters
  • Kerman, Piper – Orange is the New Black
  • Kingsley, Mary – Travels in West Africa
  • Kingsolver, Barbara – Flight Behavior; The Lacuna; The Poisonwood Bible; Pigs in Heaven
  • Kornblut, Ann – Notes from the Cracked Ceiling
  • Lahiri, Jhumpa – Unaccustomed Earth; The Interpreter of Maladies
  • Larson, Nella – Passing
  • LeGuin, Ursula – Left Hand of Darkness
  • Lessing, Doris – African Laughter
  • Levy, Andrea – Small Island
  • Lively, Penelope – Moon Tiger
  • Livesey, Margot – Eva Moves the Furniture
  • MacDonald, Ann Marie – Fall on Your Knees
  • Maloy, Maile – Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It
  • Markham, Beryl – West with the Wind
  • Marmon, Leslie Silk – Ceremony
  • Marshall, Brenda – Dakota, or What’s a Heaven For
  • Mason, Bobbie Ann – Feather Crowns
  • McDermott, Alice – After This; Charming Billy;
  • Messud, Claire – When the World was Steady
  • Min, Anchee – Red Azalea
  • Miner, Valerie – Trespass
  • Morrison, Toni – Paradise
  • Mujica, Barbara – Frida
  • Munro, Alice – Runaway; Too Much Happiness
  • Naslund, Sena Jeter – Ahab’s Wife
  • Naylor, Gloria – Mama Day
  • Nemirovsky, Irene – Suite Francaise
  • Nunez, Sigrid – The Last of Her Kind
  • O’Brien, Edna – Country Girl; The Country Girls Trilogy
  • O’Connor, Flannery – Three by Flannery O’Connor
  • O’Faolain, Naula – Are You Somebody?
  • Orleans, Susan – The Orchid Thief
  • Otsuka, Julie – The Buddha in the Attic
  • Ozeki, Ruth – My Year of Meats
  • Patchett, Ann – Bel Canto; State of Wonder; Truth and Beauty
  • Piercy, Marge – Sex Wars
  • Prager, Emily – Eve’s Tatoo
  • Prose, Francine – Reading like a Writer
  • Proulx, Annie – Postcards; Shipping News
  • Quinlen, Anna – One True Thing
  • Reichl, Ruth – Tender at the Bone
  • Robinson, Marilynne – Gilead
  • Roffey, Monique – White Woman on a Green Bicycle
  • Roy, Arundhati – The God of Small Things
  • Sebold, Alice – The Lovely Bones
  • See, Lisa – Snowflower and the Secret Fan
  • Senna, Danzy – Caucasia
  • Shields, Carole – Unless; The Stone Diaries
  • Sittenfeld, Curtis – American Wife
  • Skloot, Rebecca – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
  • Smiley, Jane – A Thousand Acres; Duplicate Keys
  • Smith, Abbe – The Case of a Lifetime
  • Smith, Patti – Just Kids
  • Smith, Zadie – White Teeth
  • Soulif, Ahdaf – The Map of Love
  • Stockett, Kathryn – The Help
  • Strayed, Cheryl – Wild
  • Strout, Elizabeth – Amy and Isabelle; Olive Kitteridge
  • Summer, Jane – The Silk Road
  • Trapido, Barbara – The Traveling Hornplayer
  • Tremain, Rose – Sacred Country
  • Walls, Jeanette – Half Broke Horses
  • Waters, Sarah – Fingersmith; The Night Watch; Tipping the Velvet
  • Weber, Katharine – Triangle
  • West, Dorothy – The Wedding
  • Wharton, Edith – The House of Mirth
  • Wilentz, Amy – The Martyr’s Crossing
  • Wilkerson, Isabelle – The Warmth of Other Suns
  • Williams, Lena – It’s the Little Things
  • Winterson, Jeanette – Art and Lies; Why be Happy when you can be Normal; Written on the Body
  • Woolf, Virginia – A Room of One’s Own; Mrs. Dalloway
  • Zeller, Zoe – The Believers; Notes from a Scandal

2014: The Year of Reading Women

/ lynnkanter / 1 Comment

joanna-walsh-readwomen2014-bookmarks

With these colorful cards in the shape of bookmarks, British writer and illustrator Joanna Walsh has sparked a movement. Throughout social media, women and men are pledging to read more – or exclusively – women writers this year. Journals are promising to publish and review more women writers. Book lists fly back and forth across the Internet. The twitterverse is aboil with #readwomen2014, the hashtag Walsh started.

To this I say hooray! And congrats! And join the party – we’ve been waiting for you. After all, for 21 years I have been in a book group whose membership has changed but whose organizing principle has remained the same: we read books by and about women.

What all this means is thanks to Joanna Walsh, it’s possible that for the first time in my life I might actually be trendy.

 Not the year of reading white women

Let’s take a quick look at the card she designed. The bookmarks represent Walsh’s favorite authors, and it did not escape my notice that they are all white. But on the back of the card, in tiny print not discernible to anyone over 40, she provides a more diverse list of 250 women writers. Her goal is to help those who want to Read Women 2014 but don’t know where to start.

Collective reading decisions

In that same spirit, I’d like to share a list of some of the titles my book group has read. This list does not represent my own favorite books or authors, but rather the collective reading decisions – achieved with much discussion and red wine – that my book group has made over the years. And yes, in deference to Read Women 2014 I’ve left out the books that were about women but written by male authors.

The list is alphabetical by author. Let’s start with A – G.

  •  Allison, Dorothy – Bastard Out of Carolina; Cavedweller
  • Alvarez, Julia – How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accent; In the Time of the Butterflies
  • Anshaw, Carol – Aquamarine
  • Armstrong, Karen – The Spiral Staircase
  • Atkinson, Kate – Life after Life
  • Atwood, Margaret – Alias Grace; The Robber Bride
  • Austen, Jane – Emma; Lady Susan; Sense and Sensibility
  • Avery, Ellis – The Tea House Fire
  • Barbery, Muriel – The Elegance of the Hedgehog
  • Bloom, Amy – Away
  • Blum, Arlene – Annapurna
  • Boo, Katherine – Behind the Beautiful Forevers
  • Braddon, Mary Elizabeth – Lady Audley’s Secret
  • Brooks, Geraldine – March
  • Brooks, Gwendolyn – Various readings
  • Cather, Willa – Death Comes for the Archbishop
  • Chang, Jung – Wild Swans
  • Chase, Joan – During the Reign of the Queen of Persia
  • Chen, Pauline – Final Exam
  • Chevalier, Tracy – Remarkable Creatures
  • Conway, Jill Ker – The Road from Coorain
  • Cook, Blanche Weisen – Eleanor Roosevelt, Volumes 1 and 2
  • Cook, Karin – What Girls Learn
  • Danticat, Edwidge – Breath, Eyes, Memory
  • Davenport, Kiana – Shark Dialogues
  • DeRosnay, Tatiana – Sarah’s Key
  • Desai, Kiran – Inheritance of Loss
  • Diamant, Anita – The Red Tent
  • Didion, Joan – Where I Was From; The Year of Magical Thinking
  • Dillard, Annie – The Maytrees
  • Donaghue, Emma – Room; The Sealed Letter
  • Duke, Lynn – Mandela, Mobutu and Me
  • Dunn, Katherine – Geek Love
  • Egan, Jennifer – Look at me
  • Ehrenreich, Barbara – Nickel and Dimed
  • Eliot, George – Mill on the Floss
  • Feinberg, Leslie – Stone Butch Blues
  • Fischer, Erica – Aimee and Jaguar
  • Flynn, Gillian – Gone Girl
  • Fuller, Alexandra – Don’t Let’s go to the Dogs Tonight
  • Gardam, Jane – Old Filth
  • George, Elizabeth – Believing the Lie
  • Golden, Marita and Shreves, Susan – Skin Deep
  • Goodman, Allegra – Intuition
  • Grant, Linda – When we Lived in Modern Times
  • Grealy, Lucy – Autobiography of a Face
  • Greene, Melissa Fay – Praying for Sheetrock
  • Greenlaw, Linda – The Hungry Ocean
  • Gruen, Sara – Water for Elephants

Your must-read list of women writers?

What do you think about The Year of Reading Women? Which women writers should go on a must-read list? I’d love to see your suggestions.

Where Are the Women?

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My novel will be published by Shade Mountain Press, a new feminist press dedicated to publishing literary fiction by women. Wait – it’s 2014. Do we still need feminist presses?

Alas, yes.

Although women buy more books than men (58% of books purchased in 2012, according to the latest research), women writers are published and reviewed at much lower rates than men. In 2012, the percentage of women authors published barely reached 30% at most  publishing houses, from the big commercial houses like Knopf (23%) to the smaller, literary publishers like Graywolf (25%). 

As for reviews, in 2012 The New Yorker published 583 reviews of books written by men, and only 218 books by women authors. The record is equally dismal at most other major review outlets. (These publishing stats, and many more, can be found at Vida.)

Good News, Bad News

Good news: In 2012, 63% of the best-selling books in the U.S. were written by women. Bad news: Women writers received only 40% of the industry’s earnings. (Read more here.)

Math was never my strong suit, but even I can see there’s something wrong with those numbers. That’s why I’m excited to be part of a bold new publishing venture that will raise women’s voices.

What Do You Think?

Do the statistics about the disparity of women in print surprise you? Or do they confirm what you already knew or suspected?

Photo by Kate Ter Haar

Photo by Kate Ter Haar