ZYZZYVA 93 / San Francisco, CA
New England Review 32.3 / Middlebury, VT
DIAGRAM 11.4 / Tucson, AZ
Camera Obscura 3 / Addison, TX
Fiddleblack 2 / Peninsula, OH
Barrelhouse 9 / Washington, DC
Antioch Review Fall 2011 / Yellow Springs, OH
Birkensnake 4 / Providence, RI
Gigantic Sequins 2.2 / Philadelphia, PA
Paris Review 199 / Manhattan, NY
Bateau 4.2 / Northhampton, MA
6x6 24 / Brooklyn, NY
We invited editors and writers to participate in a series on issues and representations of race, class, gender, and sexuality in independent publishing. We asked them how these issues affected them as editors interested in publishing underrepresented communities, or writers who want to challenge dominant notions of identity.
In February 2011, VIDA, an organization for women writers, released what has been called the VIDA Count, a totalling of male vs. female writer bylines for 14 of the top 2010 literary-type magazines. The numbers found the—perhaps expected—much greater representation of male writers in these publications. VIDA has also “counted” female writers in other publishing venues,
Originally published at The Review Review as “Sexism in Publishing: It’s About More Than Just Numbers” Inequality in publishing is finally getting its due attention. About a month ago VIDA released The Count, which compared the percentages of female and male bylines in literary and commercial magazines, revealing devastating data. Recently numerous writers have
If you asked me about the general ratio of female and male authors included in BluePrintReview—the online literary magazine I founded in 2005, and that is now up to 24 issues—I would be able to give you the answer without going through pages: it’s about 50/50. Same goes for the answer to the question: “What’s
There was a documentary recently shown on television about the life of Beethoven. It was an interesting program that, among other things, showed Beethoven to have been cruel and abusive to several female members of his family. In a discussion about the program afterwards, a friend told me that she wished she hadn’t watched it
I am called Kirsty and my co-editor is called Helen. Our names are displayed on our magazine’s website. Our names are women’s names. Generally, this is not an issue. I do not know if writers notice or care that they are submitting work to a magazine run by two women. However, occasionally writers find it
The email from the editor of the literary journal started out promisingly enough, noting that they liked my story very much. I knew that couldn’t be all, for the story I’d submitted was a dialect piece, and I knew from long experience that no editor would accept a story deploying a form of African American
Dialogue is the locale where both tension and connection can be present simultaneously; it is the site for both struggle and love. -Layli Phillips, The Womanist Reader As a writer, I have thought a lot about “community” and what it means. I am often hyper-aware of my identities as I write: female, gay, Cuban-American, daughter
The idea for a series on race, class, gender, and sexuality evolved organically from reading literary magazines, blogs, sites, small and large press catalogs, reviews, best of lists, and the like. Discussions about these issues are robust within the academy, and I wanted to respond to how they surface in literary communities. There were two
I don’t know how to write about race. I don’t know how to write about race without becoming irrational and emotional. I’m a writer and editor and I also happen to be black. I don’t know how to write about race because it makes me uncomfortable; people get defensive; they make assumptions about me, my
