Read Women discussion

A new literary journal featuring the work of women poets over fifty.

https://www.quartetjournal.com/issue-...

Thanks Story will definitely check that one out!

Something for Olga Tokarczuk fans:

https://yalereview.yale.edu/olga-toka...

And fascinating podcast about nature, Marie Matsuki Mockett talks about the legendary Japanese catfish Onamatuzu:

https://lithub.com/marie-mutsuki-mock...

Alwynne wrote: "And fascinating podcast about nature, Marie Matsuki Mockett talks about the legendary Japanese catfish Onamatuzu:

https://lithub.com/marie-mutsuki-mock......"

very cool. thanks for sharing it, Alwynne!

The NY Public Library website has some great resources. Among them is this: A Book List of Women Standing Up Around the World. It's possible that a male author has slipped in.

https://www.nypl.org/blog/2020/03/06/...

Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China by Leta Hong Fincher

Excellent Daughters: The Secret Lives of Young Women Who Are Transforming the Arab World by Katherine Zoepf

Why I March: Images from the Woman's March Around the World by Emma Jacobs

Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening by Manal Al-Sharif

and more ...

A friend shared this list in another group and I loved it: 10 Books by Asian-Canadian and Asian-American Women You Need to Add To Your Reading List, published by Cold Tea Collective. Some new releases, some that have been around for awhile.

https://coldteacollective.com/10-book...

From the NYTimes, Lucinda Rosenfeld’s fab essay, entitled, What’s with all the female literary characters who can’t stand themselves?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nyti...

Interesting article Carol, and holds for the Naoise Dolan novel in some ways too, although Dolan also holds out the prospect of something new via a relationship between women, although there are still inequalities of power at play. It also made me think of watching Lena Dunham's 'Girls' which featured numerous scenes of smart, self-aware women submitting to sexual and/or emotional relationships that held out no hope of them being satisfied or recognised. Although I'm not sure that Mossfegh's novel operates in the same way because her central character deals with things by withdrawing, which on one level seems passive but on another a form of radical refusal.

Carol, is it okay to post women/feminist related documentaries and movies in this thread? (I was scolded in another group for posting non-reading related material so thought I'd better double-check.)

Story wrote: "Carol, is it okay to post women/feminist related documentaries and movies in this thread? (I was scolded in another group for posting non-reading related material so thought I'd better double-check.)"

I think sharing that content would rock and this is a great thread for it. I’m looking forward to checking out the content you’ll post. (I am a member of a couple of groups with really tight controls over everything but breathing and appreciate the ask, too.)

"Over everything but breathing" Ha! I love it.

I wanted to recommend this great documentary about a groundbreaking female zoologist who couldn't get tenure because she was a woman: The Woman Who Loved Giraffes:
Trailer:
https://www.amazon.com/Woman-Who-Love...

Available on Amazon Prime
https://www.amazon.com/Woman-Who-Love...

I think the animal lovers among us will appreciate it.

All credit to Beverly for pulling together this list of recently announced longlists, shortlists and award winners. My effort has been limited to deleting male authors, inserting links to titles and authors, and inserting links to award websites for members who want to dig in deeper at the source.

The Rathbones Folio Prize Winner
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

https://www.rathbonesfolioprize.com/t...

The 2021 Lukas Prize Winners
The J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize
• Winner: Jessica Goudeau, After the Last Border: Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America

The Mark Lynton History Prize
• Finalist: Martha S. Jones, "Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All

https://lithub.com/here-are-the-winne...

Dublin Literary Award Shortlist
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor

https://dublinliteraryaward.ie/book-c...

Dylan Thomas Prize Shortlist - best literary work in English by an author aged 39 or under
• Alligator and Other Stories by Dima Alzayat (Picador) – short story collection (Syria/USA)
• The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi (Faber) – novel (Nigeria/USA)
• Pew by Catherine Lacey (Granta) – novel (USA)
• Luster by Raven Leilani (Picador/Farrar, Straus and Giroux) – novel (USA)
• My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell (HarperCollins, 4th Estate) – novel (USA)
https://www.swansea.ac.uk/dylan-thoma...

Stella Prize 2021 Shortlist (Australian women and non-binary authors)
Fathoms: The World in the Whale by Rebecca Giggs, Scribe
Revenge, Murder in Three Parts by S.L. Lim, Transit Lounge
The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay, Scribe
Witness by Louise Milligan, Hachette)
Stone Sky Gold Mountain by Mirandi Riwoe, UQP
The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld Vintage
https://thestellaprize.com.au/prize/2...

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction Shortlist
A Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville (Canongate/Text Publishing)
The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel (4th Estate)
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell (Tinder Press)
The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams (Chatto & Windus/Affirm Press)
https://www.walterscottprize.co.uk/re...

Republic of Consciousness Shortlist - the extraordinary work being produced and published by small presses in the UK and Ireland
A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa (Tramp Press)
Lote by Shola von Reinhold (Jacaranda Books)
Men and Apparitions by Lynne Tillman. Peninsula Press
The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey. Peepal Tree Press
https://www.republicofconsciousness.c...

2020 National Book Critics Circle Award Winners
Fiction: Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell (Knopf)
Poetry: Here is the Sweet Hand: Poems by francine j. harris (FSG)
Autobiography: Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong (One World)
Biography: Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World by Amy Stanley (Scribner)
Criticism: Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration by Nicole R Fleetwood (Harvard Univ. Press)
https://www.bookcritics.org/awards/

The John Leonard Prize was presented to Raven Leilani for Luster (FSG);
the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing to Jo Livingstone; and
the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award to the Feminist Press.

Amazing list! Thank you Carol and Beverly for assembling this.

Great list thanks!

I thought it was a perfect Friday gift to us all! i hope you find it useful.

Ms Magazine's Karla Strand pens a monthly column I found for the first time. Here's the intro, and a link to the list of 42 new releases.

Each month, I provide Ms. readers with a list of new books being published by writers from historically excluded groups.

The aims of these lists are threefold:

I want to do my part in the disruption of what has been the acceptable “norm” in the book world for far too long—white, cis, heterosexual, male;

I want to amplify amazing works by writers who are women, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, APIA/AAPI, international, LGBIA+, TGNC, queer, disabled, fat, immigrant, Muslim, neurodivergent, sex-positive or of other historically marginalized identities—you know, the rest of us; and

I want to challenge and encourage you all to buy, borrow and read them!
...These 42 books will give you plenty from which to choose to get you through the last dregs of winter. ...

https://msmagazine.com/2021/03/04/fem...

Black Women's Yoga History by Stephanie Y. Evans (nonfiction)

Plantation Politics and Campus Rebellions: Power, Diversity, and the Emancipatory Struggle in Higher Education by Bianca C. Williams (essay collection)

Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer by Jamie Figueroa (debut novel)

The Conductors by Nicole Glover (first in a speculative fiction series)

A History of Scars: A Memoir by Laura Lee

Home Is Not a Country by Safia Elhillo (novel)

How to Dispatch a Human: Stories and Suggestions by Stephanie Andrea Allen (speculative fiction / short stories)

Infinite Country by Patricia Engel (perfect for our Q2 challenge)

Justine by Forsyth Harmon

Sparks Like Stars by Nadia Hashimi (author of The Pearl That Broke Its Shell, among others)

Uncle: Race, Nostalgia, and the Cultural Politics of Loyalty by Cheryl Thompson (nonfiction)

What's Mine and Yours by Naima Coster (fiction)

Yolk by Mary H.K. Choi (YA fiction)

Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert (3rd in series)

The Arsonists' City by Hala Alyan (fiction)

and more ....

A fascinating article on Japanese SciFi author, Izumi Suzuki, whose short story collection, Terminal Boredom: Stories, is being released this month. This excerpt intrigues:

". . .Suzuki has drawn comparisons to Western authors like Marge Piercy, James Tiptree Jr (another woman who began producing SF later in her career) and especially Philip K. Dick, whose tales of social alienation and drug use are similarly ensconced in a futuristic mode. I would add Anna Kavan to the list; like Kavan, Suzuki is unsparing in her use of SF to expose and examine the self. Her work is highly personal, but the artificiality and distance afforded by SF invigorates her writing, opening the way for a more honest engagement with the collective delusion we call the ‘real world’...

https://artreview.com/how-izumi-suzuk...

I'm really looking forward to the Suzuki, thanks for the links will definitely check this out.

The 2021 PEN America Literary Awards were announced. Below are women authors recognized by PEN America.

https://pen.org/literary-awards/2021-...

Asako Serizawa , winner of the $10,000 PEN/Open Book Award for her debut novel, Inheritors. Asako Serizawa was born in Japan and grew up in Singapore, Jakarta, and Tokyo. A recent fiction fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, she has received two O. Henry Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. She currently lives in Boston.

Pen/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection ($5,000):
Obit by Victoria Chang . A transcript of an interview with Chang appears here: https://theadroitjournal.org/issue-th...

PEN Award for Poetry in Translation ($3,000):
Raised by Wolves: Poems and Conversations by Taiwanese poet-filmaker Amang , translated from the Chinese by Steve Bradbury. https://bookshop.org/books/raised-by-...

PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay ($15,000):
Had I Known by American author and political activist Barbara Ehrenreich ,
who describes herself as "a myth buster by trade" and has been called "a veteran muckraker" by The New Yorker.

PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Prize for Biography ($5,000):
Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World by Northwestern University professor, Amy Stanley , whose website is here:
https://www.amy-stanley.com/

PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction ($10,000):
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals by Columbia University professor Saidiya Hartman . A MacArthur "Genius" Fellow, Dr. Hartman has been a Guggenheim Fellow, Cullman Fellow, and Fulbright Scholar.

PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature ($50,000): Canadian poet, essayist, translator, classicist, and professor, Anne Carson . Carson was awarded Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships, has won the Lannan Literary Award, two Griffin Poetry Prizes, the T. S. Eliot Prize, and the Princess of Asturias Award, and was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2005 for her contribution to Canadian letters.

Inheritors and Stranger in the Shogun's City are on my TBR and I need to move each up ASAP.

From the National Endowment for the Arts, Five Author Interviews to Inspire Your Reading List, 4 of which are women authors and it's a diverse and talented group. The links are to podcasts and simply a treat to listen to. The interviewed authors are Rebekah Taussig, Jesmyn Ward, Elizabeth Acevedo, and R.O. Kwon. The Ward interview is a bit dated, from 2014, but the other 3 are 2019 through today.

https://www.arts.gov/stories/blog/202...

Thanks for all the links Carol.

Came across this article about translating feminist books by translator Natasha Lehrer that may interest people:

https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/d...

Some recent articles that people might like:

A mother reflects on motherhood and relates her experiences to reading Victorian women's novels
https://lithub.com/on-the-relationshi...

Article about Patricia Highsmith
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/t-...

Translating Kaoru Takamuru - this one might not be accessible to everyone
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment...?

These are great, Alwynne - thanks for sharing them!

Not sure where to post this. There's a new - new to me anyway - spam scam going around on GR. Accounts set up with no friends, reviews, books leaving comments on reviews - mainly on the ones showing on people's profile pages. The comments look as if they're only partially showing so have the green 'more' at the end that usually reveals the rest of the comment, but the green 'more' is fake in this instance and actually a hyperlink to a different site altogether. So if you click on it you get taken elsewhere. The green 'more' in the scam seems to be underlined which the standard GR version isn't so should be possible to tell them apart. Currently seems to be taking people to a sales site but obviously could be used to link to malware of some kind.

Thanks for letting us know Al. Did you report it to GR? (You can flag it and they'll remove the person.)

I just blocked the account, it was on a friend's feed, I don't allow comments except from friends. In my experience GR takes forever to respond and the person or organisation just sets up more accounts. Everyone has VPNs these days and GR doesn't seem to have the ability to deal with that.

Thanks, Alwynne. (Also I agree the speed of GR response to flagged items makes drying paint seem expeditious.)

This happened to me! It was convincing and as soon as I clicked it it took me to a web page. I quickly closed my browser and didn't see what the page was for. I reported it to goodreads but nothing has happened...

Carol wrote: "A friend shared this list in another group and I loved it: 10 Books by Asian-Canadian and Asian-American Women You Need to Add To Your Reading List, published by Cold Tea Collective. Some new relea..."

I love this list Carol, and just recently stumbked onto Cold Tea Collective myself. I've read a few, a few were on my tbr, and the rest have just made their way on my holds list. This has already been quite a year of Asian women for me. Thank you for always sharing your resources with us!

Anita wrote: "Carol wrote: "A friend shared this list in another group and I loved it: 10 Books by Asian-Canadian and Asian-American Women You Need to Add To Your Reading List, published by Cold Tea Collective. ..."

You're my role model reader on this subcategory of books, Anita, so am glad to help support your TBR expansion efforts.

This is a "doesn't fit any other thread" link. Book Riot published a targeted list of box subscriptions April 29, linked below. Notwithstanding the title, it's not limited to history book subscriptions and, for avoidance of doubt, it's not limited to women authors. But I've never heard of any of these subscriptions and I read more articles than I want to admit publicly on point, so thought other members might be jazzed to check them out, too.

https://bookriot.com/the-best-history...

Thanks Carol.

Alwynne wrote: "Thanks Carol."

I just lost ten minutes on a Boxwalla mystery books quiz. Totally my fault; not theirs. Be forewarned : )

From the Center for the Art of Translation, an interview with translator, Julie Nelsen, entitled, Translating the Overlooked Female Writer, re Gianna Manzini.

https://www.catranslation.org/blog-po...

and more on False Days:

https://www.catranslation.org/journal...

Tayari Jones on Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place

https://lithub.com/tayari-jones-on-th...

New Yorker article on flowers and art that refers to Toni Morrison's work as well as Georgia O'Keefe's art

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cul...?

Piece by Nicole Chung on writing and motherhood

https://www.raisingmothers.com/mamas-...?

On this, Lorraine Hansberry's birthday, LitHub published a random list of things and people she liked and disliked and, on the back, things she's "bored to death with."

https://lithub.com/this-random-list-o...

I'm finally, almost done with Imani Perry's wonderful book, Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry and strongly recommend it to anyone interested in its subject matter.

Thanks Carol, glad she liked Eartha Kitt after all, love her music. I've only ever seen the film of A Raisin in the Sun but it was very memorable and moving. I've been wondering about the biography glad to hear you rate it so highly!

Alwynne wrote: "Thanks Carol, glad she liked Eartha Kitt after all, love her music. I've only ever seen the film of A Raisin in the Sun but it was very memorable and moving. I've been wondering about the biography..."

The Eartha Kitt thing was kind of odd, but, yes, I was glad the "bored of" comment was balanced out to a net positive.

Perry's book is written with a target reader in mind who is a big fan. I don't think the casually interested would stay engaged, necessarily, but the insights she provides into the 1950s/early 1960s politics of the left, as well as Hansberry's figuring out of where she fits and wants to fit in that landscape is nothing I've picked up elsewhere. It's also really easy to skip ahead if a topic isn't working for you, as with me and the deep dive into Hansberry's poetry. : )

My library just shared this list of Arabic literary fiction by women writers:

https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/list/sh...

Came across a recent piece by Cathy Park Hong about life during quarantine:

https://lithub.com/letter-to-my-child...

Stop glorifying ‘centrism’. It is an insidious bias favoring an unjust status quo by Rebecca Solnit
Every sentence hits the spot, highly recommended.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentis...

The Pulitzer Prizes were announced earlier today and there were several women authors honored in the book and drama categories:

https://apnews.com/article/pulitzer-p...

Louise Erdrich won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for The Night Watchman.

The late Les Payne and daughter Tamara Payne for their Malcolm X biography The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X.

Marcia Chatelain’s Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America won for history.

Natalie Díaz’s Postcolonial Love Poem was the poetry winner.

The Hot Wing King by Katori Hall, a play set around a hot wing cooking competition, won the prize for drama.

Thanks Carol! I love Erdrich´s books, and read several of hers this and last year. I usually don´t get to read new books, but I bought this one and found it really good.

Michaela wrote: "Thanks Carol! I love Erdrich´s books, and read several of hers this and last year. I usually don´t get to read new books, but I bought this one and found it really good."

I need to push myself to try Erdrich again. Is this one your favorite, or do you recommend another as my on-ramp?

Five Books published this list of five new history books, 4 of which are written by women authors. I never read as much non-fiction as my excitement would suggest, but each of these and the interview content appeals greatly. The graphic history book about the Middle Ages could perfectly match my attention span and aspirations.

https://fivebooks.us8.list-manage.com...

Carol wrote: "Five Books published this list of five new history books, 4 of which are written by women authors. I never read as much non-fiction as my excitement would suggest, but each of these and the intervi..."

Thanks Carol! Some of these look very intriguing.

Carol wrote: "Five Books published this list of five new history books, 4 of which are written by women authors. I never read as much non-fiction as my excitement would suggest, but each of these and the intervi..."

I've never seen this site - what a great place for book list lovers! When I saw Nobber on the list of the funniest books of 2020, my heart was won.

Some of the non-fiction is really tempting, even though I've pretty much abandoned non-fiction books, since the science ones feel like long essays unnecessarily stretched into book length, and the historical ones go into a level of detail I've lost patience for. I'll be reading Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom for the rest of my life. Too good to abandon, but the detail is excruciating. My non-fiction reading now is long-form journalism in The New Yorker, The Atlantic and the New York Review of Books.

Nadine wrote: "Carol wrote: "Five Books published this list of five new history books, 4 of which are written by women authors. I never read as much non-fiction as my excitement would suggest, but each of these a..."

Graphic history books, Nadine! I hear you. I’m also, however, checking the page numbers for when the footnotes and bibliography begins because I’m finding many history books billed as 412 pages are, in substance , only 260 pages and I can hang in there for that. Five Books does rock, depending on the reviewer/interviewer. 85% of the time I’m delighted with their recs.