The Orange Prize and Women's Fiction

Here's something that I think will interest many of the women writers in this forum. I think this blog post from the Guardian speaks directly to the problem we've all been talking about, worrying about: the literary clout of women's writers.

Here's a snippet: "There's a great deal of pleasure in publishing, particularly in writing by women, but it's not found on prize lists. That's because this type of book is almost invariably marketed as "women's fiction", often clad in a bright pink cover and bearing an image of a shoe or a cupcake on the front. These books may catch the eyes of readers in Waterstone's (as reflected in the bestseller lists), but their categorisation appears to be a dealbreaker when it comes to literary prizes."

It's about marketing and how that marketing affects how the books are perceived--by readers, by reviewers, and apparently, even by editors (many of them women) deciding whether to nominate their female authors for book prizes. Or not. Some of you might remember that I talked about this during the "No Women on the PW List" discussion.

Tags: fiction, guardian, orange, prize, the, women's

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Comment by Michelle Hoover on March 19, 2010 at 6:38am: I do think the idea that a book is "women's fiction" is doomsday for book prizes. And for some reason, I feel myself sharing the distaste of the term (and of bright pink covers). How has the idea of women's fiction gotten away from us? I don't think the term or idea behind it services our efforts well, or the complexity in many of our books, even if the books sell. Are we at all responsible for this a label that basically "dumbs down" our novels? Or does the problem purely lie within marketing forces? Do our own dollars support this unfavorable idea or do we have more control?

By the way, a book this year that should be considered the epitome of "women's fiction" but is certainly not "women's fiction" as the main stream knows it: Kate Walbert's A Short History of Women. Thankfully, this book did get a lot of attention, and it involves both the problems and important freedoms behind the feminist movement. The book exists in glimpses mostly, moving from one woman to the next and leaving it up to the reader to make the necessary connections. I highly recommend it.

Best,
Michelle Hoover
The Quickening

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