author of contemporary gothic, dark fiction, horror and fairy tales
On the back of a recent SF Signal Mind Meld which asked a bunch of very smart women what genre books they would recommend to teenage girls, participant Stina Leicht penned some additional thoughts about the types of books that are often seen as "suitable" for girls to be reading as opposed to the types … Continue reading Girls and Consequences
Because it's not enough to criticise when Wrong Things Are Wrong; we also need to offer kudos when they are indeed due. As for example, this excellent cover for Ann Aguirre's new novel, Endgame: What a magnificent pose. An action-oriented female character who immediately presents as being strong, confident, physically capable and physically aware. An … Continue reading Women on Book Covers: Counterpoint
Back in January, when I wasn't blogging, one of my perpetually open tabs was this post by Jim C. Hines in which he attempted to reproduce the ways in which females are often posed on genre book covers. His conclusion was that: My sense is that most of these covers are supposed to convey strong, … Continue reading False Equivalence: An Amusing Illustration by Jim C. Hines
Over the past few months of my blog hiatus, I did a lot of thinking about feminism and gender issues, with particular attention paid to writing, authors and the publishing industry. After all, there has been a lot to provoke such thoughts over the past year: the Australian Women's Writers Challenge, the announcement of the … Continue reading Bad Feminist: An Unexpected Case Study
So I read this article about the "SlutWalk" phenomenon today in the Sydney Morning Herald. I wasn't going to blog about the whole SlutWalk thing, because my thoughts are complicated and the issue deserves some fairly nuanced treatment and I really don't have a day to spare writing a complicated, nuanced blog post right now. … Continue reading Not so much walking, as talking . . .
