Although the most recent profile of a woman novelist in the New York Times Magazine is, as best my crowd of researcher-readers has determined, the 2005 story on Gigi Levangie Grazer, many of you wrote in yesterday to supply information on additional profiles that ran before that one. And the evidence is plain: While the magazine arguably has what one of you dubbed “a weakness for a certain kind of ‘drama of the sensitive misunderstood culturally alienated (yet secretly virile!) young male writer’ story,” it will also take women writers at the apex of their careers seriously. (Interestingly, the two “new” writers in this batch are a comics artist and a fantasy writer; make of that what you will.)
- Melanie Rehak on Paula Fox, March 2001
- Peggy Orenstein on Phoebe Gloeckner, August 2001
- Maria Russo on Edith Templeton, February 2002
- Maria Russo on Carol Shields, April 2002
- John Hodgman on Susanna Clarke, August 2004
- Meghan O’Rourke on Marilynne Robinson, October 2004
- Daphne Merkin on Alice Munro, same October 2004 issue
So, yes, while my memory had frontloaded all those stories on young men setting the literary world on fire, the magazine’s editors do in fact make room for women novelists—and it’s also worth noting, for those keeping score, the number of strong women journalists who get tapped to write these pieces. (See also, in this vein, Rachel Donadio‘s 2006 piece on South African writers.)
(photos of Clarke and Robinson from the Times)