VIDA: Women in Literary Arts have released a report entitled “The Count 2011,” revealing that male writers outnumbered female writers in many publications last year.
Picking up on where last year’s report left off, this report tracks the statistics of gender balance among writers published at literary magazines, including The New Yorker (overall: 165 women, 459 men), Poetry (overall: 134 women, 179 men) and The Threepenny Review (overall: 19 women, 37 men).
They also looked at authors reviewed, book reviewers, and interviews at certain publications, including: Harper’s (book reviewers: 13 women, 65 men) and The New York Times (book reviewers: 273 women, 520 men).
What do you think? Here’s more from the article: “Here’s the short version: the publication numbers don’t look markedly different than last year’s. But we at VIDA aren’t discouraged by this fact–we know that significant change takes time. We also know that this is a conversation that’s not going away; when we talk to other writers, when we talk to our writing students, we know things are in the process of changing for the better, that our culture’s literary consciousness has been raised.”
Poets Cate Marvin and Erin Belieu founded VIDA “to address the need for female writers of literature to engage in conversations regarding the critical reception of women’s creative writing in our current culture.” A number of authors serve on the board of directors. (via Sarah Weinman)