Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Women + Men (or: Melusine + Thirst for Fire)


the new issue of Melusine launched: Melusine 2.1. the full title and description of the journal is: "Melusine, or Woman in the 21st Century, an online journal of literature and art by women (but not only women) about women (and just about everything else.)"

in a fe/male coincidence, Thirst for Fire launched the new issue almost at the same time: Thirst For Fire Winter 2010. and their new issue is 100% male: "Our all male writing cast gives us stories filled with lust and longing, drugged diaries, pornographic film sets, and boyhood memories."
.
so interesting, to browse both issues parallel - Melusine starts with fiction, and then moves to a strong poetry section. for a taste, here the opening of the first poem:

My water turns
mossy dark, viscous. A woman wearing

a Speedo slides through sparkling blue
as if she learned from sharks

- Envy's Lane, Jari Thymian


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in contrast, the Thirst for Fire issue is all fiction, 8 stories, here the starting lines of the first 2 stories.

"I see this girl in the metro. Two stops into my ride she sits right in front of me and looks away." - Love: Hate, Yann Rousselet

"The smoke grew from the fire and separated, taking an existence of its own." - Ota Benga Figures it Out, Jarrid Deaton


typing this, i wonder: if there weren't names attached, would it be possible to guess the gender of the author?

and connected to the fe/male theme, here 2 links to recent virtual notes on gender ratios in the lit scene: "indie lit scene gender imbalance" and "poetry 2000-2009 + number trouble".

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update1, 5 hours later: WHITE HETEROSEXUAL MALE

just came across this conceptual idea for an online journal, from Embassy of Misguided Zen's Blog:

"if i had a lot of time and money i'd start these journals:
4. WHITE HETEROSEXUAL MALE
this journal would only publish white heterosexual male writers, though the stories would have to have black, asian, hispanic, gay, women, alien, animal, etc. narrators. the implicit demographic of the writers and their disparate content would be instructive, valuable, relevant. this journal would be about perception, both the writer's and the reader's."
(link)

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update2, 7 hours later : I AM NOT SORRY I HAVE A VAGINA--
(pulling this up from the comments)
"Here's another article about writers and gender that Roxane Gay posted yesterday at HTML. htmlgiant.com/i-am-not-sorry-i-have-a-vagina// -coincidence????" - xTx

here the start of the article:
"The fiction section of the new issue (ETA: the set of stories that indicate they’ve been guest edited by Claire Messud) of Guernica is guest-edited by Claire Messud and she offers a brief essay, Writers, Plain and Simple, to introduce her selections, all written by women. In her essay, Messud writes of how Elizabeth Bishop did not wish to be known as a woman writer."

and here the direct link to the Messud essay, and the starting line: Writers, Plain and Simple
"Women make up 80 percent of the fiction reading audience in this country. So why, guest fiction editor Claire Messud asks, are women authors so frequently left off the best-of lists, and left out of prestigious book prizes?"

2 comments:

xTx said...

Neat Dorothee...

Here's another article about writers and gender that Roxane posted yesterday at HTML. http://htmlgiant.com/random/i-am-not-sorry-i-have-a-vagina/

coincidence????

janelle elyse kihlstrom said...

Enjoyed this post, and I love the notion of being part of an unfolding conversation. Thanks, Dorothee!