Lack of Women Writer’s Leads To New Yorker Boycott

The New Yorker contains some of the best writing in the world. It is the last stronghold of the long article, the protector of prose and the savior of the great short story. What a shame that the walls of this literary fortress cannot be extended to include the fairer sex.

Anne Hays is calling for a boycott of the dusty old tome for effectively excluding women writers from the last two publications. In an open letter to the editors, she wrote:

• I am writing to express my alarm that this is now the second issue of the NYer in a row where only two (tiny) pieces out of your 76 page magazine are written by women.  The January 3rd, 2011 issue features only a Shouts & Murmurs (Patricia Marx) and a poem (Kimberly Johnson).  Every other major piece—the fiction, the profile, and all the main nonfiction pieces—is written by a man.  Every single critic is a male writer…

• Women are not actually a minority group, nor is there a shortage, in the world, of female writers…  And so we are baffled, outraged, saddened, and a bit depressed that, though some would claim our country’s sexism problem ended in the late 60’s, the most prominent and respected literary magazine in the country can’t find space in its pages for women’s voices in the year 2011…

• I have enclosed the January issue and expect a refund.  You may either extend our subscription by one month, or you can replace this issue with a back issue containing a more equitable ratio of male to female voices. I plan to return every issue that contains fewer than five women writers.  You tend to publish 13 to 15 writers in each issue; 5 women shouldn’t be that hard.

Tradition takes time to change, but it is time we stop assuming that women’s writing is not serious stuff. Whether it is about bombs or babies, the progeny of our brains are as strong or weak as yours. Sometimes the articles written are as fully formed and powerful as Athena leaping from Zeus’s head, and other times they wither and die under the harsh light of criticism.

If editors reach for the same writers every time they will publish the same voices with the same opinions. Taking a chance on one of the women in the wings may be a little bit more work, but it’ll be worth the effort. As more publications become extinct, the fittest will survive by adapting to the changing literary climate… and by not alienating half of their readership.

Contact the author here: mick@morningquickie.com