LITERARY SNOBBERY and the harm it does…
Scottish writer SARA SHERIDAN argues that literary snobbery is a destructive and divisive force. She defines it as a prevailing attitude that prefers male authors to female, sees war as a superior subject to family and celebrates the literary over the commerical…The result is an unfair distribution of prizes, reviews, media attention and advances,
In her thought-provoking guest post at Women Writers, Women’s Books, she says that “most writers come into the publishing industry imagining an open creative door, where their work will be judged solely on merit”. Instead “they find a fissured landscape”.
Effectively, now we have a two-tier system – a staid ‘literary’ community, which doles out reviews and prizes, and a commercial community that is far more concerned with real readers in numbers. The nature of the former is predominately male, the latter, I would say is mixed, if not more female.
Read the full article HERE
Do you think there is a deep-rooted inequality in the world of literature?
Do we still need women-only prizes in an attempt to redress the balance?
photo credit: Iustitia via photopin (license)
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3 comments on “LITERARY SNOBBERY and the harm it does…”
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"Unputdownable" Miriam Stoppard
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Oh there is a LOT of this in my local area… including a competition for all of Brisbane, in which the only winners were up and coming journalism students – across an entire population. People were spitting furious.
Hmm, so they were encouraging entries from far and wide but only wanted a certain distict “type” to win…can I ask was there an entry fee?
No, there was no entry fee, but you had to print eight, double-spaced copies of your work (which was expected to be novella sized, not a quick story) and then post it. Postage and ink in Australia is $$$$$ and there were no email submissions, so everyone was mad.