On Female Authors ...

(x-posted to This Is Where The Voices Go)
Rejected Title: "I need Maurier books than just Daphne"

While browsing the fantastic events calendar for Manchester Literature Festival, I found myself noting just how many of the female authors (but the not poets, strangely) I'm completely unfamiliar with. This got me to wondering why none of the female authors I follow ever do events or talks. 

A cursory glance at my bookshelves provided me with the answer. If you take away my near-complete Daphne DuMaurier collection and the obligatory Harry Potters, a shockingly dominant male bias shows its face.

a female writer, evidently

Pull out any books bought for university that have survived the six years since (Austen, Bronte, Shelley, Winterson, Zadie Smith, A.L Kennedy, Stella Gibbons, *) and I'm left... with two... Simon Lia's beautiful graphic novel Fluffy which I one day hope she'll let me put on a stage, and Claire Dowie's Creating Chaos.

Thinking my collection was incomplete, I checked out the books that I lust after, rather than just those that I own. Of the 217 books on my Amazon wishlist, only 18 are by female authors, and only 9 of those are fiction.

My first reaction was one of guilt, but that didn't feel right. Despite what I said about Linda Barnes, I have no issue with female authors. I don't really think of them as female authors, just as I don't think of men as male authors. Both are just extra words on a book cover or a flag to tie a series or style around.

It's not my fault that classic science fiction and fantasy was male-dominated. It's not my fault that the most attractive covers on the shelf last time I was a-browsing were attached to works by David Drake and Jeff Somers. I've got to blame the industry, and go about fixing this bias by filling my shelves with female authors, right?

No.

Putting my new-feminism cap on for a moment (they gave me one at university, it suits me when I like it), I have to say that actively searching out female authors simply because they are female is just as sexist and oppressive as having an ignorance of female authors. Gender plays no part in quality of writing, nor should it affect prominence of genres or form, although certain lists are more likely to push certain familiar styles.

So what's the solution? Passively expose myself to as many books as possible in the hope that some of them are by female authors? I'm fairly sure that's what I'm already doing, and it isn't enough.

UPDATE. Well we've proven enough through the comments below that crowd-sourcing is an excellent way to get hold of new writers, and I don't want you to think for a moment that I'm pandering when I say I'm going to enjoy working my way through all those recommendations. I also have to say I love that you're chatting amongst yourselves too!

But still.. the fact that it had to go to crowd sourcing is not such a great thing. I can easily generate a list of male writers I have never read or know nothing about, but the same clearly isn't true for women writers. I'm not special in this regard, and don't feel that my situation is a rare one. We should all be able to pull names from the air regardless of their gender, age or race, and I feel the need to return to blaming this on the availability of information, and the relative lack of exposure women writers receive, and should consider that a goal worth working towards.

Well like I say, I'm off to follow up on some of this excellent feedback, and to pass it on.

Nick

xx
*I nearly put Wilkie Collins on this list but a quick google proved a worthwhile error-check..