Friday News: Authors United to call on the DOJ, Amtrak’s Writers Residency project, Olivia Pope’s popularity, and more banned books to read
Publishing NewsAmazon / Amtrak / antitrust / Authors United / Banned-Books / censorship / gender / Hachette / publishing / television11 Comments
Authors United’s Next Move: DOJ – Apparently this story originally appears in the Financial Times, but since the site has a paywall, I’m not going to link to it. So not many details beyond the fact that Authors United is now urging the Department of Justice ti investigate Amazon. Does anyone believe for a second AU didn’t want news of this released now?
According to Preston, a letter addressed to William Baer, assistant attorney general for antitrust, has been drawn up and calls for a closer look at Amazon’s practices. News of the letter, said Preston, was leaked “very prematurely.” –Publishers Weekly
MEET THE 24 WRITERS SELECTED FOR THE AMTRAK RESIDENCY PROGRAM – A while back I posted a story about Amtrak’s pilot writer’s residency program, and apparently it was successful enough to warrant a pretty good expansion — to 24 writers. And while the lineup is a little whiter than one might hope, the range of writing interests is pretty diverse, and I’m pretty curious to see what this experiment yields, both personally and professionally for the writers.
Amtrak is excited to announce the selection of 24 members of the literary community as the first group of writers to participate in the #AmtrakResidency program. Over the next year, they will work on writing projects of their choice in the unique workspace of a long-distance train. The 24 residents offer a diverse representation of the writing community and hail from across the country. –Amtrak
Why every major network wants an Olivia Pope – I’m torn about this piece by Alex Abad-Santos. I appreciate its celebration of a morally and ethically complex woman who is comfortable seeking and wielding power. But I’m ambivalent about the ‘women can’t have it all’ refrain, in part because the rest of that thought is always left blank, specifically, that if women can’t have it all, it’s because they’re still expected to do entirely too much without adequate support from spouses and society. Also, I found that A.O Scott piece in the NYT on ‘the death of adulthood’ or whatever it was called, incoherent and misguided, so to see Abad-Santos call it “excellent” was kind of disturbing to me.
These new Olivias are popping up around two years after Scandal premiered in 2012. That was the same year The Atlantic‘s huge Anne-Marie Slaughter cover story “Why Women Can’t Have It All,” a dissection of what happens when women’s professional and family lives intersect, was widely discussed. We’re still having conversations about the issues raised in Slaughter’s essay, but it’s important to remember what spurred her into writing the essay: she was sick of watching young women being duped into believing a fairytale. . . .
Olivia Pope offers a different option. She’s fully aware of not being to able to have it all. (In her case, the stakes are soapier, since “having it all” involves sleeping with the president.) Instead, Olivia shows us that there’s nothing wrong with trying to have everything that she can.
–Vox
12 Banned Books Every Woman Should Read – As Banned Books Week closes out, I’m offering this up with a modified title: 12 Banned Books Everyone Should Read.” Yes, including Our Bodies, Ourselves. But also Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. –Huffington Post
When was the last time someone said, “Men can’t have it all”?
Oh, that’s right: never. This whole argument is so tired.
Its possible AU didn’t want Amazon to have advanced warning.
Silly women, believing in fairy tales.
I continue to find it entertaining that on the one hand there are articles that constantly remind women that they can’t have it “all,” but then on the other hand there are articles that constantly remind women that they’re somehow incomplete women without a family/children.
@Kenzi: It was probably the same time someone told their son, “don’t dress like that, people are going to say you are asking for it.”
@Kenzi and @azteclady:
And after that, the boy’s gaming blog got filled with comments about how he was such a fake geek boy, claiming to like videogames only because it was attractive to the girls. With the occasional “I’d still do him”.
I wish the world would realize that women can have it all they just need to figure out what their individual “all” is. My “all” does not include having children not because I have somehow failed as a woman but because I do not want to have children.
Thing is, men *don’t* have it all either. But it’s socially acceptable for a man to spend limited time with his children and no time on keeping his house clean and welcoming because he’s focused on his career. It’s not socially acceptable for women to do the same yet.
Having it all is indeed so tired. Because the premise is that the career part is a choice somehow – and I’ve never known anyone male or female that works because it’s a fulfilling life choice. Everyone I know that works does so because they need money for bills. And even if they do go into fields where they feel some fulfillment and find a job they love, it’s still a necessary paycheck. People I know with kids don’t have the options of juggling career and family – they take care of their family, and both partners work. Most of these friends went to college, some grad school, etc., and are doing office work. This has been typical – of people I know anyhow – since the 90s. And there are at least two that have male partners that stay at home with the kids.
Do the brain trust at AU not realize that DOJ has already been involved, and that the parties found wanting were the publishers?
I love the list of Amtrak writers! I’ve read newspaper opinion pieces and blogs from several of them – I wish they’d had a little bit more popular full-length fiction, but I think they did a great job of selecting people who have both a track record of demonstrating commitment to writing (not just ‘oh, that’s cool, I’ll enter the contest too’) and yet aren’t these big best-sellers – people who could still benefit from a boost. And it’s a way more diverse group than I would have expected – a lot of women! Which is, to circle back to the ‘having it all’ discussion, great. Because these are women who are going to both put themselves out there in public as a writer, and they’ve found a room of their own (or at least a berth), and they’ve received recognition for what they’re doing. And they’re presumably leaving that housework and all the other stuff that comes with “having it all” behind to run away and write on the train. That’s fabulous!