Before novels written by women were relegated to their own 'genre,' I was introduced to Jane Smiley by a dear professor who raised my awareness of what female authors were bringing to the table of contemporary fiction.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I don't think I'm interested in writing women's novels anymore.
Far more women read fiction than men, and because of this, novels have become marginalised as serious texts.
Literary fiction is kept alive by women. Women read more fiction, period.
My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh.
I wonder if novels work for women because they give us a safe place to talk about our ish.
As a male writer, women are always what men pursue, and their world is always a mystery. So I always tried to present as many views as possible on women's worlds.
Nobody is surprised that women writers accurately represent male characters over and over again, no doubt because everybody knows that women understand men much better than vice-versa.
Most mainstream male fiction is littered with heroines, and female characters are basically so great, you want to fall in love with them.
I can't imagine writing a book without some strong female characters, unless that was a demand of the setting.
Female authors were still using male names when I was young, or they were neatly shoehorned into 'women's books' except for those few that men could always point at when the disparity was pointed out.