Publisher finds that writers' influences are mostly male

When Tramp Press asked authors submitting manuscripts to name the writers who inspire them, only 22% were female - pointing again to ‘the larger issue in the industry: our habitual dismissal of women’

She's right there in front of you ... why do authors name so few women authors as influences? Image from Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision at the National Portrait Gallery, London.
She’s right there in front of you ... why do writers name so few women authors as influences? Image from Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

An Irish publisher has stoked the flames of the gender debate currently running in the literary world, revealing that when it asked writers submitting their manuscripts to name their literary influences, just 22% of names cited were female.

Independent publisher Tramp Press always asks authors to lay out their influences when submitting manuscripts, but when co-founder Sarah Davis-Goff looked at the last 100 submissions, she found that 148 influences had been named, just 33 of which were female.

“I read letter after letter from well-meaning, perfectly nice men and women who list reams of writers they admire, without apparently noticing that the writers they are listing are all of one gender,” wrote Davis-Goff in the Irish Times. “If a writer lists two influences and they both happen to be male – well, fair enough. They never both happen to be female, though, and receiving list after list of five, seven, 10 or more male influences is disturbing. It points again to the larger issue in the industry: our habitual, unchecked dismissal of the experiences, viewpoints and brilliant work of women.”

She told the Guardian that she set out to tally up the influences after wondering if she was “imagining that so many submissions seemed only to cite male influences”.

“So I spent an hour one afternoon just going through a sample of 100” – split 40% women, 60% men – “and totting up the numbers: they were far worse than I had imagined, which really made me want to write about the problem,” she said. “It’s not malicious, but accidental sexism is still sexism, and that’s what I wanted to talk about – about trying to make our choices, about art, culture, politics and daily life, thoughtfully.”

Tramp Press’s disclosure is just the latest in a series of figures addressing the gender balance in today’s literary arena. In May, the novelist Nicola Griffith analysed the winners of six major literary prizes, finding that male rather than female protagonists dominated, while Vida has annually documented the fact that both male authors and male book reviewers are more prevalent on literary pages. In June, writer Kamila Shamsie suggested a “Year of Publishing Women” in 2018 as part of “ a concerted campaign to redress the inequality”.

And Other Stories was the first publisher to sign up, with Tilted Axis Press, a not-for-profit publisher focusing on literature in translation, particularly from Asia and Africa, now also answering Shamsie’s call – although a little earlier than 2018.

“We’d already committed to have at least 50% of our list be by women. And having initially thought ‘yes, this sounds like a good initiative, we’ll go for it too’ I then looked at our schedule and realised that in fact our entire list for next year, which will be our first year, is by women,” said founder Deborah Smith.

“Of course, I recognise that this ‘Year of Publishing Women’ is hardly going to be feasible, or even desirable, for the vast majority of publishers. But I’m proud that Tilted Axis is the kind of company for which it is possible, and grateful to Kamila Shamsie for her clarion call.”

Davis-Goff said that Tramp had also “sort of accidentally” joined up. “That is, of the three books we published in our inaugural year, two were novels by women. The breakdown for our 2015 list is working out very similarly,” she said. “We don’t particularly feel the need to favour women in our list, since so much of the brilliant work that we find happens to be written by women. We talk a lot about why this is. Perhaps they’re being overlooked elsewhere, and they’re the low-hanging fruit in literature?”

Tramp’s titles include Oona Frawley’s Flight, which Davis-Goff said “had been disregarded by other publishers for years”, but which has been reprinted more than once by Tramp, well reviewed, and shortlisted for an Irish Book award.

“It’s really clear that there’s a gender issue in publishing, and I think problems need to be tackled with action,” said the editor. “There’s probably not one perfect answer that will combat the issue, but Kamila Shamsie’s interesting idea would achieve a lot – just drawing more attention to the problem is fantastic, and if it inspires acquiring editors and publishers to confront their own patterns or even their accidental prejudices, then that’s wonderful. The question for us isn’t ‘Why aren’t there more excellent female writers?’ because clearly there are loads out there. The question is ‘Why are they so often sidelined?’ Anything that can induce publishers, reviewers and newspaper and journal editors to address that question for themselves has got to be a good thing.”

Smith was clear that Tilted Axis would not continue publishing only women in the future. “Though our small size means we’re flexible enough to do a women-only year, I certainly don’t intend for Tilted Axis to exclude men beyond that. Fighting discrimination with discrimination seems a terrible idea in general, and besides, it makes little sense for us to refuse to publish a male author such as Prabda Yoon, when barely any Thai literature makes it into English,” she said. “Commercial publishers’ inherent conservatism means a tendency to churn out more of the same, but for us it’s important to present a range if we’re to avoid lazy pigeonholing.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/28/writers-influences-female-inspirational-authors-gender
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