The non-profit feminist organization Vida: Women in Literary Arts has released the results of their 2016 Count, a survey that tallies the gender of contributors to literary magazines.
In the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, The Cut is publishing stories by women about the sexual harassment and assault they’ve experienced. The latest comes from Emma Cline, author of the novel The Girls, who details the gendered violence she’s faced. Cline writes about the ways in which women’s stories of abuse are minimized or explained away, noting that women often have little choice but to stay silent or remain friendly with their abusers: “It’s like teaching someone how to play a game and then punishing them when they follow the rules; women would act differently if we believed there was any other way to escape unharmed from the whims of men. We’re navigating a society defined by them, and suffering for it. Yet we’re blamed for our attempts to survive within those parameters.”
Knopf is publishing a novel by Sam Shepard, the playwright, actor, and screenwriter, who died this summer at the age of seventy-three. Spy of the First Person will be released in December.
In 2013, Joe Hagan teamed up with Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone, to write an authorized biography of Wenner’s life. Two previous attempts at an authorized account had been abandoned, as Wenner objected to how he was portrayed. Now that Hagan’s Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine has just been published, Wenner is, predictably, making his displeasure known, telling the New York Times: “Rock and roll set me and my generation free musically, socially and politically. My hope was that this book would provide a record for future generations of that extraordinary time. Instead, he produced something deeply flawed and tawdry.”
Tonight at apex art in Manhattan, Albert Mobilio’s free reading series “Double Take” continues. The evening will feature Forrest Gander and Lucy Ives on miracles and disasters, Dominic Pettman and Merritt Symes on Chicken Little, and Elissa Schappell and Rob Spillman on meditation.