Friday Finds

Rebecca Giggs has written a really interesting piece on gender and genre which you can (and should) read over here.Giggs is one of my favourite non-fiction writers at the moment, and this feature is a highlight of both her ability as a journalist and as a writer generally. The topic itself is one that's pretty close to my heart too, so it's nice to see her cover it.

Men, too, write books about family, memory, loss and suburbia. Men, too, adopt the twee, the contemplative, the sentimental and the romantic as literary temperaments. But as the American author Lionel Shriver has pointed out, themes that might be considered quaint and localised in women’s writing are cast as synecdochic and political in books by men. So novels by women writers are often given mawkish, pastel covers – images taken from child-height of bodies, domestic settings and wispy plants – while novels by men are illustrated with images taken from overhead or in panorama, showing buildings, vistas and animals. Of course, there are exceptions, but the distinction still largely holds. Women’s writing is cottage industry – craft – while men make art and ideology.

 This beautiful speech by Louise Pratt to the Senate regarding the Marriage Amendment Bill.

Justine Larbalestier has written a great blog post on the importance of relationships in fiction too, and the fun you can have with them. 

Also, MURDER OR HUG?! (this is my new favourite).