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Recent political events have me considering the way our history shapes the books that writers write and
As for recent events, I’m wondering how the overturning of Roe v
Women have of course written books throughout history, and the best ones reflected the difficult realities of
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë focused on a woman making her way through the world with limited
Wade, stories written by women for women became much more common and not all were focused exclusively
Wade in the Supreme Court set the precedent for the legal right to abortion across the United
Though it was never codified into federal law, from 1973 to 2022, the legal right to abortion was protected
That changed on June 24, 2022, when the Supreme Court ruled on Dobbs v
It’s important to understand this basic history and how radically things can change with expanded access
The average age of first-time American mothers in 1970 was under 22
Today, more women are able to choose to wait for marriage until they are ready for it,
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For a lot of women, this meant joining the workforce first and advancing their careers in fields
For the past 20 years, The New York Times Best Seller List has approached equity in the numbers
However, when you go to the genre breakdown, women dominated the “domestic” genre since the 1980s and
Wade, we probably never would have gotten the explosion of women’s fiction and romance novels that
“I do write primarily for women,” she says at LitHub, “but what I refuse to accept is
Over the past few years, women authors have been accused of “conquering” fiction and leaving no space
Although numbers don’t support this assertion, it is true that anything approaching equality feels like a
Additionally, we’re only just getting more writing by women of color and by trans and gender-nonconforming
The biggest trend I’ve noticed in “women’s fiction” overall is having the freedom to make
Though there are still a ton of novels about successful women making the best of their lives,
All these reasons are equally valid and important for all people to access care
Things were never rosy for AFAB people seeking abortions around the country, even legally
I’m certain readers will continue to crave the candy-colored joy of a low stakes beach read
I wonder if there will be an uptick in historical, or sci-fi and fantasy genre fiction, which
Although many states are working to impose restrictions on anyone who is not a cisgender man, writing
It might be preferable to dive into a different world of fiction to process our terrifying reality
I personally hope there are also a small number of books imbued with hope and optimism and
In the past, female authors wrote under male or gender neutral-sounding pseudonyms in order to get their
Men determined that writing as a career would distract women from their proper duties of child-rearing and
It’s not just that the writers wanted their work to be assessed holistically; they knew their
The summer of 2020 caused a major uptick in customers purchasing social justice books, a trend which persisted
Even if things are changing quickly in customer buying patterns, publishing is slow to change because of
The first one is that writing, selling, and publishing a book takes a long time
However, there is also a crisis of faith in the publishing industry itself among young, overworked book
These past trends call into question how the publishing industry will respond to the Dobbs v
Authors might choose to publish anonymously if they are writing about fiction or nonfiction about these places
The issues with low pay and burnout in the publishing industry are driving out employees who would
When you only have privileged people in publishing, choosing which books get published and publicized, you get
My concern is that the majority of these stories will be skewed to the white perspective
Writers who have books on submission that fit the theme will get their work picked up, and
For further reading on the genres I discussed here, you can dive into books about social justice,