Books

10 Essential Books About Writing

Must-read titles for writers include works by Elena Ferrante, Akwaeke Emezi, Meg Wolitzer, Yoko Ogawa, and more.

Jail Bait: Rethinking Images of Incarcerated Women

It is not my pleasure to remind anyone of the 2001 teen flick Sugar & Spice. Teetering between the black humor of Heathers and the girly glitz of Clueless, it achieves the success of neither, and I bring it up now only because of a single scene. The movie follows a group of cheerleaders who... Read more »

Fan/tastic Voyage: A Journey Into the Wide, Wild World of Slash Fan Fiction

A journey into the origins of slash fanfiction.  Read more »

O is for the Other Things She Gave Me: Jonathan Franzen’s "The Corrections" and contemporary women’s fiction

As every tabloid reader knows, it’s a short step from a celebrity marriage to a publicity-filled divorce. When Jonathan Franzen’s new novel, The Corrections, was published this fall, critics waxed hyperbolic over its wedding of character-driven family drama and up-to-the-nanosecond cultural... Read more »

A Galaxy of Our Own: Searching for black women in science-fiction film

In the '90s, the black man suddenly invaded the blockbuster science-fiction and fantasy film. African-American males found expanded roles for themselves in a genre that had previously been blindingly white. We finally have a celluloid landscape in which Will Smith and Wesley Snipes get to... Read more »

Tea Time: Michelle Tea Likes it Caffeinated

Michelle Tea loves words, and it shows. Read more »

Why Don't We Do it in the Road?: Seven weeks on the Sister Spit tour

the traveling spoken-word gang Sister Spit started five years ago as a weekly open mike where grrrly-type poets and performers could ply their trade at San Francisco bars and coffeehouses. In 1997, co-ringleader Michelle Tea, author of the charming and intimate memoir The Passionate Mistakes and... Read more »

Bitch Reads #2

Reviewed in this issue: Defending Pornography, by Nadine Strossen; Gender Wars, by Brian Fawcett; Talk Dirty To Me, by Sallie Tisdale; Going All the Way: Teenage Girls’ Tales of Sex, Romance, and Pregnancy, by Sharon Thompson; and Unnatural Dykes to Watch Out... Read more »

Magazines We Hate

Esquire’s annual “Women We Love” feature gives with one hand and takes away with the other. Hidden behind the premise of honoring them, the article puts women firmly in their place by using the traditional patriarchal tool of male approval—rewarding certain traits in the female while disparaging... Read more »

Why Don't We Do It on the Road?: Seven Weeks on Tour with Sister Spit

The traveling spoken-word gang Sister Spit started five years ago as a weekly open mike where grrrly-type poets and performers could ply their trade at San Francisco bars and coffeehouses. In 1997, co-ringleader Michelle Tea, author of the charming and intimate memoir The Passionate Mistakes and... Read more »

Pages

Demanding the Impossible: Walidah Imarisha Talks About Science Fiction and Social Change

Before she was a poet, journalist, documentary filmmaker, anti-prison activist, and college instructor, Walidah Imarisha was fascinated... Read more »

A Look at How Media Writes Women of Color

Nearly every Saturday morning, feminists of color hold Twitter discussions taking a deeper look at issues, such as gender violence. It’s the... Read more »

Know & Tell: The Literary Renaissance of Trans Women Writers

For so long, the people who wrote about us were not us. Finally, that is beginning to change. Read more »

Rewriting the Future: Using Science Fiction to Re-Envision Justice

Our justice movements desperately need science fiction. Read more »