Two Organizations Promoting Women's Writing

As a longtime feminist, I can remember when books by and about women were much less available than they are now. The current far greater proliferation didn't just happen: many writers, readers, publishers, academics, journalists, activists and others worked very hard to create structures and possibilities for more publications by, for, and about women. Here I would like to give credit to two entities that have been extremely influential in this area: Virago Press and the Women's Review of Books.

Virago Press (www.virago.co.uk/) began in 1973 in England. The founders of the press recognized that biases on the part of publishers, reviewers, academe, book distributors, and others all kept many worthy books by women writers from being published or kept in print. The publisher's mission was and is to discover, or in many cases rediscover, these books, many of which had fallen into obscurity. Virago calls itself "a feminist publishing company," and is now the largest women's imprint in the world. After studying English literature in college, where we were still assigned mostly books by white male Western authors, I remember my joyful discovery of Virago books, especially the "Virago Modern Classics" series, with their beautiful green-bordered covers. Some of the great authors whom Virago published -- authors who might have been lost to us otherwise -- were Vita Sackville-West, Rosamond Lehmann, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Dorothy Richardson, Mary Webb, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Rose Macauley, Mary Olivier, and Rebecca West.

The Women's Review of Books (www.wcwonline.org/womensreview)was first published in 1983 by the Wellesley Center for Women at Wellesley College. Its goal was "spreading the news about the scholarship emerging from the then new field of women's studies and about creative writing -- fiction, memoir, poetry -- that examined women's experiences" (from the website), and it has continued to spread that news. It publishes not only reviews and essays but also poetry and photography. It is an essential resource for those of us who love, read, and write about books by and about women. I am a longtime subscriber, and I find every single issue both enjoyable and useful.