Now incorporating The Sudbury Hill Harrow and Wherever End Times

Friday, March 25, 2005

From the introduction to New Writing 13

"It's worth pointing out: a lot of what was submitted was dauntingly undaring. On the whole the submissions from women were disappointingly domestic, the opposite of risk-taking - as if too many women writers have been injected with a special drug that keeps them dulled, good, saying the right thing, aping the right shape, and melancholy at doing it, depressed as hell. Thank god for the writers here, then, who refute this strange trend; to name just a few - Nicola Barker's understanding of the strangeness of social structure, Frances Gapper's pier-end eccentricity, Kamila Shamsie's visceral force, Susan Irvine's good aggressiveness of form, Monique Roffey's theatrical panache."

That's the controversial bit from The introduction by Toby Litt and Ali Smith. Are they angry, are they in denial, why do their names sound implausible ... who cares?

Ossian

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