The WILLA List of Great Books by Women in 2009 got swiped by Guerrilla Girls on Tour, hunh?!

I am all for spreading the good word about Great Books by Women that Publisher's Weekly Missed in 2009, but for some reason Guerrilla Girls on Tour (not to be confused with Guerrilla Girls) published the open-edit WILLA wiki list as their own. And sans link, so readers don't know they can add their own titles. W-e-i-r-d. They tell us they'll give WILLA a shout out tomorrow, but in the meantime, I thought I'd repost all the fine titles here on my blog.

If you visit the wiki page, you can still add great books by women published in 2009 to the list! We've gotten some fab press about it at Jezebel, NYTimes ArtsBeat, Salon, and other such outlets.

[Update: it's tomorrow, and GGOT has added a link to the WILLA list on their blog.]

And WILLA Women in Letters and Literary Arts is developing its Web site here. Exciting stuff!

FICTION
Megan Abbott Bury Me Deep
Marguerite Abouet Aya: The Secrets Come Out (Graphic Novel)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie The Thing Around Your Neck
Margaret Atwood The Year of the Flood
Margo Berdeshevsky Beautiful Soon Enough
A.S. Byatt The Children's Book
Amina Cain I Go To Some Hollow
Chelsea Cain Evil At Heart
Bonnie Jo Campbell American Salvage
Mary Caponegro All Fall Down
Emily Chenoweth Hello Goodbye
Farai Chideya Kiss the Sky
Inger Christensen Azorno
Jennine Capó Crucet How to Leave Hialeah
Randy Sue Coburn A Better View of Paradise
Lydia Davis The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
Rachel DeWoskin Repeat After Me
Elissa Elliot Eve: A Novel of the First Woman
Louise Erdrich The Red Convertible
Janet Evanovich Finger Lickin' Fifteen
Gillian Flynn Dark Places
Ru Freeman A Disobedient Girl
Amanda C. Gable The Confederate General Rides North
Diana Gabaldon An Echo in the Bone
Mary Gaitskill Don't Cry
Mavis Gallant The Cost of Living: New and Uncollected Stories
Meg Gardiner The Memory Collector
Kate George Moonlighting in Vermont
Amelia Gray AM/PM
Lauren Groff Delicate Edible Birds: And Other Stories
Tina May Hall All the Day's Sad Stories
Masha Hamilton 31 Hours
Samantha Harvey The Wilderness
Elina Hirvonen When I Forgot
Joanna Howard On the Winding Stair
Michelle Huneven Blame
Tania James The Atlas of Unknowns
Holly Goddard Jones Girl Trouble
Toni Jordan Addition
Stephanie Kallos Sing Them Home
Laura Kasischke In a Perfect World
Barbara Kingsolver The Lacuna
Deidre Knight Butterfly Tattoo
Laila Lalami Secret Son
Dylan Landis Normal People Don't Live Like This
Glenda Larke The Last Stormlord
Stacey Levine The Girl With Brown Fur: Tales and Stories
Laura Lippman Life Sentences
Sophie Littlefield A Bad Day for Sorry
Sheila Lowe Dead Write
Li Yiyun The Vagrants
Lisa Lutz Revenge of the Spellmans
Hilary Mantel Wolf Hall
Juliet Marillier Heart's Blood
Joyce Maynard Labor Day
Jill McCorkle Going Away Shoes
Jen Cullerton Johnson Seeds of Change
Maile Meloy Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It
Anne Michaels The Winter Vault
Marie Mutsuki Mockett Picking Bones from Ash
Lorrie Moore A Gate at the Stairs
Nami Mun Miles From Nowhere
Alice Munro Too Much Happiness: Stories
Antonya Nelson Nothing Right
Bich Minh Nguyen Short Girls
Audrey Niffenegger Her Fearful Symmetry
Sara Paretsky Hardball
Ann Parker Leaden Skies
Gaile Parkin Baking Cakes In Kigali
Victoria Patterson Drift
Samantha Peale The American Painter Emma Dial
Lydia Peelle Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing: Stories
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya There Once Was a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby
Gin Phillips The Well and the Mine
Jayne Anne Phillips Lark and Termite
Naomi Pringle Ginga' Root Tea
Amy Reed Beautiful
Sarah Rosenthal Manhattan
Joanna Ruocco The Mothering Coven
Preeta Samarasan Evening is the Whole Day
Lisa See Shanghai Girls
Nicole Seitz A Hundred Years of Happiness
Heather Sharfeddin Windless Summer
Brooks Sigler Five Finger Fiction
Emily St. John Mandel Last Night in Montreal
Kathryn Stockett The Help
Jean Thompson Do Not Deny Me
Laura Van den Berg What The World Will Look Like When All The Water Leaves Us
Kate Walbert A Short History of Women: A Novel
Sarah Waters The Little Stranger
Jennifer Weiner Best Friends Forever
Tracy Winn Mrs. Somebody Somebody

POETRY
Carrie Olivia Adams Intervening Absence
Kim Addonizio Lucifer at the Starlite
Deborah Ager Midnight Voices
Rae Armantrout Versed
Jessica Bozek The Bodyfeel Lexicon
Ana Bozicevic Stars of the Night Commute
Brigitte Byrd Song of a Living Room
Teresa Cader A History of Hurricanes
Gabrielle Calvocoressi Apocalyptic Swing
Kara Candito Taste of Cherry
Andrea Cohen Long Division
Norma Cole Where Shadows Will
Gillian Conoley The Plot Genie
Rita Dove Sonata Mulattica
Kate Durbin The Ravenous Audience
Robin Ekiss The Mansion of Happiness
Sarah Gambito Delivered
Amy Gerstler Dearest Creature
Kate Greenstreet The Last 4 Things
Marilyn Hacker Names
Leslie Harrison Displacement
Brenda Hillman Practical Water
Janet Holmes The ms of m y kin
Julie Kane Jazz Funeral
Bhanu Kapil Humanimal
Jesse Lee Kercheval Cinema Muto
Myung Mi Kim Penury
Amy King Slaves to do These Things
Ish Klein Union!
Noelle Kocot Sunny Wednesday
Jennifer Kronovet Awayward
Rachel Levitsky Neighbor
Rachel Loden Dick of the Dead
Dana Teen Lomax Disclosure
Barbara Maloutas The Whole Marie
Sabrina Orah Mark Tsim Tsum
Jen McCreary :ab ovo:
Karyna McGlynn I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl
Nicole Mauro The Contortions
Helena Mesa Horse Dance Underwater
Chelsey Minnis Poemland
Mel Nichols Catalytic Exteriorization Phenomenon
Hoa Nguyen Hecate Lochia
Lisa Olstein Lost Alphabet
Alicia Ostriker The Book of Seventy
Gaile Parkin Baking Cakes In Kigali
Carol Peters Sixty Some
Kiki Petrosino Fort Red Border
Marie Ponsot Easy
Lisa Robertson Lisa Robertson's Magenta Soul Whip
Sophie Robinson a
Kim Rosenfield re: evolution
Lee Ann Roripaugh On the Cusp of a Dangerous Year
Lisa Samuels Tomorrowland
Sarah Sarai The Future is Happy
Sandra Simonds Warsaw Bikini
Carmen Gimenez Smith Odalisqued in Pieces
Pamela Sneed KONG
Alison Stine Ohio Violence
Terese Svoboda Weapons Grade
Stacy Szymaszek Hyperglossia
Michelle Taransky Barn Burned, Then
Eleanor Ross Taylor Captive Voices
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon Open Interval
Catherine Wagner My New Job
Anne Waldman Manatee/Humanity
Liz Waldner Trust
Susan Wheeler Assorted Poems
Dara Wier Selected Poems
Allison Benis White Self-Portrait with Crayon
Rebecca Wolff The King
Karena Youtz The Shape is Space
Rachel Zucker Museum of Accidents

NONFICTION
Julie Abraham Metropolitan Lovers: The Homosexuality of Cities
Diana Athill Somewhere Towards the End
Nancy Balbirer Take Your Shirt Off And Cry: A Memoir of Near-Fame Experiences
Carlene Bauer Not That Kind of Girl
Helen Benedict The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq
Eula Biss Notes From No Man's Land
Rebecca Brown American Romances: Essays
Lily Burana I Love a Man in Uniform
Ashley Butler Dear Sound of Footstep
Gwen Cooper Homer's Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale
Mary Cappello Called Back: My Reply to Cancer, My Return to Life
Staceyann Chin The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir
Jennifer Culkin A Final Arc of Sky: A Memoir of Critical Care
Jenny Diski The Sixties
Hope Edelman The Possibility of Everything
Lise Eliot Pink Brain, Blue Brain
Barbara Ehrenreich Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
Terry Galloway Mean Little Deaf Queer
Michelle Goldberg The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World
Temple Grandin Animals Make Us Human
Debra Gwartney Live Through This
Duchess Harris Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton
Lyanda Lynn Haupt Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness
Monica Holloway Cowboy & Wills
Jane Jeong Trenka Fugitive Visions: An Adoptee's Return to Korea
Diana Joseph I'm Sorry You Feel That Way: The Astonishing but True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother and Friend to Man and Dog
Mary Karr Lit
Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor Traveling with Pomegranates
Hermione Lee Biography: A Very Short Introduction
Sara Maitland A Book of Silence
Brenda Miller Blessing of the Animals
Eileen Myles The Importance of Being Iceland
Maggie Nelson Bluets
Rebecca K. O'Connor Lift
Lilian Pizzichini The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys
Dawn Potter Tracing Paradise: Two Years in Harmony with John Milton
Ruth Reichl Not Becoming My Mother: And Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way
Harriet Reisen Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women
Robin Romm The Mercy Papers
Laurie Sandell The Impostor's Daughter (Graphic Novel)
Rebecca Solnit A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster
Helen Thorpe Just Like Us
Andrea Tone The Age of Anxiety: A History of America's Turbulent Affair with Tranquilizers
Spring Ulmer The Age of Virtual Reproduction
Rebecca Walker One Big Happy Family: 18 Writers Talk About Polyamory, Open Adoption, Mixed Marriage, Househusbandry, Single Motherhood, and Other Realities of Truly Modern Love
Lauren Weber In Cheap We Trust: The story of a misunderstood American Virtue

CHILDREN'S & YOUNG ADULT
Katie Alender Bad Girls Don't Die
R.J. Anderson Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter
Pam Bachorz Candor
Cyn Balog Fairy Tale
Eileen Beha Tango - The Tale of an Island Dog
Lauren Bjorkman My Invented Life
Molly Breen Darkwood
Sarah Rees Brennan The Demon's Lexicon
Leigh Brescia One Wish
Jennifer Brown Hate List
Ann E. Burg All the Broken Pieces
Megan Crewe Give up the Ghost
Kirstin Cronn-Mills The Sky Always Hears Me (and the Hills Don't Mind)
Sarah Cross Dull Boy
Kate Di Camillo The Magician's Elephant
Kate di Goldi The 10 PM Question
Erin Dionne Models Don't Eat Chocolate Cookies
Deva Fagan Fortune's Folly
Megan Frazer Secrets of Truth & Beauty
Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl Beautiful Creatures
Matthea Harvey The Little General and the Giant Snowflake
Cheryl Renee Herbsman Breathing
Kerry Cohen Hoffman It's Not You, It's Me
Deborah Hopkinson Keep On! The Story of Matthew Henson, Co-Discoverer of the North Pole
Mandy Hubbard Prada & Prejudice
Jennifer Jabaley Lipstick Apology
Stacey Jay You Are So Undead to Me
Danielle Joseph Shrinking Violet
Suzanne LaFleur Love, Aubrey
Cynthea Liu Paris Pan Takes the Dare
Malinda Lo Ash
C. Lee MacKenzie Sliding on the Edge
Sarah MacLean The Season
J.E. MacLeod Waiting to Score
L.K. Madigan Flash Burnout
Lisa Mantchev Eyes Like Stars
Nan Marino Neil Armstrong is My Uncle and Other Lies Muscle Man McGinty Told Me
Neesha Meminger Shine Coconut Moon
Kate Messner The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z
Saundra Mitchell Shadowed Summer
Jenny Moss Winnie's War
Sarah Ockler Twenty Boy Summer
Rosanne Parry Heart of a Shepherd
Jackson Pearce As You Wish
Diana Peterfreund Rampant
Shani Petroff Bedeviled
Aprilynne Pike Wings
Cindy Pon Silver Phoenix
Sarah Quigley TMI
Amy Reed Beautiful
Carrie Ryan The Forest of Hands and Teeth
Sydney Salter My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters
Fran Slayaton When the Whistle Blows
Kristina Springer The Espressologist
Jen Cullerton Johnson Seeds of Change: The Wangari Maathai Story
Rhonda Stapleton Stupid Cupid
Heather Duffy Stone This Is What I Want to Tell You
Charity Tahmaseb & Darcy Vance The Geek Girl's Guide to Cheerleading
Jessica Verday The Hollow
Lara Zielin Donut Days
Michelle Zink Prophecy of the Sisters

The WILLA List of Great Books by Women in 2009

Think Publishers Weekly missed something on their top ten list? Add to The WILLA list Great Books by Women that Publishers Weekly Missed in 2009!

WILLA's Press Release from November 2, 2009

Why Weren’t Any Women Invited To Publishers Weekly’s Weenie Roast?

Publishers Weekly recently announced their Best Books Of 2009 list. In their top ten, chosen by editorial staff, no books written by women were included. Quoted in The Huffington Post, PW confidently admitted that they're “not the most politically correct" choices. This statement comes in a year in which new books appeared by writers such as Lorrie Moore, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, Rita Dove, Heather McHugh and Alicia Ostriker.

“The absence made me nearly speechless.” said writer Cate Marvin, cofounder of the newly launched national literary organization WILLA (Women In Letters And Literary Arts), which, since August, has attracted close to 5400 members on their Facebook web page, including many major and emerging women writers. “It continues to surprise me that literary editors are so comfortable with their bias toward male writing, despite the great and obvious contributions that women authors make to our contemporary literary culture.”

WILLA’s other cofounder, Erin Belieu, Director Of The Creative Writing Program at Florida State University, asked, “So is the flipside here that including women authors on the list would just have been an empty, politically correct gesture? When PW’s editors tell us they’re not worried about ‘political correctness,’ that’s code for ‘your concerns as a feminist aren’t legitimate.’ They know they’re being blatantly sexist, but it looks like they feel good about that. I, on the other hand, have heard from a whole lot of people—writers and readers--who don’t feel good about it at all.”

PW also did a Top 100 list and, of the authors included, only 29 were women. The WILLA Advisory Board is in the process of putting together a list titled “Great Books Published By Women In 2009.” This will be posted to the organization’s Facebook page and website. A WILLA Wiki has also been started for people to share their nominations for Great Books By Women in 2009. Press release to follow.

WILLA was founded to bring increased attention to women’s literary accomplishments and to question the American literary establishment’s historical slow-footedness in recognizing and rewarding women writers' achievements. WILLA is about to launch their website and is in the process of planning their first national conference to be held next year.

(Note: until recently, WILLA went under the acronym WILA, with one “L.” If you’re interested in the organization, please Google WILA with one “L” to see background on how this group was originally formed.)

Delirious Hem Poetics Forum This is What a (Pro)Feminist [Man Poet] Looks Like

Delirious Hem's third poetics forum is up, and each day this week you will find new responses.

This is What a (Pro)Feminist [Man Poet] Looks Like



In May 2009, Danielle Pafunda curated the first installment of Delirious Hem's This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like. This forum featured women discussing the relationship between their feminism & their poetry, and these contributions elicited thoughtful responses from women & men bloggers alike. Mark Wallace was one of those bloggers. Together, we've curated This is What a (Pro)Feminist [Man Poet] Looks Like. We hope you'll visit, read, comment, & enjoy!

Monday October 5: Brian Teare, Christian Peet, & H.L. Hix
Tuesday October 6: Hugh Behm-Steinberg, Kareem Estefan,
    & Kevin Simmonds
Wednesday October 7: Mark Wallace, Mike Hauser, & Nate Pritts
Thursday October 8: Philip Jenks, Tim Atkins, & Tony Frazer,
Friday October 9: Tony Trigilio, & David Lau


Upcoming Forums:
December: 2009 Advent Kalendar (check out 2008's!)
January: This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like, 2

Sous Rature 3ssue

You can read another piece of "The Desire Spectrum is Dead to Me Now" here at Cara Benson's very own animal 3ssue of Sous Rature


Shaula Evans Ross Priddle Aidan Thompson Lydia Davis Kyle Schlesinger Uchay Joel Chima Charles Freeland Rebecca Wolff
Stephen Webber Edwin Torres Joel Chace Danielle Pafunda Urayoán Noel Douglas A. Martin Stephanie Strickland Alejandro Crawford Jared Hayes & Joseph Cooper Erin Casey Russell Pascatore Adam Katz Thierry Brunet & Jeremy Geddes Anselm Berrigan
Donald Breckenridge Michael Basinski Claire Hero Judith Goldman Jerome Rothenberg Chris Rizzo & Katherine Sullivan Anne Gorrick Ching-In Chen Andrew Zawacki

Saltgrass! Issue 4!

The new issue of Saltgrass is out, starring these awesome poets & writers:

Laura Solomon, G.C. Waldrep, Cecily Iddings, Anne Boyer, Ben Mirov, Ish Klein, Claire Hero, Hugh Merwin, Jason Bredle, Karla Kelsey, Lisa Ciccarello, Danielle Pafunda, Brett Price, Genya Turovskaya, Maureen Thorson, Ron Rash

For only $5, you can purchase a copy of this issue here: http://www.saltgrassjournal.blogspot.com, where sample poems are also available for your viewing.

Please kindly snag a copy and/or pass on the word.

Also, we are now open to submissions for issue 5.


Thanks,
Julia Cohen, Poetry Editor

This Week at Delirious Hem

Please check out this week's collaborative feature at Delirious Hem, Jennifer Karmin & Bernadette Mayer with poems on neutrinos (and thensome!). And stay tuned for our October forum This is What a (Pro)Feminist [Man Poet] Looks Like!

Poetry and science. The etymology of the clitoris. The unnameable. The undefinable. We read our newly finished poems in the living room to Philip Good and Hector the dog. Phil took a picture.

-- Jennifer Karmin

The most difficult poetry assignment I ever envisioned is to write a 10-line poem about neutrinos with alternating lines containing a metaphor and a gerund. Here are Jennifer Karmin’s & my, Bernadette Mayer’s groundbreaking neutrino poems.

-- Bernadette Mayer

GlitterPony!

In the hot new issue of GlitterPony, some poems out of my series "The Desire Spectrum is Dead to Me Now" (from Manhater, and cheery news on that, soon!).

O Say Can You See

Nonverbal Reviews and Adaptations of Women's Poetry



Mina Loy, Surreal Scene













September 1

* Abi Stokes collages Matthea Harvey
* Tyler Flynn Dorholt splices Sandy Florian, Joyelle McSweeney, Laura Solórzano, and Kim Hyesoon
* Jennifer Karmin street teams Kristin Prevallet

September 2

* Daniela Olszewska puts a bow on Chelsey Minnis
* Christine Neacole Kanownik horses around with Jennifer Scappettone
* Janet Snell goes Dickinson on Nanette Rayman-Rivera


September the Rest

* You? We'll accept rolling submissions through September 20.

What book, chapbook, performance, or poem by a woman poet published/presented in the last year or two has left you speechless? How might that speechlessness manifest itself visually, sonically, or through another nonverbal medium?

Please create a response to this piece; your response can act like a review, adaptation, homage, investigation, companion piece, Frankenstein, child, or any mash-up of the aforementioned. In August, all responses submitted will be featured as part of a forum here on Delirious Hem.

Curated by K. Lorraine Graham and Becca Klaver.


FAQ

Are all words banned?
Although the projects should not be text-based, words are not banned.

I want to create a response to a poem published in 2007. Is this too early?
Nope. We mean "published in the last year or two" loosely.

Can I create a response to a book written by:
a) a man?
b) a biological male who identifies as a woman?
c) a drag queen?
a) No. b) Yes. c) Yes, if they self-identify as a woman.

Can non-Pussipo members participate?
Yes. If you'd like to forward this call, feel free.

Can men participate?
Yes.

What file formats can you accept?
For videos, Blogger can accept AVI, MPEG, QuickTime, Real, and Windows Media, 100 MB maximum size. For images, jpg, gif, bmp and png images, 8 MB maximum size.

Responses might include videos, songs, performances, photographs, or photographs of visual pieces, but are not limited to these, so please query if you're not sure if Blogger can support your format.

Please email your submission and a bio to K. Lorraine Graham (klorraine[at]gmail[dot]com) and Becca Klaver (beccavista[at]yahoo[dot]com).

My favorite librarians

of The Desk Set are touring libraries of Vermont. Including the Center for Cartoon Studies.

They are also making me east coast homesick. Quit it.

NYers, check out their fundraising parties like Dance, Dance, Library Revolution, benefitting Books Through Bars.

Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls

Ben Marcus & Starcherone Books know what's what! (And La Petite Zine, yo.)

Alissa Nutting of Las Vegas, Nevada, is the winner of the 6th Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction contest (2009-10) for her manuscript, Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls. Nutting was selected from among five finalists by Final Judge Ben Marcus.

Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls is a hilarious and terrifically inventive collection of short fiction where each story in the book is predicated upon a would-be career choice for women. The stories are titled, sometimes very fancifully, after these "unclean jobs," such as "Model's Assistant," "Knife-Thrower," "Bandleader's Girlfriend," "Corpse Smoker," and "She-Man." Ten of the stories have been published in literary journals, including Fence, Tin-House, Mid-American Review, Denver Quarterly, Southeast Review, and Swink.

And the collection gives good heartbreak. Hurts so good.