susansimone
  • Blog
  • About
  • Artwork
  • Business Graphics
  • Book Covers
  • Books

Susan Simone . Words & Art

There's Something Missing - Women in Horror

8/3/2015

0 Comments

 
Horror has been, almost since its inception as a genre, a boy’s club.  While organizations like the Horror Writer’s Association seek out to engender equality by offering memberships based on merit, the fact remains that women horror writers are often relegated to the kid’s table, while occasionally lesser writers that happen to have a man’s name carry the forefront.

This is a societal problem, and a reflection of the lack of gender equality.  Other genres are hit hard as well.  Science Fiction is notorious for gender inequality.  And very few men romance writers are taken seriously and often have to work harder for the same audience.  There is an erroneous idea that a person’s gender identity is encapsulated by a name or that that dictates their ability to write different genres. 

The NY times recently reported, Women who use a genderless pen name like P.D. James, or J.D. Robb (who happens to be Nora Roberts) have higher sales.  Part of the problem is exposure.  Reviewers, which can be the life blood of sales often feed into the gender gap.

According to The Guardian, in 2010, 74% of reviews by the London Review of Books were of books by male authors, 65% male dominated reviews by Granta Magazine, and 83% male dominated reviews by the New York Review of Books.  Or look at this study by Edward Champion on the gender bias of individual reviewers for the New York Times.  Each reviewer has their own graph of how many male vs. female authors they reviewed in 2013.

Here is a simplified one page version.
Picture
Picture
Here is another graph from Australia.


Gina Denny has another article with tons of graphs to show the discrepancy.

Okay, I’m going to stop filling you up with percents and numbers here and get to the point.  Recently J. Ellington Ashton Press did something to quiet all arguments on the ability of different genders in horror.  It took the current climate and put it on its ear.  We hosted our own Male vs. Female horror short story contest, the results of which will find their way into two amazing anthologies.

We picked two teams.  13 men, and 13 women.  Not all the participants were necessarily horror writers.  A few on both teams find their voices in other genres from romance to science fiction. Amid the friendly trash talk the writers were paired up into round competitors.  Each round had one writer from each team and were given a place, a weapon, and a big bad (thing that caused the trouble).  Then they were set free for 30 days to write a 5 to 7k word story.

The judges were kept secret, and the authors kept secret from the judges.  They were handed stories with only titles and which round they belonged to.  No other information.  Everything was based entirely on merit.

The results?  Almost entirely equal.  The women took it by one story.  The honorable mentions were split equally between genders.  The overall winners were split equally between genders.  When gender was taken out of the equation, authors that would have otherwise been ignored stepped into the light.  Primary genre had little to do with it as well.  Some of the winners are not horror writers.  At least one of the honorable mentions is a fantasy writer.  That squashes the argument that women prefer to write certain genres and are therefore not adept at horror.  Really this contest proved all previous arguments are unfounded.

But don’t take my word for it.  Keep an eye out for the upcoming MvF anthologies and judge the work for yourself.

Update 2/29/16:  Both books now live on Amazon!

Click the images below to buy your copy today!

Picture
Picture
Cover Art by Michael Fisher


From the twisted imaginings of:

MvF
Essel Pratt
and Dona Fox
Ts. Woolard and Alice J. Black
Michael Noe and Dani Brown
Jim Goforth and Christina Engela
*Andrew Freudenburg and Brenda Evans
**Stuart Keane and Amanda M. Lyons

FvM
Brian Barr and Wendy Potocki
Kent Hill and Lisa Dabrowski
Michael Fisher and Sharon Higa*
Roger Cowin and Susan Simone
Mark Woods and Tabitha Baumander
Justin Hunter and Michelle Garza
John Ledger and Catt Dahman**

Bold indicates round winner.  * Indicates honorable mention. ** Indicates overall winner.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Susan Simone

    Susan is a writer and artist by day, a child and pet wrangler by night, and occasional crazy person on the weekends. She walks the path of a Siedr and strives to grow day by day.

    follow me on twitter

    Archives

    November 2019
    September 2019
    January 2018
    November 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    November 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    April 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013

    Categories

    All
    Artwork
    Baha'i
    BBQ
    Boobs
    Celica
    Chronic Illnesss
    Community Service
    Contest
    Contracts
    Cover Art
    Critique
    Dan Williams
    Death
    Death Doula
    Diet
    Dissociation
    Ethics
    Excerpt
    Facts About Me
    Faith
    Family
    Fata Arcana
    Fear
    Fibromyalgia
    Fish To Die For
    Free
    Friend
    Gluten
    Horror
    Interview
    Introspection
    Iran
    Jazz
    Kansas City
    Kids
    Last Haven
    LGBTQA
    Life
    Media
    Mental Health
    Morning Song
    Music
    Nation
    New Book
    Pagan
    Parenting
    Poetry
    Preditors And Editors
    Prepping
    Rape
    Scarlett Metal
    Scotty Schrier
    Self Image
    Shameless Self Promotion
    Short Story
    Silent Heart
    Social Media
    Spoon Theory
    The Beast
    Transgender
    Under A Twisted Moon
    Vacation
    Warped Souls
    #WednesdayWrtings
    Women
    Yahoo! Articles

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Photos used under Creative Commons from jiyooneda, Vince Alongi, UU World, jonseidman, Tambako the Jaguar, Mr.Eneko, yoco**, Tony Webster, Aurelien G. Photographie, Tommie Hansen, Live to Create Photography
  • Blog
  • About
  • Artwork
  • Business Graphics
  • Book Covers
  • Books