By
What a glorious time it is to be an American woman novelist! Oprah Winfrey has only to say a writer’s name so far, most of her book-club choices have been novels by women and hundreds of thousands stampede the bookstores in search of the lucky author’s work. Most books are bought by women, who tend to read novels by female authors. One of our two living Nobel laureate novelists is an African-American woman. Women edit major magazines
The New Yorker,
The Nation,
The New York Review of Books aimed at readers of both sexes. Women are top decision makers at America’s ten biggest commercial publishing houses. And male editors, writers, and academics will be the first to tell you that they read and publish and teach writings by women as well as by men.