Innovative Women Writers
(Now Available)
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I present this selection of essays on current women writers whose work either could be called innovative, or raises important issues relative to the notion of experiment or innovation in fiction, without a lengthy preface because I believe that the connections among these writers emerge clearly enough when the essays are read in sequence, especially through the brief signals provided by the section headings. Ideally the reader would indeed read these essays in sequence (they have been arranged here with a purpose, and to some extent were initially written with the idea they might appear in a collection like this), but readers are certainly free to consider them individually as well. Whatever insights I may have to offer about a particular writer ought to be able to stand alone, or of course my effort has failed.
I have no overarching theory about the nature or direction of innovative writing by women writers, although as I do note in several of the essays in the first section, there is a recognizable affinity among numerous current writers for what I am here calling “fabulation.” Otherwise it seems to me that a representative sampling of writing by women today decidedly exhibits much variety in its outlook and eclecticism in its method. (Although this is not to say that in the essays that follow I always find the writer has successfully expressed that outlook or feel the writer's method is always sound.)
Very often—too often, it seems to me—people are made to think they have to write in a particular way, and that they can’t write about certain things. And it seems obvious that what’s absolutely essential is that the creative process be guiltless. . .the idea being that you can write about anything at all, you just have to do it very well.
--Rikki Ducornet
Table of Contents
FABULATORS
Rikki Ducornet
Aimee Bender
Joanna Ruocco
Angela Woodward
THE MOVEMENT OF LANGUAGE
Noy Holland
Julie Reverb
Elisabeth Sheffield
Rosalind Belben
Sara Greenslit
GOING DEEP
Helen DeWitt
Eimear McBride
COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES
Erin Pringle
Siri Hustvedt
FORMAL DISRUPTIONS
Magdalena Tulli
Meredith Quartermain
A.M Homes
SAD AND BAD AND MAD: THE FICTION OF ROSALYN DREXLER
Earlier versions of some of these essays were written for the following publications:
Kenyon Review Online; Full Stop; The Quarterly Conversation; American Book Review
Other Available Ebook Volumes:
Experimental Fiction Now
Between Silliness and Satire: On Black Humor Fiction
The Art of Disturbance: On the Novels of James Purdy
Also Available:
Beyond the Blurb: On Critics and Criticism
Published by Cow Eye Press
List of Complete Publication Credits
E-BOOK VOLUMES COMING SOON:
AMERICAN POSTMODERN FICTION
BOOK REVIEWING AS LITERARY CRITICISM
