Content area
Full Text
BY THE NUMBERS
NICO MARA-MCKAY TAKES A LOOK AT CANADIAN WOMEN IN THE LITERARY ARTS (CWILA) AND THEIR METHODS FOR HIGHLIGHTING GENDER IMBALANCES WITHIN THE BOOK REVIEW SECTIONS OF CANADIAN PUBLICATIONS.
"What we do, in part, is a count of book reviews by gender," says Gillian Jerome, founder of Canadian Women in the Literary Arts (C1LWA). "But our larger project is a critique of power: who holds it and how is it passed along within a literary culture?"
Jerome was inspired to launch CWILA, in part, through Canadian poet and critic Sina Queyra's writing on VIDA (the acronym-like name doesn't stand for anything), which since 2009 has looked at the representation of women in critical and prize culture in America's literary scene. Jerome started digging, and found that Canadian journalists were suggesting the numbers might be similar in Canada, but detailed research hadn't yet been done for Canadian publications. "So, 1 started to ask questions about literary culture in Canada," says Jerome, who was also inspired by Natalie Zina Walschots' 2012 analysis of The National Post's poetry column, which found that 85.7% of poetry reviews were of collections authored by...