September 17, 2009

Posted @ 15:12 GMT

Horror wants women to scream, but not talk

This weekend the British Fantasy Society (BFS) is hosting its annual convention, Fantasy Con. Last night while on Facebook I noticed a news item, which constitutes an electronic "flyer", about the convention.

I immediately noticed the cover of a new book the BFS is launching at the convention: a collection of interviews with writers (the first in a trilogy) in which they discuss their genre. It's called In Conversation: A Writer's Perspective. Volume One: Horror. It's edited by James Cooper, and is composed of 16 interviews with horror authors Ramsey Campbell, Tom Piccirilli, Greg F. Gifune, Conrad Williams, Joe R. Lansdale, Gary McMahon, Brian Keene, Stephen Gallagher, Jeffrey Thomas, Peter Crowther, Tim Lebbon, Ray Garton, Mark Morris, Gary Fry, Graham Joyce and Norman Partridge.

Not a single woman is interviewed.

Simply put, this is not representative of the horror field today. I've been advised that women submit less to horror markets than they do to science fiction or fantasy. In those genres women submit at a rate of 35-40%, approximately. Out of a collection of 16 authors five women would indicate representation. In this collection perhaps four, or at the very least three, women would have been correct.

This isn't an anthology (although Mr. Cooper's previous anthology of horror fiction is also exclusively male). Mr. Cooper had to sit down and draw up a list of writers he wanted to contact, interview them, and transcribe their views. I'm baffled that he never considered asking a woman writer for her opinion about horror.

Plus, I find it incredible that not a single person in the BFS noticed this lack and brought it to Mr. Cooper's attention.

Here are a just a few writers he could have approached: Tanith Lee, Lisa Tuttle, M. Rickert, Sarah Langan, Margo Lanagan, Sarah Pinborough, Tananarive Due, Sara Gran, Alexandra Sokoloff, Gemma Files, Cherie Priest, Fran Friel, and Melanie Tem. That list took five minutes to compile with a friend (and it's certainly not exhaustive - there are many others). I'm sure three, four or five of them would have been happy to agree to an interview.

There are no excuses for this omission. That it happens, and it was allowed to happen, speaks to the deeply cultured disregard for women's opinion in the world. I see it every day. We are marginalised, silenced, side-lined, forgotten, conveniently dropped, patronised, under-represented, dismissed, subtly intimidated and ignored.

I'm not interested in assassinating characters or insulting a society that generally does good work.

I want this never to happen again.

I never want to see an all-male anthology or collection or essays/interviews in the speculative field again. Enough. It's the twenty-first century.

Women exist, we work in this field, and we deserve recognition. It's that simple.

Believe me, we have opinions.

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