At some point in the third month, readers who accept the year-of-women-authors challenge notice something unexpected. It’s not a dramatic insight. Compared to that, it is quieter. As I browse through an online cart or stand in front of a bookshelf, the question that comes to mind almost automatically is, “Why did I never notice this before?”
For many, reading exclusively female writers for a whole year began as a personal experiment in paying attention. At first, it wasn’t necessarily political. It was more akin to a gut feeling, a suspicion that something was a little off in their reading life. It was confirmed by the numbers when they actually counted. In reality, shelves that seemed diverse turned out to be predominantly male. Literary fiction, science, history, and nonfiction are all skewed in the same way.
The imbalance itself wasn’t what shocked the majority of readers. They had partially anticipated that. They were taken aback by how fast it vanished once they began to look past it.
In a matter of weeks, the books began to come in: science fiction that explained without being patronizing, memoirs that didn’t sanitize their subjects, and historical fiction told from viewpoints that felt truly fresh. According to some readers, the experience was like hearing a frequency they had been unconsciously tuning out for years. One woman who wrote about her year said it was like going from being a soloist to being in a chorus; it wasn’t because the books were better, but rather because they were addressed to her in a way she hadn’t previously encountered on a regular basis.
It may seem insignificant, but that feeling of recognition is important. Fiction in particular influences readers’ perceptions of whose story is universal and whose inner life merits investigation. A kind of subtle distortion is created when the vast majority of books a person reads focus on the male experience as the default; it’s not obvious enough to identify, but it’s real enough to feel.
That distortion is disrupted by a year of reading only female authors. Interestingly, it also tends to broaden readers’ perspectives. When readers look beyond the typical bestseller lists, which have historically favored certain types of male-authored work, they discover things they would not have otherwise encountered, such as translated literature, independent presses, debut novels, and essayists writing about topics that would not normally fall into their purview.
It’s important to note that not everyone finds the experience to be comfortable. After committing to the challenge, a number of readers discovered that their preconceived notions about what “women’s writing” should entail were incorrect. Some were also forced to identify gaps in their own intersectional awareness as a result of the challenge. Reading women led to reading women of color, which led to reading non-binary writers, raising serious concerns about the true goals of the original frame. Midway through the year, some readers noticed that the objective changed from being a rigid binary rule to something more thoughtful and less categorical: a dedication to reading marginalized voices.
That evolution is arguably the challenge’s most honest result. Seldom does it finish as it starts. The point is always what the rule compels you to see, not the rule itself.
In the majority of English-language markets, over 60% of books sold are purchased by women. In a number of fiction categories, they dominate bestseller lists. However, women writers continue to be underrepresented at the level of major literary prizes, critical attention, and canonical status in ways that are difficult to explain without recognizing a structural issue. A year of reading only female authors won’t solve that. However, it accomplishes something more difficult to measure: it alters what a reader observes and what they are no longer prepared to accept as typical.
The majority of readers don’t go back to where they began at the end of the year. Men are still read by them. They do, of course. However, the autopilot feature is no longer available. And the point is probably that once it’s gone, it’s hard to get it back.
