It's pretty obvious from a cursory glance at the display tables at any mega-chain bookstore that "chick lit" is everywhere. And most of it is absolute trash. Worse, it ghettoizes young women writers as capable only of writing stories with plots thinner than the soles on their strappy Jimmy Choos. While I just loooove shoes as much as the next girl, I'm not interested in reading about them. Nor do I find it sufficiently suspenseful to bite down the tips of my flawlessly manicured nails while the quirky heroine chases her inevitable man down - who's rich, natch - for a hundred or so pages, only to secure him and a happy ending at the same time. Lovely.
Hence, Cupcake, the reading series that's going to ice chick lit once and for all with fabulous readings by New York's best serious, funny, literary women writers. I founded it last June with two like-minded friends, Miss Elizabeth Merrick and the inimitable Jen Kirwin. It takes place once a month at a bar downtown called Lolita, on the Lower East Side.
And because I can't do it justice without posting it in its entirety, The Cupcake Manifesta:
Perhaps you have noticed a big pink pile of books in your local Barnes and Noble about women, shoes, wanting to lose fifteen pounds, snagging a husband, and working for bitchy New York ladies with harsh haircuts. Perhaps you are familiar with the term "chick-lit" for this super-lucrative trend in publishing that has provided such unlimited opportunity (and large advances) for white women to write knock-offs of Bridget Jones's Diary so that they can ditch the pink-collar temp-job ghetto and finally put their liberal arts education to work. Perhaps you're a writer yourself, and you've noticed with slowly growing alarm that the guys you went to school with are publishing books that don't have anything to do with wanting to lose fifteen pounds or landing a rich spouse. (Although, actually, that's possibly pretty close to what is going through their minds, at least the ones who aren't Jonathan Safran Foer.) Perhaps you're feeling a little frustrated because you love these men, you love these guy writers as people and as citizens and as wordsmiths, but you're noticing that their careers seem to be moving at a much faster pace than those of the young women writers you know: the guy writers are getting NEA grants, they're getting published in the small, prestigious literary journals that are mostly edited by men and that lead to tenure-track teaching gigs, and they're getting those good teaching gigs.
Perhaps, week after week, you've counted up the 0-3 (exceedingly well-established) women published in the New Yorker, counted up the 9-13 men, come to depressing conclusions, and wished someone had told you the deck was stacked against you this badly when you decided to become a writer and take out all those student loans. Perhaps you've done the same sort of count, week after week, for the New York Times Book Review as well. The New York Times Magazine. Perhaps the only thing you could think to do about this was to start a literary chapter of the Guerilla Girls, but you had to check in with your temp agency first.
Perhaps you're a guy who wants to be around New York's most passionate and funny literary goddesses. Perhaps you simply want to hear some talented, serious, thoughtful, punk rock, accomplished, experienced, hilarious women writers read work that will inspire you and give you little tingles everywhere. Perhaps you have been wondering: where are the literary versions of PJ Harvey and Sleater-Kinney?
Perhaps you'd like a Cupcake:
Because you've had enough chick-lit and it's time for dessert.
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