Nov 30, 2011

Australian Women Writers 2012 National Year of Reading Challenge

awwc2012This is my entry post for the challenge above. While I have made an effort to alter my reviewing to try and combat gender bias*, because of the nature of the book business I think a systematic and directed approach is needed. 

I have managed to get my reading and reviewing close to a 50/50 split. I would ,however, like to add weight to the campaign by Australian Women Writers.  I think even women readers fall victim to an ingrained cultural gender bias(if my discussion with female library customers is anything to go by) so combating it is something that requires a dedicated approach.

Hence the guidelines/goals/prompts of the challenge.

You can find out more about the challenge here at Australian Women Writers, but briefly:

Objective: This challenge hopes to help counteract the gender bias in reviewing and social media newsfeeds that has continued throughout 2011 by actively promoting the reading and reviewing of a wide range of contemporary Australian women's writing. (See the page on gender bias for recent discussions.)

Source:Australian Women Writers blog.

I will be entering in the Dabbler category.  My books will mostly be Speculative Fiction, but there are a couple of contemporary works that I want to read as well.

I will also be attempting the Franklin-fantastic challenge level (read 10 and review at least 4 books)

A tentative list:

  1. Dark Space by Marianne de Pierres
  2. Chaos Space by Marianne de Pierres
  3. Mirror Space by Marianne de Pierres
  4. Transformation Space by Marianne de Pierres
  5. The Diamond Anchor by Jennifer Mills
  6. Gone by Jennifer Mills
  7. Thief of Lives by Lucy Sussex
  8. Nightsiders by Sue Isle
  9. Diamond Eyes by A.A. Bell
  10. Dangerously Placed by Nansi Kunze

The challenge begins on 1st of January 2012.


*I completed a gender audit of my reading and reviewing along with a poll.  Sadly the information was lost in the blog hack in September. Sufficed to say that I over estimated the number of women I reviewed and read.


Are you interested in keeping up with the challenge? Would you like to read more? You can subscribe to the blog through a reader,by Email or Follow me on twitter.

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