I was quite pleased and excited to see that Bonnie  Jo Campbell, an alumna of my MFA program and Kalamazoo literary celebrity whom I interviewed for this blog, was nominated for the National Book Award this year for her collection of short stories, American Salvage. It was interesting to see her nomination announced on one of my favorite blogs, Jezebel, via this short post, “Nine Female Authors Finalists for National Book Awards”. That means almost half of the nominees are women, which is supposedly pretty good. Of course, we all know there are more male winners of major awards like the Pulitzer Prize and the Booker, but I wondered about the ratio of men to women nominees and winners for the National Book Award.  As a feminist whose sexism detector is always on fairly high alert, writing is one area of my life where I think about sexism the least. I read men and women equally without discrimination, and I don’t think my gender has anything to do with whether I am chosen for publication or accepted into a writer’s conference.  At all. But it is interesting to see that although there are just as many female aspiring writers, more men end up winning big prizes later in their careers.

In my very non-scientific study during a bout of writer’s block, I decided to take a look at the nominees and winners of the National Book Awards over the last 20 years, focusing only on fiction. From 1989 to 2008, there have been 45 female nominees and 55 male nominees–while women are still behind, it is certainly not by a huge margin. But in this same time, there have been 13 male winners and only seven female winners.  That’s almost twice as many men as women. In fact, the last female winner was Lily Tuck for her novel, The News From Paraguay, which took the award in 2004, a year when all the nominees were women. Since that year, things  have been going downhill somewhat; between 2005 and 2008, there were six female nominees, 14 male ones, and not a single female winner.

It’s interesting to see how these awards parallel women’s progress in many other areas of life. Though more women cook than men, there are still more male top chefs. Though more women ride horses than men, there are still slightly more men winning medals in the Olympics. Etc., etc.

An author’s gender has little to do with the experience I have with his or her book and obviously I am sure that the well-respected judges of the major book awards feel the same way.  But you can’t  help but wonder if sexism plays some kind of part when a beautiful book like Home by Marilynne Robinson, with its somewhat “domestic” subject matter, loses last year’s award to Shadow Country, by Peter Matthiessen, a book which explores the life and violent death of outlaw E.J. Watson, much more “masculine” subject matter.  In 20 years, it will be interesting to look back at the National Book Awards to see if the ratios have changed somewhat, or if women are still in close second.

Related posts:

1. Some Lady Thinks Men Should Just Read Re-Branded Chick Lit
2. Book Fair, Book Haul
3. Stoner by John Williams
4. Print a Book in Minutes
5. The Life and Death of a Book Critic at the Seattle PI

Tags: American Salvage, Bonnie Jo Campbell, booker, feminism, home, jezebel, kalamazoo, lily tuck, marilynne robinson, mfa program, national book award, peter matthiessen, pulitzer prize, sexism, shadow country, the news from paraguay