#readwomen2014

I stumbled across an unfamiliar Twitter hashtag and found this explanation when I started poking around.

I started the Twitter hashtag #readwomen2014 after drawing some bookmark-shaped New Year's cards showing some of my favourite female writers. I had been inspired by two literary journalists – both male, as it happens – who didn't want to show up on the wrong side of this year's Vida pie chart (coming out next month) and were willing to do something about it. Jonathan Gibbs in the UK and Matthew Jakubowski in the US both made a commitment to read only female authors for a set period. When I posted photos of my cards on Twitter, a few people asked me to tweet the 250-odd names of female writers I had typed on the back.

For the exercise I'll have to see if I can find those 250 names. But it makes me kind of glad that among the last few books I've read the dominant names are George Eliot and Mimi Sheraton.