I’m Suzannah, and I blog for The Gloria Sirens.  

A play on the name “Gloria Steinem,” The Gloria Sirens is a communal blog that galvanizes women wordsmiths in person, in print, online, and across all time and space. This is our virtual auditorium where we and other literary women can promote, inform, and strengthen the voices that move us. Banded together we take artistic chances without fear of silencing and embolden each other to sing our riskiest songs.

Not sure there’s a problem? For six years VIDA has tallied the rate of publication between women and men in the world’s most respected literary outlets. This year, VIDA expanded to include a Women of Color count as well. VIDA recently reported that although there are signs of progress, the 2014 numbers haven’t much budged from the 2013: some of the most influential literary magazines still showcase fewer than thirty percent of work by women. (Listen to us discuss the blog on Life Improvement Radio.)

The Sirens believe

writing is an act of courage;

all stories are worth telling (especially women’s stories);

as an artist you deserve to be paid for your work;

as women you deserve equal representation in the arts;

as our readers you deserve support, acceptance, community, and encouragement;

I’ll be on this fab panel of activists for VIDA Lit on Monday at @housingworksbookstore! Free to the public and starts at 7pm. 

Join Sackett Street’s Jennifer Baker of @minoritiesinpublishing along with @aaww-nyc‘s Jyothi Natarajan, @topsidepress‘ Cat Fitzpatrick, poets  Hafizah Geter and Kathi Wolfe, moderated by Lynn Melnick.

This year, the VIDA count has expanded from three broad categories (the VIDA Count, the Women of Color VIDA Count, and the Larger Literary Landscape VIDA Count) into several smaller surveys under those three categories. Intersectionality is the key word here, as VIDA has now included sections on sexuality, disability/difference, and trans women writers–indeed, the organization calls 2015 “The Year of Intersectional Thinking,” and the reason for their focus is clear:

If the literary landscape is dominated by specific groups, how can we be healthy as a society and benefit from both our differences and commonalities? Isn’t one of literature’s effects to humanize populations beyond our own?

So let’s take a look at the state of literary journals over the last year with VIDA. 700 writers filled in the survey earlier this year, a 50% turnout, and the results are rather encouraging. With the exception of The Atlantic and The Paris Review, the main literary journals all improved their numbers from 2014. Happily, I can share that trans women were included among the number of bylines given to women: one transfeminine and two genderfluid trans women wrote for Poetry, and 0.1% of writers identified as trans women in The Times Literary Supplement.