This Week in Chick Lit
  April 22, 2011  |    Author:  admin

~ By Melina Kantor

Well, Chick Lit Fans. . .

What can I say? It’s Friday, which is a good thing.

The bad news? This hasn’t been the greatest week for our favorite genre.

Behold:

First, we’ve got the now infamous interview in which Pulitzer Prize winning author Jennifer Egan used the phrase “derivative, banal stuff” to describe certain works of chick lit. You can read more about that here.

You know, just go to any RWA meeting or conference, anywhere, and most authors will tell you that they will never, ever publicly diss another author. It’s just poor form. We authors are all in this together, and should support each other.

I guess that means that romance and chick lit writers are just extra classy. 😉

And then, there was this horrifying article that proclaimed:

Yet for some reason, agents are encouraging female writers to think about chick lit marketing when writing their first books. I mean, no one is denying that the genre has mass appeal. But you know what else had mass appeal? “Two and a Half Men.” And Hitler.

Excuse me, Drew Grant. You did not just compare chick lit to Hitler. . .

Even the title of the article, Chick Lit Reimagined as Respectable Fiction, is enough to make your head spin without the added subtitle:

We team up with TheGloss.com to find out how to turn that best-selling genre of female writing into real literature

Real literature?

Again, I say excuse me?

However, you can rest assured that the chick lit community remains strong. We’re certainly not taking this lying down. We’re standing up for ourselves on our Twitter feeds, our Facebook pages, and our blogs.

In fact, chapter member and fabulous author Megan Crane (aka Caitlin Crews) posted a fantastic note on her Facebook page. And Jennifer Weiner was all over the Jennifer Egan comment on her Twitter page. We’re in good hands.

So go curl up with a great chick lit book and enjoy the weekend.

(But first, leave us a comment and let us know what you think of all this nonsense.)

See you next week! 🙂

Melina writes contemporary women’s fiction with a pinch of oregano and a dash of chutzpah. By day, she is an elementary school computer teacher. You can visit her athttp://melinakantor.com.