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Lecture for first year Masters in Creative Writing Students, Swinburne University 2011 based upon my 2007 Madrid Conference paper. These slides accompany the Master of Arts (Writing) Module 501. 2010
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Women’s popular fiction: Romance fiction and Relationship Fiction or Chick Lit
Carol-Anne Croker
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Why choose Women’s Fiction?Is gender still an issue? Don’t women write everything?
Yes.... but there are some books predominantly read by women...
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…Romance fiction
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Why is this genre of interest?
$$$
THE CITYBLING
The heelsSEX
ROMANCE
CAREER
SHOPPINGMR ALRIGHT FOR NOW
Glamour
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“…Are women readers taken seriously in the market as their consumer dollars would indicate?..”
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Are women readers and writers seeking to define in print women’s sexuality within contemporary society?
Image from Ladybooks.com
From Black Issues Book Review January-February 2005 ©
http://www.hodrw.com/womensficorromance.htm
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Is the growth of Relationship fiction, aka Chick Lit, a global phenomenon and a mobilisation of the female readership demanding that their lived experiences deserve and are worthy of literary portrayals and pop- cultural reflection?‘Over the past one hundred and twenty years, the production of Australian fiction, though subject to drastic shifts, has moved from the publication of high literary texts, historicised nowadays as the “old canon” or “classics”, through a considerable boom period of popular and pulp fiction not especially marked by Australian or literary traits to an expanded contemporary market favouring not only mainstream genre fiction but a type of fiction that is particularly literary and Australian’ Jason Ensor, pp 206-7 JASAL Special issue 2008.
Image from: Chick Lit Chicks.com | Site Design & Maintenance by Flower WebCopyright © 2007
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Can women’s popular fiction be considered literary fiction?
ã Swinburne University of TechnologySource: Ensor 2008 : 209
Drawn from the Auslit database
ã Swinburne University of TechnologySource: Ensor 2008 : 209
Drawn from the Auslit database
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Source: Ensor 2008 : 212
Drawn from the Auslit database
ã Swinburne University of TechnologySource: Ensor 2008 : 213
Valerie Parv is Australia’s most prolific Romance novelist for the Harlequin Mills and Boon imprint having sold 26 million copies of her 75 titles
Source: Romancing the Tome. Sunday MagazineHerald-Sun 5/7/09
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Victorian based author Stephanie Laurens is third on the NY Times bestseller list in March, behind Nora Roberts and Danielle Steele.
“...with 38 books to her name Laurens knows romance. In two decades she has sold more than 16.2 million copies globally – 300,000 in Australia making her one of the country’s most successful authors. Temptation and Surrender was her 20th to make the prestigious New York Times bestseller list debuting at No 14 in March.” Herald Sun Sunday Magazine
Source: Romancing the Tome. Sunday MagazineHerald-Sun 5/7/09
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The term “Chick Lit was coined in 1995 by Chris Mazza and Jeffrey DeShell. She is quoted saying... “ I sat on the floor of his living room, brainstorming what title we would give to the anthology we had just finished. To name the book effectively we had to boil down into a single concept what we had asserted in choosing, from more than four hundred submissions, the final twenty-two stories. Our original goal had been todetermine how, in a post Barth and Barthelme era,women’s experiments with form and language might be distinct from men’s... The fictions we had compiledwere simultaneously courageous and playful; frank and wry; honest, intelligent, sophisticated, libidinous,unapologetic, and overwhelmingly emancipated.”
Ferriss & Young: Chick Lit: the New Woman’s Fiction, 2006:17-18
Images sourced University of Allabama Press: http://fc2.org/
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Thus Chick Lit was born; with the term used to flag activism and empowerment not as a derogatory genre descriptor.
Yet Mazza is not generally credited with creating the Chick Lit genre... That ‘honour’ goes to UK author Helen Fielding and US author Candace Bushnell.
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Chick Lit titles...
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Then came Lad lit
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Then, of course, Bride Lit...
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Then logically....
... Mommy Lit
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For the over 35s... Hen Lit...
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And for the Over 50s... Nanna Lit
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Sistah Lit... (African American Chick Lit)
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Latina or Chica Lit...
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Asian Chick lit...
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A global phenomenon...
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More sub-genres...
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Why not write it?
