In August 2009, Erin Belieu and Cate Marvin formed Women in Letters and Literary Arts (WILLA), which “seeks to explore critical and cultural perceptions of writing by women through meaningful conversation and the exchange of ideas among existing and emerging literary communities.”
          Interest in the organization spread rapidly – between genres, across the country and around the world. WILLA will “go live” in an off-site AWP Conference event this Friday night, “WILLA Goes Live: A Benefit Evening of Burlesque, Literature and Roller Derby.” In a recent e-mail interview, Belieu and Marvin discuss WILLA, gender disparity in the literary world, and their plans for Denver .

Interview by John Deming

How did you develop the idea for Women in Letters & Literary Arts (WILLA)?

It would be easy to say that the idea for WILLA initially sprang from one woman’s irritation with having a proposed panel – one that focused on transgressive feminist issues in contemporary American poetics – rejected by AWP. But we as WILLA’s directors soon came to recognize that the idea for WILLA had long been fomenting in many people’s minds.

WILLA started as a response to a single e-mail (written by Cate Marvin) initially distributed to a small group of friends and acquaintances, a letter that identified frustrations with how certain issues directly affecting women writers’ work are so often glossed over or completely ignored by mainstream literary institutions. This letter essentially asked if there wasn’t something women writers could do together to fill what Cate perceived as a gap. That this “gap” felt much more like an enormous hole to a great many women writers became more and more obvious as the e-mail quickly went viral, shooting from inbox to blog to website in the space of just a few short days.

From our perspective, the huge and overwhelmingly positive reaction to the initial e-mail was genuinely astonishing. Before the e-mail went viral, we’d begun talking about how the organization we had in mind could be shaped; looking back, we weren’t quite prepared for what we now know is a significant need for such a forum. As such, at the time we thought we’d be lucky to get a few hundred women involved. However, within two months, the WILLA Facebook page had acquired close to 6,000 members, women from all over the country, even women writers abroad. It then became clear that WILLA would eventually have to be international in its scope.

This response made it amply clear the idea behind WILLA had long been cooking in the collective consciousness of women writers all around the country, and that it just needed an occasion by which to present itself. At that point, it seemed obvious: Why hadn’t we created WILLA long ago?

Development is another matter. We immediately began to pull together committees to represent different genres, recognizing that while some issues are shared among women writers, other things can be very particular to the different literary cultures involved. One of the first obvious needs we saw was to include Children’s Literature in the genres our organization would represent. Children’s Lit is often treated like the redheaded stepsister to those genres mainstream culture likes to perceive as more intellectually and artistically “legitimate.” Ironically, Children’s Literature also happens to be the single genre in which women writers are most frequently recognized; could the attitude be: “Let’s leave the babies to the women folk while others write The Important Work”? We also recognized that the genre of Playwriting lacked attention from the mainstream literary community. It’s a genre in which women’s contributions with regard to publication and theatrical production suffer from gender bias.

Once we divvied up the genres we thought WILLA would best represent (keeping in mind, always, that women writers often move between genres and complicate the very boundaries these distinctions erect), we formed our committees. We began by asking women whose work we respected to be involved. We then asked that they guide us in the selection of additional members for their genre specific committees. All along we have emphasized inclusiveness and have made every effort to invite women writers who represent various regions, identities, ages, aesthetics, and so on. In this way, the women initially involved in WILLA were instrumental in creating its membership. And they are an impressive group of women by any measurable standard. Part of the pleasure for us in doing this has been not only getting to know such accomplished writers on a personal level, but discovering just how much we have in common as women and artists.

Could you describe the WILLA Off-Site event at the Associated Writers and Writing Programs Conference in Denver?

Our event is titled:

WILLA Goes Live: A Benefit Evening of Burlesque, Literature and Roller Derby

Here’s the When and Where:

Friday, April 9th, 2010
Time: 9:00 – 12 midnight
Cover/Admission: $10
Location: The Denver Press Club, 1330 Glenarm Place

We’ve been lucky enough to have an on-the-ground / go-to person to manage our event: the poet Roxanne Banks Malia, a Denver resident. She initiated contact with Vivienne Vavoom and the Black Box Burlesque, as well as the Roller Dolls, the roller derby team who will be joining us. The poet Jake Adam York gifted the original idea for this event to us.

We’ve promoted it via Facebook and Twitter, and we’ve sent out a press release to a great many media outlets.

Why Burlesque? Why Roller Derby?

Surely these questions will be at the forefront of the minds of those who first discover WILLA through our off-site event at AWP, which is most certainly a debut.

First and foremost, we are introducing WILLA to the literary public in such a way because it’s irreverent, humorous, and calls into question any assumptions one might have that a feminist organization is stodgy, retrograde, or dull. The literature being created by women now is made of all parts: lively, intellectually rigorous, deeply human, terribly serious, and wickedly funny. Hence the spectrum of those we’ve invited to be a sort of emblem for WILLA’s debut: burlesque dancers, who spin humor, eroticism, and display into a performance that calls female representation into question. On the other end of the spectrum, we’ve invited the Roller Dolls to join us; we love that these women represent real competition on an ironic level, brute force, and sexiness on wheels. The burlesque dancers and the roller derby women are, in many ways, metaphors for female power and individuality; as such, they are themselves evocative of the women who will read for us at this event.

Who will speak and/or read at the event?

• Cate Marvin
• Erin Belieu
• Roxanne Banks Malia
• Camille Dungy
• Patricia Smith
• Carol Muske-Dukes
• Antonya Nelson
• Dorianne Laux
• Kim Addonizio
• Mary Akers
• Ana Božičević
• Jami Brandli
• Barrie Jean Borich
• Nickole Brown
• Kara Candito
• Mary Cappello
• Ashley Capps
• Jennine Capó Crucet
• Ru Freeman
• Lara Glenum
• Cathy Park Hong
• Olivia Johnson
• Lynn Kilpatrick
• Amy King
• April Manteris
• Danielle Pafunda
• Ann Pancake
• Jennifer Park
• Carmen Giménez Smith
• Susan Steinberg
• Cheryl Strayed
• Ann Townsen

In The Beauty Myth (1991), Naomi Wolff claims that “the more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon us” and that even though women made tremendous progress in the United States in the 20th century, “After years of much struggle and little recognition, many older women feel burned out; after years of taking its light for granted, many younger women show little interest touching new fire to the torch.” Is this true today? Do you see complacency as a threat?

“Threat” is a difficult word. It’s not really part of the WILLA vocabulary. We, as an organization, are far more interested in discussion than reaction. It’s surely true that the definition of feminism is complicated, and that its implicit connotations vary for different generations of women. But this isn’t so much a question that we can answer right now, right here; rather, it’s one that is up for debate among our members. WILLA wishes, on the most basic level, to create forums in which such discussions may take place. But, we would like to add – and emphasize – that we are an arts organization. We are concerned with literature as being produced by women, and the reception of such. In this manner, our goals are quite practical. How can we create a space in which women’s work is addressed as a central focus? What practical matters concern all women who write literature? These are discussions we wish to initiate among our membership.

Essentially, there are no “threats” to WILLA, or those involved with the organization. Certainly not among women and women writers. To be a woman is to live both as and under “threat.” All women know what it’s like to fear for their physical safety: to be dismissed for being female. We firmly intend for WILLA to be a safe-space for all of its members.

As for the younger generation, WILLA is blessed to have a good number of younger women writers working hard on its behalf. In fact, these women were some of WILLA’s first and most enthusiastic supporters. It seems that this latest generation of emerging writers may be a bit savvier regarding feminist politics and the realities of what it means to compete as a woman within our literary community. But then they are the children of working mothers and probably know more about the realpolitik of feminism than most generations for having been first hand witnesses to their mothers’ struggles and triumphs.

What are the main objectives of WILLA?

We aim to create candid, creatively inspiring and intellectually rigorous forums for people to discuss the work of women writers, including its reception in critical venues and its larger cultural contexts.

Describe what you see as some of the dominant obstacles against women writers.

That’s a particularly complicated question, because people’s biases aren’t usually sitting there on the surface for everyone to observe. And the nature of biases of all types is complex and most often deeply unconscious. Not many people will say, “Yes, I’m happily aware that I’m discriminating against (fill-in-the-blank).” But that’s something that WILLA’s website feature “The Count” calls into question quite starkly.

Having now gathered together the hard facts of who’s won what literary prizes and how many times both recently and historically, it becomes profoundly obvious that there are some serious biases at work when talking about which writers receive literary awards and recognition. Often, when you point out these hard facts to someone, their response will often be “Well, so-and-so is a woman and she won the Big Fat such and such prize last year.” That is, for a variety of reasons, many people don’t like to face the unpleasant facts the percentages reveal and so use anecdotal evidence to assure themselves about the way they’d like to continue to think. And even after you present the data to them, they’ll often devise elaborate statistical schemes to come up with reasons for the numbers meaning something other than the blatantly obvious. Or finally they’ll argue that art is “universal” and that “the best is simply the best and rises to the top,” as if there weren’t the subjective, human hand of an awards committee or editorial staff behind each choice, each winner, each grant recipient. Apparently for these people “the best” just tumbles out of some golden file cabinet up in literary heaven.

The more disturbing moment is when you encounter other women writers who are more than comfortable with the status quo. These are typically women writers who’ve managed to wrest a hard-won foothold inside the old boys clubhouse. We definitely have some sympathy for their position. But it’s easier and more comforting to think “I’m clearly exceptional,” rather than for such a woman to ask, “Why can’t more of my sisters get a foot in the door?” Adrienne Rich talks about this in her essay “When We The Dead Awaken,” describing the notion of “special woman” status. And one of the most brilliant things that Rich ever did was to be that woman upon whom special woman status had been conferred and yet she chose to interrogate this specious privilege and reach out to other women. That’s what WILLA is trying to do as an organization. Because if you look at our Board Of Directors and all of the other women who’ve volunteered for WILLA, you’ll see that these are all very accomplished women and that many of us have held or presently hold positions of authority within the literary community. But there are still a lot of women out there who, from a lack of luck, experience, financial ability, personal circumstances, etc., need a hand from those of us who can afford to extend it.

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