It’s interesting that you consider it being “punished.” I read a lot, over 50 books a year, and that’s still not enough to read everything good out there. On the whole, how one chooses which books to read is fairly arbitrary: how books are placed in the store, what the cover looks like, whether someone I know happened…

As a white male aspiring writer, I applaud a broadening of who is getting published and read. I want it to be harder for my book to enter the market. This isn’t sarcasm. I don’t want to be published because I fit all the check marks of what authors traditionally are while someone else has to work harder to get a…

I spent a year only reading female authors several years ago (2007, maybe? I can’t remember for sure). It was really eye-opening, both in finding writing I wouldn’t have found otherwise and in seeing just how heavily male my usual reading skews.

There’s a world of difference between reading a good book by an author who happens to be a woman of color, telling people about that book and recommending it to others; and publicly proclaiming your intention to avoid books by straight white men to score enlightenment points.

So I should read more books by women, especially women of color, I just shouldn’t talk about it or tell anyone I’m doing it, which would include encouraging others to do it.