How About Those VIDA Numbers

In terms of gender diversity (let alone other dimensions of social variance), the byline breakdown in major literary magazines was about as dismal in 2013 as it always is. Trusty VIDA rolled out the count this morning:

Drumroll for the 75%ers: The Atlantic, London Review of Books, New Republic, The Nation, New York Review of Books (actually holding steady at 80% men for four years) and New Yorker. We get it: you’re mighty, unmovable giants.

Notably, the Paris Review and the New York Times Book Review came much closer to gender parity this year than ever before, and this year, VIDA included more smaller publications, many of whom are much more even-handed: POETRY, Callaloo, the Gettysburg Review, New American Writing, Ninth Letter, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner and the Missouri Review were all near equal or tilted in favor of female writers.

Personally I think this is an issue better solved by social policy than magazine editors as well as one that is continually exacerbated by the growing class barrier around making literary writing your primary pastime, but I am glad for VIDA’s pie charts and the opportunity to think about the invisible pie charts that sort out bylines by race!