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EventsAnnual Meeting May 13, 2009 With over 100 people in attendance and in the beautiful setting of downtown Portland’s Old Church, this year’s annual meeting on May 13th was a great success. We said goodbye to retiring board members and welcomed four new board members. Our two speakers, Molly Gloss and Ursula K. Le Guin, spoke on the topic of "Women Writers: East and West," participated in a lively Q&A session with the audience after their talk, and stayed to chat at the wine and cheese reception following the meeting. Molly Gloss reminisced about growing up reading male-authored westerns, and the SheMolly talked about how her work has been inspired by strong female characters from these books that she has spent years collecting. We moved from west to east as Ursula Le Guin took over. She began with the powerful image of literature as a ship, asking, "Who are the sailors? Men. Who is the captain? A man." Ursula continued on the theme of gender and genrefication, noting that what women write is treated differently from what men write and is often set aside in special categories such as "chick lit" or "soft science fiction." To illustrate this point to the extreme she quoted Norman Mailer, who said, "What a writer needs is balls." Both Molly and Ursula have defied this attitude through their success in fields that have been typically dominated by men, and have proven to be great role models for aspiring female writers. Both speakers made us more aware of the sexism that persists in the writing world. They also rejected the practice of genrefication and encouraged us to enjoy a book for what it is rather than accepting an arbitrary classification. What an eye-opening discussion for all of us who attended! Looking ahead to next year’s meeting, we were thinking of trying to get a food writer to speak to our group. Everyone loves food, right? And who doesn’t like to salivate over good food writing? -- Exerpted from a Footnotes story by Davida Jordan -- Photo: Authors Ursula Le Guin (left) and Molly Gloss (right) top
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