Literary News: VIDA and Pushcart

VIDA, the organization that tallies gender inequality in book reviewing and literary journals, has just published their 2013 count, and we’re happy to report that although The Cincinnati Review isn’t perfect, we are relatively gender equal.

The Breakdown: In overall gender balance for 2013, we had 73 pieces by women and 84 pieces by men. Our poetry tally was almost 50/50, with 56 poems by women and 57 poems by men. Our fiction count came in a little less equal with 6 stories by women and 9 stories by men, but for nonfiction we had one essay by a man and 2 by women. For our reviews, we featured mostly female book reviewers (6 to 4), but we reviewed mostly works by men (3 female and 13 male). However, in our 2014 Winter issue, we have an special review feature dedicated to debut short story collections by women (Jamie Quatro, Kate Milliken and Marie-Helene Bertino). Check it out.

The Cincinnati Review believes that VIDA is doing important and necessary work, and we support their mission for gender equality in publishing and reviewing. You can see the infographs here.

More Pushcart Nominations: We both love and hate nominating pieces for the Pushcart Prize. With our allotment of a mere six selections, there are so many excellent stories and poems that we must leave unheralded. That’s why we’re thrilled to announce more Pushcart Prize nominations from the Pushcart contributing editors. They’ve nominated three more poems from CR’s 2013 Winter issue:

Ruth E. Dickey, “In My Wallet”

Regina DiPerna, “Death, Naked”

Alan Feldman, “A Message from My Mother”

Congrats to these worthy poets and thanks to the editors for nominating these marvelous poems.