Here are the six titles on the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist:
Cynthia Bond: Ruby
Anne Enright:The Green Road
Lisa McInerney: The Glorious Heresies
Elizabeth McKenzie: The Portable Veblen
Hannah Rothschild: The Improbability of Love
Hanya Yanagihara: A Little Life
The winner is announced on 8 June. Find reviews of Anne Enright and Elizabeth McKenzie by using the search engine on this page.

It is with great sadness that bookoxygen reports the death of reviewer Paul Sidey. Paul’s career in publishing was long and very distinguished. He spent over three decades working at publisher Hutchinson where his authors included Ruth Rendell and Sir Richard Attenborough. Paul contributed some wonderful and witty reviews to this site and they can be found by using the website’s search engine.

Of course, some of us have been favouring women’s writing for ages, but for others, newly stimulated by the latest Vida figures which show not much shift in the gender imbalance when it comes to books and reviews by women, it’s time to take action. Read the Guardian’s article and be prepared to cast aside blokes’ books for a while in order to free your mind from innate attitudes to what a level publishing playing field looks like. [Read more...] in News and events

bookoxygen mourns the death of one of the most important women writers of the twentieth century, Doris Lessing, whose novels, notably The Golden Notebook, were formative in the annals of women’s writing. (Lessing herself was unhappy that the work was seen as feminist though many readers found it a breakthrough work of pro-female fiction.)
Lessing’s output was prodigious and wide-ranging. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007.

In the unironic words of the Swedish Academy, ‘master of the contemporary short story’ Alice Munro has been awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature for an outstanding body of writing which includes fourteen volumes of short stories. The Canadian writer’s most recent collection was entitled Dear Life. Find our review of it under Reviews or via the search engine. Since its publication she has announced her decision to retire from writing.
Munro is the thirteenth female to be awarded the Nobel Prize.

bookoxygen congratulates exceptional writer A.M. Homes on winning this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. Read a Q & A with her about the winning novel, May We Be Forgiven, on this site by putting the author’s name or the book title in the search box at the top of this page. [Read more...] in News and Events

Bookfest? I think I would call it a freebie-fest. I’ve been to book fairs before, lots of them, in Frankfurt, London, Oslo and Berlin. I’m accustomed to them being rather oppressive trade shows heavily packed with meetings at which publishers talk to publishers or distributors or agents. But Book Expo in New York is something else [Read more...] in News and events

So it’s plus ca change in the world of book reviewing – still vastly more reviews written by men of men’s books, as the Guardian points out in an article today [Read more...] in News and events.
One of the few good deeds in this dirty world is the website you are reading right now. bookoxygen is committed to tipping the balance back towards women – as writers, reviewers and readers. So if you like what we are doing and want to see it develop, tweet or comment about it. Tell your friends. Because we’re worth it.