by Ruth Skilbeck
One of the fastest
growing trends in new literary publishing is the new movement of
author-publishers, and women publishing self-based literary books as e-books
and printed books, via the internet.
There are several things that this shows:
first women have been empowered through new publishing technologies, and the opportunities
to network and create new communities online, that has given rise to the
thriving new author publishing movement. Second, that new forms of literary
writing and new hybrid genres are proliferating in the new world of publishing,
which has proved to have only increased the number of books published and read,
contrary to the dire warnings of a decade ago that books were dying.
Far from books dying, and authors becoming
redundant, books have been rewritten as e-books, and authors have been reborn
as author publishers, able to have the freedom to publish their own works, as
they want to, and what this has done is to increase the reading public, and
number of books being published online exponentially.
Pre order through The Antipode Room
In this conducive and creative environment,
women have emerged as strong voices in new ways: creating books about the inner
life of women, and their relationships, books written from angles and dealing
with subject matter that until now has been considered as inappropriate or
vulgar, or smutty. Now women are writing and reading intelligent thoughtful and
authentic stories about how women feel and live, in their real relationships
with significant others, and with just others. This means writing about and of
the body, and women are doing this in many ways, from the extraordinary stories
(and success) of erotica E.L James, in her ‘Shades of Grey’ series on “bdsm”
and the way this changes the life of the protagonist, to women’s memoirs and
the creation of new genres such as romantic vampire thriller, to write about
the inner world of women’s lives metaphorically and of course central to this
is writing of sexuality and sex.
Until now, literature has been the realm of
genres of books that have been termed erotica. Yet these have been seen
generally as distinct from literature (except in the hands of the
intellectually regarded authors such as Sacher von Masoch, author of the
influential Venus in Furs, or George Bataille author of Story of the Eye and
Blue of Noon, amongst others. These have been highly regarded and discussed in
universities and amongst the intelligentsia. Yet, men have written them, about
women. Now, at last literature is able to catch up with the changes that
revolutionized Art in the 1970s, when women were able to participate as equals
(well that is the idea, in reality it is not so conclusive) – by enrolling in
art schools and universities in large numbers. Yet it was at this very time,
that in universities, the idea of ‘the death of the author” took hold (I know
this is not meant to be literal!) however it too neatly coincided with a
dismissive attitude that arose to the idea of “originality” in authorship. One
of the effects of this was to silence, or sideline life stories by authors in
their own voices, confessional, first person, stories that lost credibility in
the academy at that time. Yet this is the kind of writing that women in
particular excel at, and love to read- and write.
In the new publishing world, where author
publishers are rising into a strong new movement, that began in the US and
spread to the UK and is now beginning to start up in other countries, such as
Germany, and I hope will too in Australia, women have come to the fore- writing
and publishing the stories that they like to read and write. These books are
literary, they are serious works about what it means to be human from a women’s
perspective. (Of course there are others as there always have been in
publishing, but I am focusing here on serious literary writing by women).
To be honest and write authentically as a
woman one must write about emotions, feelings, the body, sexuality, eroticism,
and one’s own deepest experiences, which tend to be sexual, erotic, the
experiences that have most deeply moved and affected us, as humans. New
generations of women are writing about the inner world, of feelings and
relationships, as lovers, mothers, sisters, friends, as workers and unemployed,
or as “casual” workers and exploited, as successful, and as aspiring, in all
the modes of life that we live for our selves.
Women are driving the new author publishing
movement in new forms of literary writing about what it means and feels to be
human and female. They are writing about all the stages of the life cycle, from
childhood, through to teenage years and rites of passages, coming of age, to
the struggles to develop relationships and assert oneself in ones twenties,
raise families perhaps, or discover alternative ways of living and relating,
alternative sexual lives, and/or focusing on careers.
This is a literary movement of women’s
empowerment that women have been able to develop in the vectors of social,
cultural and technological change enabled by new media communications
technologies. In this new machine age of digital technologies, a new wave of
humanity has swept forth as if we are redefining ourselves as human in this new
matrix of digital media. This coincides
with women’s cultural movements of ‘the fourth wave’ of feminism, and the new
movements of young women, which interesting involve bodily nudity, as a
political statement of self-empowerment and new feminism.
There is a naked turn in culture and in
author publishing where women are striving for the truth, and naked expression
is part of this. There is a purity and innocence to nudity, as William Blake
for one knew. Women are writing from their own lives and perceptions and from
the body, and this is creating an interesting new movement in author publishing.
The new series of books that I am
publishing is called Australian Fugue. The first book in the series is The
Antipode Room; it is the first of two novels based in Australia and London and
which tell the story of Roxanne-Ruby’s journey from a state of fugue, loss of
awareness of identity, to self-knowledge.
The series is about women’s self-empowerment
through culture, and the process of art writing, and the stories it tells are
of sex, art and inner world- and how it feels to be an intelligent and
artistic woman in different stages of life.
You can support the project of new artistic
literary writing and publishing by pre-ordering a limited first edition copy of
The Antipode Room as an e-book or as a printed book, through pozible a site for
creative projects, that is based in Australia but which is now taking payment
from the US.
Details on the book and on how to order it
can be found by clicking this link.
The e-book is only $19 and the printed book
is only $34 – the original photographic cover art is also for sale in a limited
edition. This is a unique opportunity to participate in a moment of literary
history in Australia, the first book publication by the first author-publisher
house, Postmistress Press.
I hope that you will enjoy the book.
All the best and happy reading,
Ruth
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