Washington Square. On air is the Audiotown square for the Washington Square Review. Lansing Community College's literary journal. Writers, readers, scholars, publishing professionals, citizens of the world, gather here and chat about all things writing. Hey there. This is Melissa Ford Lucken, editor for the Washington Square Review. I'm here today with Jill Bromfin. We're going to be talking about feminist fiction. Jill's a returning guest and last time we were talking she piqued my interest with this topic, so I invited her back. And so. Hey Jill, tell us a little bit about your area of interest.

Sure. I think last time we were talking about how I had written a thesis paper as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley. So way back when in on publishing romance novels and you know, the industry has changed a lot, but I still have a very strong interest in feminist fiction. And as we've talked about before, I think feminist fiction can be romantic. It can also appear in a number of different genres. And we can talk about, you know, science fiction and fantasy fiction and historical fiction and how feminist romance plays out in those different genres.

Talk a little bit about the paper that you wrote. How did you get started with that topic and what were you looking at back then? At the time?

Yeah, so back then I was looking at statistics and which novels were popular and how things have changed over time. So I was kind of writing historical fiction about romance fiction about publishing and looking really at where the industry was going and how it changed with the times. When I think of romances, and I'm not the only one that thinks of this stereotype, I think of the Regency romance with an 18 year old female character pitted against a 35 year old male protagonist. He's rich and powerful and she has to use her charm, which, you know, charm has kind of a negative connotation. But I would argue that charm in these romance novels is really a feminized version of intelligence and wit and strategic skills to win him over. You know, the downside is sometimes, sometimes he's a jerk at first, which is not a great impediment to overcome. I mean, we shouldn't be teaching young girls that their goal is to change a man. You know, even aside from the socioeconomic tropes.

Talk a little bit about the market. At the time you said you saw some changes. So what were you looking at?

Yeah, over time there are changes, you know, in the 50s and 60s and into the 70s and 80s, you see, I mean there's still formulaic fiction, there's still the Regency romance, as I mentioned, and there's still a Series of romance novels where you. You're given a very set formula. You know, by page 50, they kiss, and by page 100, they, you know, if it's more erotic than they've been to bed together or, you know, there's a conflict at page 75. Those kind of super formulaic fiction. But I think there's also in recent years, especially in the 2000s and 2000s, where women writers have broken out of the formulas and kind of come up with a new formula. I would say there are three things that I would look for in a modern romantic fiction. I would look at, number one, characters with agencies. Agency, not agencies. It's cool if they have, like, an advertising agency.

Yeah, for sure.

Characters with agency. Singular. Something to do, not just something to be. And then item two of three, I kind of. This will sound familiar to a lot of people. It's the Bechdel test, which is a measure of the representation of women in film and other fiction. And the test asks whether her work has two female characters. So it could be a mother and a daughter or two friends, and they're having a conversation about something other than a man. Right?

Right.

So something like, if you're watching the Bridgerton TV show, there's two women. And it doesn't have to be politics. It could be address, or it could be starting your own secret gossip business. But they're having a conversation about something other than a man and his life. And then some versions of the test maybe require that the two characters that we're talking about have names. So they're real people, you know, with names and personalities, not just two background characters or two characters that talk about a man. And then the third thing that I'd add to what's going on in current romantic fiction and feminist fiction is looking at the descriptions of the characters. So I read a lot of work as a reader for Literary Journal. I read for the Master's Review, and as soon as I see something that's like, oh, you're discovering a woman, and, oh, it's her lips, it's her breasts, it's her hips, it's her legs, it's her nails, it's her clothing, I'm like, oh, this is so stereotypical. Let's move on. And it's okay to include these, but I also want to see in a description of a character like a facial expression, a gait, the way she walks, you know, the quirks of language and idioms and how someone speaks, you know, not just the really standard body parts of the woman. So those three things, you know, having agency, having conversations that don't involve men, and then kind of. I call it feminist descriptions. That's the third thing. Kind of the new formula, I'd say, of what we're looking for in feminist fiction for publishing.

What influence do you think TikTok has on fiction for women?

Yeah, well, there's, you know, TikTok, book talk and social media in general is important. One of the ways that we communicate right now is social media, and one of the ways that we create characters and interest in characters is social media. So it kind of has replaced social media in general. You know, TikTok in particular has kind of replaced certainly during the early years of the pandemic, but even now, as kind of. Maybe we'll call it a silver lining of the pandemic. There have been other ways to promote a book or to get people interested in a book other than just go to the bookstore, read your book, you know, sell 10 copies.

It is pretty great that readers can get together on social media and talk about books and talk about them freely and openly and over, you know, a period of several days or several weeks or even several months. So it gets to be an ongoing conversation, which I think is pretty great. That, to me, seems something really new when I think about romance. Years ago, Even, you know, 10 years ago, before there was the big influence of social media was mostly like book reviews. There would be magazines that would have book reviews in them, but that wasn't really a conversation. It was finding out about the book. But reading the reviews is very different than actually having conversations with other people who've also read the books. And it's fun because, like you're saying, readers don't always. They. They look for different things and they have criteria and they discuss them and they're. They feel free to say what they do like and what they don't like. And I think that's pretty great. Really?

Yeah. I mean, people are having conversations. You know, when I think about marketing or publishing feminist fiction, people are having conversations about all sorts of things. Like we talked a minute ago about characters, and I think characters are really important, and people identify with the characters and they want to talk about the characters and they want to ship different characters than you've put in a relationship. You know, moving, moving and grooving with the. The characters to make new relationships and cross genre and cross book relationships. You know, shipping those people. I don't know, you could. I guess you could ship a real person with a fictional person. People are probably writing Fan fiction about that as we speak.

Yeah, for sure.

But I think people are having conversations about all sorts of things. So, like, you can find elaborate social media conversations about book covers, about what you should put on the book cover, like real women versus graphics, what kind of colors, what kind of shapes, what kind of font, what quote unquote appeals to women, or more specifically, what signifies on a book cover that this is something that they might want to read. Like, this is about a strong woman.

Any images come to mind? Any specific book covers that you've liked or disliked?

I have a friend who writes the bodice ripper type novels, and that is another formula along with the Regency romance. And there have been lots of jokes made about the shirtless guy on the COVID of romance novel. So that is something that maybe has gone too far. Once you see that, you're almost expecting it to be either too stereotypical or maybe funny. You know, if they've done it for laughs.

Yeah. The funny thing about the torso is the trend in the past couple years of cutting the guy's head off. So he's just like, you know what I mean? It's just from the. It's just from the neck down, and he doesn't have a head or face anymore.

Well, you could get more flexible, you know, thinking about race and gender and religion and ethnicity. I mean, maybe the torso has a particular color to it, but, you know, there are really good conversations. People are having really interesting conversations of whether the author has to match the protagonist on issues of gender, race, religion, ethnicity. You know, can women write men and vice versa? You know, I think men get a little bit too much of a pat on the back for writing good female characters. Like, good for you. You wrote a good female character, whereas women have been writing male characters for a very long time. You know, it's. They're not like, they don't usually get quite the same pat on the back. Like, oh, you wrote a boy character. You know, that was amazing how you did that. And men, you know, it's like men getting extra credit for, quote unquote, babysitting their own children.

What kind of COVID trends do you think are going to be? The ones that disappear quickly?

I mean, the pink cover, you know, that's almost as funny as the headless torso.

The headless torso guy has been around for a while. Yeah, yeah.

I think book covers are still important. They're still important. They're still a visual online as well as in person. I mean, when you're in person in a bookstore, you can better judge like the length of a book, how heavy it is, the length of chapters, the weight of the book. Those sort of factors are more difficult to see online. But the COVID is so important because it is a graphic and you do see, even if it's a tiny thumbnail. I guess if you're asking about trends, I would think if you're looking at a lot of online sales and you've got a very elaborately detailed cover, like a whole city scene with a bunch of people in it, and then you're looking at a thumbnail online, that might be difficult. So I guess if I could pinpoint one trend, I would say make sure it works as a thumbnail.

Right. I think that that's unfortunate because some of those older covers that used to be on all books had a lot of detail in them. And as you're saying, they don't translate to an online view. So, like when they make the book covers, they have to keep that in mind, which is kind of unfortunate. It does limit.

Yeah. Like one word titles. Right. Think about how you can't put like a billion words on a thumbnail image of a book ever.

Right. And if someone's trying to come up with a new pen name, they're like, make it short so it'll fit on. Yeah. It's interesting to think about the way that the romance industry has been affected by Kindles. E Readers versus paperback, as you're saying. Because when you go in the bookstore, you can pick up a big book, you can look at it, you'll know how long it is. You can get an idea of what kind of experience you're going to be getting. With an ebook, it's different.

Yeah. And think about, with a Kindle, how that's opened up privacy for people. You know the old joke about reading Fifty Shades of Grey, which is, by the way, a modern version of a Regency romance in a big way. People reading it on the subway with a fake cover on it covered with wrapping paper, so you can't see what people are reading. Having a Kindle or reading something on your laptop or your phone really makes it a lot more flexible. You can read anything and not worry about other people judging you.

Something people are often surprised to hear is that often authors don't have any control over what goes on the COVID They might have some control, but typically the person that makes the COVID design may not have even read the book. Oh, no, they just read a description of it. And so the COVID shows up in the author's inbox and there it is. And surprise there's your cover and all you really, if you're new, all you can really do is say thank you. I love it.

Right? It's beautiful. I love it.

Yeah. Obviously indie published authors get to design their own cover and so they have complete control. So that's, that's a big difference in the, in the industry.

And now I'm working on one word titles and very stark cover images for the novel that I'm working on. Now I also think about timing, you know, not only privacy and reading electronically, but also time and place for where and when do women buy books? I was at a winery and it was a Klein winery in Sonoma and in California. And Emma Klein is a really well known writer and there was her book for sale next to the wine and you know, maybe in the Target while you're shopping for beach toys for your kids or in the grocery store, a daycare drop off. You know, all these places where women are in droves. And I think it's kind of like the videos that they're now showing on the back of airplane seats and in elevators where they have a captive audience. And I've been thinking creatively about, like, where would I sell a book that I wanted women to read? And it might not be just in the regular bookstore or on, you know, the regular bookshop or Amazon online. I might think creatively about where I wanted to put the book so women could actually get a hold of it.

It's interesting to think about because I think you have a really good point that books are often located in what seem like odd places. Like this isn't the book area. But they know that, you know, women readers are everywhere and we see something we like and a lot of readers are very dedicated. When you think about the romance industry or feminist fiction, what is it that you think that people often misunderstand or need to know, but they don't.

I think, and I hinted at this earlier, the idea that in order to write something feminist, that it can't be romantic or that it has to be super realistic. I think, you know, Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale is obviously a great example of feminist fiction. And the Power by Naomi Alderman is kind of the newer version of that. The Power being a super title. Right. Under the theories that we're just talking about the idea that teenage girls could have, like the ability to electrocute men who are harassing them. That would be great. You know, all of these fantasy, like the Women who Could Fly by Megan Giddings, where witches are real. You know, not just fantasy, but witches are real historical fiction like the Red Tent by Anita Dammont and Color Purple by Alice Walker. I mean, so you can have historical fiction, you can have fantasy, you can have sci fi, you can have just about, you know, film noir or crime fiction mysteries. You can write, I think any genre, you know, and I challenge your listeners to give it a shot, you know, if they think it, oh, this is too far fetched. I can't write a feminist tale or romantic tale within this other genre. I mean, I'm writing right now. My novel is both romantic and sci fi. Not sci fi, like hard sci fi. But the book is mostly set in the future. You know, it's about a young woman who starts off in the present day, in her twenties, and lives her life into the knowable future. And there's sci fi in the sense that it's in the future. And clifi, which is a cool abbreviation for climate change fiction, which is also a really popular, growing genre. If people are looking to get into soft apocalypse or climate change fiction, I think there's, there's room to grow in that area as far as publishing this. And so I guess the thing that the stereotype or the misconception that people have about feminist fiction is that it can't reach into other genres. And I definitely think it can.

I'm wondering about your thoughts on the publishing gatekeeping. I have a lot of friends that write romance, popular romance fiction, and written some of it myself, and, and find that sometimes if you've written what you know, you believe to be a feminist perspective, that sometimes it is not as easily accepted by the publishing community. In other words, editors will pass on it because they say that the heroine is unlikable or it's unrealistic or that people wouldn't like it. So there seems to be a little tension between what editors can or will accept for publication and what people are actually writing. Have you seen any of that or have any thoughts about that?

You know, people have been writing feminist and romantic fiction on the sly for quite some time. You know, back to reaching all the way back to like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Right. That doesn't seem feminist or romantic when you first read it, but it certainly is. It's certainly based on her own sad, you know, romantic and tragic life with her love and her, you know, children and that sort of thing. But people say, oh, it's a horror or it's, it's a horror genre or it's a monster genre. And boy, was that popular. Right. So I Think maybe, although I would love to advise people to be really straightforward and stomp around and say, this is. This is a feminist book and that's the way it is, I think there's some advantage to, as the poets say, write it slant right, slant rhyme, or a slant theme where it's not maybe the most obvious feminist story of all time, but it's in there.

How do you feel about that? That that's the way that it is? Does that frustrate you or are you like, nah, it's fine.

Maybe it's a creative prompt, right? Maybe it's a writing prompt to write something that's feminist that someone who's anti feminist would not object to. I hope that's not our political future. But as you mentioned, it might be somewhat of an issue with present day publishing that they're still stuck on some of the stereotypes that we've had in the past. And in that sense, you might have to be a little more creative.

It may also be that some publishing communities are unaware of the changes that readers themselves have gone through and that readers do want these different kinds of stories. So maybe they aren't really fully aware of that yet.

I mean, maybe the publishing industry is more female statistically than a lot of other industries. It's not like you're trying to write something in the energy and gas industry, technical writing. So we do have that going for us. But maybe they're a little older and a little whiter than the readers or even the writers. So that might be an issue. You know, that trends happen when they notice when not just the writers and the readers change, but the gatekeepers turn over into a new generation as well.

Mm. Is there anything in particular that you can think of that you'd like to see change in the future?

Just really the narrow funnel of publishing? I think things have opened up quite a lot. I mean, you think about film, media in general has opened up a lot. Think about how many. How much easier it is now to make a short film or to write a story and maybe put it up on your blog, as opposed to waiting for a publisher and a particular format. So there's so many more formats available than there used to be. But there is still sort of a narrow tunnel to getting into traditional publishing. I mean, there's print on demand and that's helpful too. But for traditional publishing, I would just like to see people take a few more chances and to have it be a little bit more of a risky business. There are small publishers who are not doing well right now and could use a little funding. So I guess the one financial move that I think would help is more government funding of the arts. That would be amazing.

I hear that. Let's talk a little bit about your manuscript. So you're working on finishing it up and then what are your plans for getting it out into the world?

Yeah, I mean, my goal was I'm in my fourth semester of four semesters at Pacific University in the MFA in fiction. It's a low residency mfa. It's been pretty cool so far. I went into it being a published author in a number of categories, a lot of academic writing from my history as a professor and policy. Right. You know, nonfiction, policy writing, and. And then I had poetry and short stories and essays published, but I really hadn't written a novel in any, you know, completed sort of format. And so Now I've got 100,000 words. That seems like a novel.

It does.

And I've got. I've got to polish it. So work with my thesis advisor over the next couple months and see what I can do to polish it. And then I will, I guess, at least try a traditional publishing methodology of reaching out to an agent and a publisher and see how that goes. I mean, the novel has lots of fun things in it, even though it is. It does deal with the future and the possibility of technology change and climate change. There's a really adventuresome protagonist who has lots of love affairs and does amazing things with art. So, you know, there are fun things to read in as well. I'm trying to write a beach read slash great American novel. We'll see how that goes.

So you see yourself making an agent list and doing the query letter thing.

Yeah. At least to try. I mean, I have the same attitude towards that as I did to the mfa, where I was like, oh, well, I. I'll apply to one MFA program and see how that works. That's not what I would advise undergraduate students to do. I'd advise them to really research a lot of different programs and apply to a bunch of them. But, yeah, I will at least try different publishing methodologies, including some of the more traditional ways to go.

Yeah, all right, that sounds great. So if people would like to stay in touch with you and watch for this book when it comes out, they can find you on your website. Right. So you can.

Yeah, it's just jillbromfman.com and J I L L B R O N F M A n dot com. It's not easy. I know. Maybe I need a pen name and I'm on. I'm really easy to find on LinkedIn and Facebook.

Okay, cool. We'll put those links in the show notes. And if you do pick a pen name, you better pick a short one, right? So it'll fit on my cover. And use one that starts at the letter A, because then you'll be at the front of the the bookshelves.

Oh, wow. You are so good. Totally doing that.

All right. That's awesome. Well, thanks a lot for coming back and talking with us some more. It was great.

Yeah, it was fun. Thank you.

Thanks for stopping by the audio town square of the Washington Square Review. Until next time, this has been the Washington Square on air from Lansing Community College. To find out more about our writers, community and literary journal, visit lcc. Edu Wsl Writing is messy, but do it anyway.