Domestic Women and Short Story Land

The New Writing Anthology 13 is edited by Toby Litt and Ali Smith: their forward appeared in yesterday's Guardian.

This reference to the state of the short story had me scratching my head. What do you reckon?

The most popular form by far was the short story. This is probably explained by there being, at the moment, so few outlets for shorter prose fiction. In the end though, as we read through the large stack of manuscripts, we began to believe that somewhere out there is a strange, pseudo-English country called Short-Story-Land where all day long, peculiarly short-story-like things happen. We began to dread starting a story only to find we were once again in Short-Story-Land.

But it was their comments on women's writing which stirred up a hornet's nest of controversy:

On the whole the submissions from women were disappointingly domestic, the opposite of risk-taking - as if too many women writers have been injected with a special drug that keeps them dulled, good, saying the right thing, aping the right shape, and melancholy at doing it, depressed as hell.

Domestic? Dulled? Melancholy?

Not on your life, say A.L. Kennedy Yvonne Roberts and Jane Rodgers in today's pages.

All nicely argued stuff and food for thought. (And if your want even more controversy, click here.)