Barnes & Noble Celebrates World Literature Today to Honor Its November Issue

In its November 2016 issue, World Literature Today honors women writers, and Barnes & Noble has responded with an unprecedented campaign to feature the magazine in all of its stores in every state.

For the first time in the magazine’s 90-year history, all authors, translators, and subjects of reviews are women contributing essays, fiction, poetry, interviews, and reviews spanning the globe. In “Of Gatekeepers and Bedtime Stories: The Ongoing Struggle to Make Women’s Voices Heard,” writer and translator Alison Anderson says that until parity is achieved, such “conscious, practical efforts [are needed] to give women writers the place they deserve.”

Her contribution is part of the Puterbaugh essay series that surveys the twenty-first-century literary landscape. In 2016 the Puterbaugh series featured Bangladesh’s K. Anis Ahmed, Palestine’s Ghassan Zaqtan, Malaysia’s Bernice Chauly, 2016 Neustadt Prize winner Dubravka Ugrešić, and Alison Anderson. 

In this historic special issue of a famous magazine, WLT shows how the world of literature populated solely by women might look and includes city profiles, helpful reading lists, and global-culture features by female contributors.