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On the Need to Start an Ole Boys’ Club For Writers

By Larry Shallenberger
Writer photo, studio_chki / Shutterstock.com
Writer photo, studio_chki / Shutterstock.com
Apr 26, 2012
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My feeble brain overheated Saturday afternoon at precisely 2:23 PM at the Festival of Faith and Writing. Jonathan Safran Foer philosophized and Marlynee Robinson rhapsodized. I’d taken in sessions on young adult fiction and memoir. Each synapse in my noggin was frayed by the foot traffic of theory, Cafe Americano, and conversation.

I returned to home base– The Burnside Writers’ Booth– for the safety of familiar faces. Kim Gottschild, a gifted memoirist, was faithfully working the table and I offered to give her a break.

Sure enough, writers visited our booth. But good writers. Intelligent, thoughtful, and witty thinkers, each of them.

The conversation swirled from economics to politics to social justice to theology. My tired brain grumbled at first, but found itself sucked into the conversation. I asked several of these thinkers to consider writing for Burnside. Any one of these authors would be a welcome addition to the Burnside team.

After several of these conversations I noticed two things. Each of these writers had a red sticker on their name tag and each was a woman.

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