News for 2023

I SO wanted The Night Field to be a short story. I’m a lazy hound, and novels take lots of actual work, so my basic stance was “not going there, if I can help it.” I really thought I could get in and get out fast, telling the life of a young hero-woman—think Greta Thunberg, X (Emma) Gonzalez, Malala Yousafzai, or even Joan of Arc (the unofficial patron saint of my beloved New Orleans.) Led by her guiding voices, my...

I thought it went without saying that we live in a patriarchal world, but then I went on Twitter. And the number of people (or bots) who tweet daily that the modern world is a matriarchy – and are mad about it – truly shocked me.

But the truth is, it’s not just a patriarchy. It’s a male-default world. The deeper you get into every aspect of how we use gendered language, from suffixes to idioms to profanity, the...