On LAR’s partnership with AROHO Foundation

In the past year, the literary community has been taking part in a discussion that’s close to The Los Angeles Review’s heart: the status of women in print.When VIDA: Women in Literary Arts began its count–a tally of the numbers of men and women writers in major national journals–we at LAR weren’t surprised to see confirmation of what we already felt to be true: that women writers have an outsider status in much of literary publishing.

We at LAR feel it is both our privilege and our responsibility to provide a home to an eclectic group of writers. Our identity as a West Coast journal under the umbrella of a West Coast press gives us outsider status that naturally makes us interested in outsider writing, and we’ve long been dedicated to representing a wide selection of fine work by women writers, minority writers, writers of all faiths, LGBTQ writers, writers outside the academy, and new writers publishing work for the first time.

As a journal that routinely publishes equal numbers of men and women contributors, we hope to see changes in the literary landscape as a result of VIDA’s count. But we feel that a true move toward gender parity in literary publishing involves more than journals simply increasing the number of women in their pages. We feel that literary organizations like ours have a responsibility to uncover and discuss the many opportunities for women in writing, and to foster community. This year, it’s given us great pleasure to partner with A Room of Her Own Foundation, an organization that actively supports a community of women writers through its retreats, conferences, and through its $50,000 Gift of Freedom award that grants deserving women the financial freedom to write.

In 2011, we’ve published the winners of A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Orlando Awards–semiannual awards in poetry, nonfiction, short fiction, and flash fiction, that celebrate the diverse spectrum of women’s writing. The winners of the Orlando Awards are teachers, students, playwrights, urban farmers. They live in Los Angeles; Seattle; Louisville, Kentucky; Providence, Rhode Island. They are an eclectic group of women who deserve to be heard, and it’s our honor to present their work in our pages.

In our recently released Issue 10, we’re proud to present Jen Silverman’s essay “Six Bright Horses and the Land of the Dead,” Jennifer Beebe’s poem “The Green Season,” Laura Brown-Lavoie’s short story “A Strange Woman,” and Ashley Kunsa’s flash fiction “A Woman’s Glory.”

Learn more about A Room of Her Own Foundation: www.aroomofherownfoundation.org