A.S.Byatt Interview

The marvelous, and often contentious, A.S. Byatt recently told an audience at the Edinburgh book festival that critics perceive intellectual women writers like “a dog standing on its hind legs,” before going on to criticize the Orange Prize as sexist. Her comments have triggered a flurry of discussion in the press (so nice to know it’s not just Martin Amis who can get everyone all riled up), and I tend to agree with her. It does seem that women’s writing is in danger of becoming marginalized through the very attempts to celebrate it; it is odd to have a prize for which the eligibility is one’s gender. It’s worth checking out the illuminating interview with Byatt by Charlotte Higgins at the Festival, about Byatt’s The Children’s Book, which recently won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and her thoughts on religion and social networking media.