Women’s stories

A note from Editor-in-Chief Kaitlyn Andrews-Rice

I haven’t known what to write here. I spent the last month alternating between despair and full-blown panic. The news is never good and truth never prevails.

So I’ve been avoiding, procrastinating, tweeting. I thought, what would I write if this were my AOL Instant Messenger Away message? Would I tell you about my days (long, sweaty)? My nights (trying to write, but failing?) My dreams (anxiety-producing, teeth-grinding)? Nope. What I would tell you about is this:

I did it. I cancelled Hulu.

And I know. So what? Who cares? How does this relate to a literary magazine anyway?

I cancelled Hulu because I can’t bring myself to watch The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s a form of torture, too close to home, and I suppose that is the point. To shock and awe me into action. But torture as a form of entertainment doesn’t feel like a way to advance feminism, it feels like more of the same. 

Of course I appreciate and admire The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s gorgeously produced and acted. I enjoy the writing and the set design. I love the novel, and I love (most of) Hollywood. This isn’t some thesis on why Hollywood is bad, and I’m not making a political statement by not watching. I’m simply saying that this particular women’s story, at this particular time, is not the story for me.

What are “women’s stories” anyway? I think we’re supposed to be in the post-Chick-Lit-as-a-slur era, but whenever a story contains love or sex or mothers or children or abortion or a dystopian world in which women are sex slaves, and said story is written by women, the industry labels it “For Ladies,” marketed and branded as such. The now-cancelled Handmaid’s Tale wine is just one terrible example.

At Split Lip we’ve recently come to a wild conclusion: when a literary magazine’s editors are women, you publish more women. 

This month, with work from Brooke Larson, Lorelei Glaser, Belinda Hermawan​, Tanya Grae, plus a conversation between Laura Kendall and Brian Leung, Lauren Dostal’s review of Julián Herbert’s Tomb Song, and Klara Bartilsson’s art, we’re celebrating love stories and family stories and space stories and sex stories. We’re celebrating women’s stories sure, but mostly, importantly, we’re celebrating story stories. Just the way we like it.

--KAR