I talked to the lovely Tahree Lane from the Toledo Blade for this article on chick lit that ran yesterday:
Women who write literary fiction see their work assigned a back seat at bookstores to chick lit, which goes to the front of the class, she said. In April, Merrick drew the ire of many chick-lit scribes when it was announced she would edit a collection entitled, This is Not Chick Lit: A Collection of Original Stories by America's Best Women Writers, to be published in 2006.
"The point of the anthology is to put emphasis on another kind of woman writer who doesn't get as much attention as chick lit," let alone as much attention as literary writing by men, she said. The chick-lit genre includes excellent writers, she said. But with publishers seeking such a fast infusion of writers, quality wasn't always sustained.
"I think it's wonderful that we have more content about women's lives than we did 10 years ago," said Merrick. "But there's so much more going in women's lives than what's frequently portrayed [in chick lit]."