More evidence why this anthology is necessary

From the New York Times ArtsBeat Blog, NYTimes.com, Patricia Cohen writes:

"Female writers and editors have noticed that the guest editors (and one introduction writer) selected last week by Houghton Mifflin to put together the publisher's "Best American" anthologies for 2010 are all white men.  The blog SHE WRITES by Kamy Wicoff, reported that Barbara Jones, the editorial director of Hyperion Books and Voice (an imprint of books for women), had sent an email message with the subject line "women apparently not fit to judge this year." 

We need a strategy to fight the underlying assumption that women writers are cute and male writers are serious--- wait, I know.  How about an anthology that asks writers to revise the classics of myth, fairy-tale and the Bible.  Stories with that kind of narrative stability have clout; they have power.  This anthology is not about rewriting a cuter, hipper version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  This anthology is not about sexing up the Bible--- although that's not a bad idea.

This anthology is about subverting archetypes.  This is a top down mission.  When we start to have strong female heroes on the world stage again, in fairy-tales again, in myth again, and in the Bible again, we won't have all white male editors judging editing the best of American writers.  The very idea would be absurd.

"Jung rarely described feminine archetypes as repositories of power for women."
----- Annis Pratt, Archetypal Patterns in Women's Fiction