Writers

Culture
I don’t want to be a rare successful female writer. I just want to be a successful writer
More often than not, when you pick up a new book in a bookshop, it will be by yet another white man, meaning that white and male will be what the next set of Big Names will look like. How can we break out of this self-reinforcing cycle?
By Sophia McDougall
27 February
Culture
How are rape jokes different from murder jokes? Let me count the ways
If murder was so common that in any medium-sized mixed group I could be pretty sure someone there had been directly affected by murder, you are damn right I wouldn’t make any jokes about murder, writes Sophia McDougall.
By Sophia McDougall
06 September
Culture
I hate Strong Female Characters
Sherlock Holmes gets to be brilliant, solitary, abrasive, Bohemian, whimsical, brave, sad, manipulative, neurotic, vain, untidy, fastidious, artistic, courteous, rude, a polymath genius. Female characters get to be Strong.

By Sophia McDougall
15 August
Culture
The rape of James Bond
On sexual assault, and “realism” in popular culture.
By Sophia McDougall
14 March

NewStatesman