As Virginia Woolf is reputed to have said, “The reason women writers are not more widely read is because their friends don’t teach at Harvard.”  Apparently they don’t work at Wikipedia, either. According to a New York Times article by Amanda Filipacchi, Wikipedia thinks its list of “American Novelists” is too long, so they’ve created a subcategory of “American Women Novelists” without creating a corresponding one for “American Men Novelists.”

Well-known women writers have been relegated to the sub-list while obscure male writers remain on the “Amercian Novelists” list.  I guess we should be thankful they didn’t name the subcategory “Girl Novelists.”  Perhaps we can help them out with a few suggestions for some other subcategories to pare down their list.  How about:

1)      Dead white male novelists.

2)      Male novelists who really aren’t that great but whose friends are publishers.

3)      Overrated male novelists we still read because they’re on the list.