You may have noticed this: I include quotes in every issue of my newsletter, and most of the quotes I include are by women. This is intentional. My newsletter often has a theme, and I search for quotes by women writers that align with that theme.
What you probably don’t know is this: It’s not as easy to find enough quotes by women writers on a given theme or topic as one might think. I discovered this when I taught a course for a small group of women writers and began looking for quotes by established women writers to back up the points I was making.
I spend a good amount of time combing the internet for these quotes. Sometimes I’m on a time constraint and have to give up my search and include quotes by men writers. Often I really like a quote by a man writer and decide to include it—I love men and men writers, so my mission goes deeper than that, as I’ll explain below. (Isn’t it strange that the phrases “woman writer” and “women writers” sound completely natural—we use them all the time—but the phrases “man writer” and “men writers” don’t sound quite right?)
“While there are ‘women writers’ there are not, and have never been, ‘men writers’. This is an empty category, a class without specimens; for the noun ‘writer’—the very verb ‘writing’—always implies masculinity.”
—Joyce Carol Oates
If you don’t believe me that it’s not as easy to find quotes by women writers, Google “quotes about writing” and see what you come up with. The first result that came up for me was this Writer’s Digest list of 72 of the Best Quotes About Writing. Of the 72 quotes, only 17 are from women—less than 24%. Yet women make up a little more than half the population in the United States, and women now dominate the book business and write the majority of the books published in the United States each year.
Now click the “Images” tab up top—on my computer screen, I see a grid of eight pretty images across—quotes turned into colorful memes. For the most part, no more than one or two of the quotes in each line are by women.
Some of the articles that come up when you Google “quotes about writing” do have better ratios, but for the most part, click into a list of quotes about writing and you’re going to get a list made up mostly of men writers talking about writing. This holds true whether or not the person compiling the list is a man or a woman. See, for example, 52 Relatable Quotes About Writing compiled by a woman author, E.G. Bella—only 7 of the quotes on the list are by women, less than 14%, but I do not blame Bella for this. I know from my own experience that it is hard to flesh out a list of quotes with an even distribution between women writers and men writers, and it is time-consuming and damn near impossible to compile a list of quotes on a given writing topic using only quotes by women writers. Pro Tip: Google “quotes about writing by women writers” to increase your odds.
Why is this? you may ask, considering that women are supposedly dominating in publishing these days. Well, here’s the thing: women writers have a lot of catching up to do. We haven’t been writing nearly as long as men have, we haven’t been publishing nearly as long as men have, and our writing hasn’t been taken seriously for as long as men’s writing has. These points were first driven home to me when I read Virginia Woolf’s extended essay A Room of One’s Own in college. I understood that these things have been even more significant barriers for women of color after I read Alice Walker’s essay “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens”.
“Virginia Woolf, in her book A Room of One’s Own, wrote that in order for a woman to write fiction she must have two things, certainly: a room of her own (with key and lock) and enough money to support herself.
“What then are we to make of Phillis Wheatley, a slave, who owned not even herself?”
—Alice Walker, “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens”
Change has come slowly, and the imbalance is perhaps more subtle these days. Take this issue of my newsletter, for example. I searched for quotes about summer reading and committed to only using quotes by women writers. I ended up with six quotes to divide the sections of my newsletter, all by women, but it took longer than usual. And then I checked and only one of those quotes was by a woman writer of color. I do not believe for one minute that women writers of color have had nothing to say about the joys of reading in the summer.
This is why I make the effort to quote women writers, even though it is harder to find the quotes I need. And this is why I make the effort to quote women writers of color, even though it is doubly and triply hard to find the quotes I need. The DEI policies on this Substack are in full force and effect, and (for now), no one can put an end to them. I feel a responsibility to spend two or three hours instead of one on this task. All this is with the hope that, someday, I will Google “quotes about writing” and find a more equal balance of quotes by women and by men and by writers of every color.
“I raise up my voice—not so I can shout, but so those without a voice can be heard … we cannot succeed when half of us are held back.”
—Malala Yousafzai
XOXO
Leanne
P.S. I’d love to hear your favorite quote about summer reading. Please drop one in the comments below!
“My summer reading suggestion: Pick a really famous, really long novel.”
“I never understood the concept of a fluffy summer read. For me, summer
reading means beaches, long train rides and layovers in foreign airports.
All of which call for escaping into really long books.”
—Maria Semple
NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
GOLDEN QUILL WRITING CONTEST
The Golden Quill Writing Contest is now open for entries in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. This year’s judges are Juliet McDaniel, whose debut novel Mr. and Mrs. American Pie is the book upon which the hit Apple TV+ series Palm Royale is based; Deanne Stillman, author of many nonfiction books, including Twentynine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines, and the Mojave; and SLO County Poet Laureate Caleb Nichols, author of Teems///\Recedes.
CENTRAL COAST WRITERS’ CONFERENCE
Please join me at the Central Coast Writers’ Conference, September 26th & 27th, in sunny San Luis Obispo, California! I’ll be speaking on a panel about finding your writing tribe on Friday and presenting two sessions on Saturday, one on the who, what, where, when, and how of publishing short pieces and one on funding your writing career with grants, fellowships, and residencies.
“I’m ready for barbecues and picnics; reading books in my hammock; lemon-berry iced tea and a rocking chair on the front porch, watching the sun set with friends; stargazing while eating s’mores in the backyard. Oh, summer … bring it on!”
—Oprah Winfrey
SOME BOOKS MY FRIENDS HAVE WRITTEN
Retreat (out now!)
My friend Lindsay Jamieson collaborated with Krysten Ritter on her New York Times bestselling novel Retreat! A beautiful con artist insinuates herself into a wealthy socialite’s life … with deadly consequences, in this serpentine thriller about identity and obsession, from actress, director and bestselling author Krysten Ritter.
Ten Sleep (coming 6/24/2025)
This is the second novel by my friend Nicholas Belardes, author of The Deading. Here’s a little blurb from bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones: “Open these pages and fall into a cattle drive up in the high lonesome country, where it’s not just the cattle and the work that are challenging—here there be monsters, too.”
Absolute Pleasure: Queer Perspectives on Rocky Horror (coming 9/16/2025)
This anthology includes my friend Trey Burnette’s piece “A Rather Tender Subject.” The essays in Absolute Pleasure … explore … [the] complicated legacy of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, along with queer and trans joy, sexuality, family, generational understandings of queerness, and what we do with our problematic faves.
Vicious Cycle: A Thriller (Corey in Los Angeles) (coming 10/21/2025)
The debut novel by my friend Jaime Parker Stickle. A former reporter gets a new spin on life in this gripping debut from author Jaime Parker Stickle, whose psychological roller-coaster ride set in sunny Los Angeles tackles motherhood and murder.
Sing the Night (coming 10/28/25)
The debut novel by my friend Megan Jauregui Eccles. Magic. Music. Madness. Discovery a fantastical retelling of The Phantom of the Opera, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo and Erin Morgenstern.
Only Way Out (coming 11/04/25)
Cover reveal! A luckless thief’s wrong turn becomes a crooked cop’s fortune in a wild ride of a thriller by New York Times bestselling author (and my MFA thesis advisor) Tod Goldberg.
“Sitting under a tree in a park in the summer, listening to birds
and squirrels chirping while reading a good book, is priceless.”
—Charmaine J. Forde
SOME THINGS FOR READERS
The Pushcart War Is The Kid’s Book We Should All Be Reading: Revisiting Jean Merrill’s 1964 “Fight the Power” classic
(Jason Diamond for The Melt by Jason Diamond)
Utah Expands Statewide School Book Ban to 18 Titles, Targeting Women Authors and YA Fiction
(Kath for For Reading Addicts)
Books You’ll Never Finish Reading
(Amy Boal for Ranker)
Good For Me: In this essay, Ann Garvin reveals the reality of dating after 60
(Ann Garvin for Madison Magazine)
The 2025 Goodreads Guide to Summer Reading
“Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August.”
—Jenny Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty
SOME THINGS FOR WRITERS
10 things I wish every writer knew about marketing: I’ve spent 25 years working with thousands of writers. This is what I’ve learned…
(Dan Blank for The Creative Shift by Dan Blank)
I didn’t want a job: I wanted to make art
(Amie McNee for Amie’s Substack)
Envy, Obsession, and Instagram: On My Mental Breakdown at an Esteemed Writing Conference
(Brittany Ackerman Chronicles a Very Short, Very Bad Fellowship for Literary Hub)
Only Connect II: The Heretic [a brief punctuation tutorial]
(Benjamin Dreyer for A Word About…)
What It Means to Make Your Story Relatable
(Deborah Williams for Jane Friedman)
“I only have to break into the tightness of a strawberry,
and I see summer—its dust and lowering skies.”
—Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
SOMETHING TO MAKE YOU LAUGH
On My Deathbed, I Have Just One Regret: Not Spending More Time Resetting Passwords (Lindsey Smith for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency)
“Summer bachelors, like summer breezes, are never as cool as they pretend to be.”
—Nora Ephron
Leanne Phillips
Writer | Book Coach | Editor
leannephillips.com
Thanks for reading my newsletter! If you liked it, please share it with a friend who might enjoy it. If you didn’t enjoy the newsletter, you can unsubscribe below.