The shortlist for the BBC National Short Story Award is out and the list features entirely female writers. Of course as much as I would like to believe we are past all of this, when a list isn't neatly balanced with men and women, knickers tend to get into twists with speculation. Before any roaring starts, let's go here:
Simply put, an award must be about the writing. If the process of judging solely on merit results in an unbalanced list, so what?
What do you think? Should such list makers take care to gender-balance their lists? And, if so, isn't doing so putting the author's demographic information ahead of his or her merit?
aguth@tribune.com