Poet Verandah Porche asked famous author about female writers, setting social media ablaze

[eridani]

http://www.reformer.com/localnews/ci_29738905/vermont-poet-sparks-feminist-social-media-firestorm?

That's when the educated women in the audience took to Twitter. (Or, as the poet recounts: "There was a kind of hiss, a syncopated intake of breath, and I could tell there was a barely audible clatter of people starting to punch their machines.&quot

"In many ways Gay Talese is a revolutionary," one female Massachusetts freelancer tweeted, "in others (eg his views of women nonfiction writers), he's an 84 yo guy from NJ."

Added New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean: "#womengaytaleseshouldread Lillian Ross. Joan Didion. Janet Malcolm. Jane Kramer. I'm just getting started here, folks."

And actress and author Tina Fey, speaking to the Associated Press: "Nothing by Gay Talese has moved me."

By the end of the week, the New York Times was reporting a story headlined "Gay Talese Goes Through the Twitter Wringer," in which the author clarified, "When I was in my formative years, there were no women in journalism who inspired me — the women who inspired me were fiction writers."

But Porche's question has inspired a conversation she hadn't intended.

"It's not like I had an ax to grind, or this was a gotcha question," she said. "I heard him list this whole catalogue of men and thought he might inadvertently have left out some people who it would be valuable to hear about."