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Female friendships tend to take a back seat in our narratives, so that when they are given the space to exist, they exist almost solely to discuss a man. Virginia Woolf once commented that “all the great women of fiction were . . . not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex.”
When women are allowed to interact with each other beyond their thoughts on the other sex, they often end up in fraught relationships. Instead of supporting one another, they tear each other down.
Slowly but surely this status quo is being upturned. We are getting more stories with complex, nuanced female friendships and positive representations of sisterhood. This is something we at Breaking the Glass Slipper are very excited to see!
Alix E Harrow explores female friendship and sisterhood in The Once and Future Witches as well as her new novella, A Spindle Splintered. So who better to join us to tackle this subject?
Mentioned in this episode:
- Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
- Ammonite by Nicola Griffith
- Daughter of the Forest by Julier Marillier
- Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim
- She Who Became the Sun by Shelley P Chan
- Merlin (BBC)
- Sherlock (BBC)
- Mean Girls
A former academic, adjunct, cashier, blueberry-harvester, and Kentuckian, Alix E. Harrow is now a full-time writer living in Virginia with her husband and their semi-feral kids.
She is the author of Hugo-award-winning short fiction, and her debut novel, THE TEN THOUSAND DOORS OF JANUARY (Redhook/Orbit 2019), was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, and Goodreads Choice awards. Her second book, THE ONCE AND FUTURE WITCHES, is out now, and A SPINDLE SPLINTERED, a Sleeping Beauty novella, is published in Fall 2021. Find her on Twitter at @AlixEHarrow.
