The 2016 VIDA Count is finally out as of Oct 17th, and we find both improvement and setback in terms of women writer representation in major literary publications and reviews.

Some publications (Poetry, Tin House etc.) represented many more women writers, and were on a steady rise toward gender parity. However, some of them (London Review of Books, The Nation etc.) actually backslid, or remained the same as before.

Seeing the statistics made us wonder how we were doing. As a publisher with an East Asian focus, we’re bound to have more writers of color than a typical press, but how was our gender parity? A count of our six releases in 2016 shows that seven out of twelve authors and translators were women, and five of the seven were women of color of different nationalities. We’ll be interested to see how these numbers change next year, and what other data we can provide for things like age, education, and dis/ability, especially since Ghosts of Seattle Past gave a much larger cast of characters than usual. The statistics from VIDA keep us aware of and accountable to which voices we’re recognizing here at Chin Music Press.