Gender Diversity in Publishing | Case Study: The Georgia Review — Windmill: The Hofstra Journal of Art & Literature

Introduction

VIDA is a “non-profit, intersectional feminist literary organization” that focuses on diversity in publishing. Their annual count compiles data from 40 literary journals and periodicals with the intent of “creating transparency surrounding gender imbalances and the lack of diversity in the literary landscape.” Like traditional ‘Big Five’ publishing, prominent literary magazines have a history of unevenly promoting the work of white, male authors over any other voices. With work like the VIDA count and general shifts in cultural demand for more diversity and representation, many publications have made statements about their commitment to improving—but do the results reflect the intention?

I chose three different literary magazines to perform my own VIDA count with, each across three years. The gender data used is based on which pronouns each author used to identify themselves in their bio. Overall diversity was more difficult to track—if the author noted their race, ethnicity, sexuality, etc in their bio or on their website, they were included in the percentage. However, no author is required to relay every aspect of their identity to the public, so the number represents an ‘at least’ tally rather than complete accuracy. The pie chart represents an annual average of the numbers. The following bar graph shows the percentages in each issue published that year. The radial percentage notes the wider diversity in each issue.

This web series is just a glimpse into a small portion of the larger literary landscape. Lacking the resources of the dedicated VIDA team, it would have been impossible for me to track long-term patterns all on my own in the time-frame of the project. However, even in this limited data collection, the findings are eye-opening. Representation is there. But there is still a lot of improvement that needs to be made in the world of the literary magazine and beyond.

Some Brief Reflections

Of the three publications examined in this web series, The Georgia Review is the only to not outright commit itself to diversity and representation in its mission statement. However, this does not translate to a lack of representation within its pages. The statistics place this magazine below the others in the web series in terms of the traditional VIDA count focused only on gender—but the charts still reflect growth, with the imbalance improving from 2020’s issues to the more recent in 2022. It would be unproductive to only consider the whole numbers when evaluating a publication’s diversity. Though the percentages are perhaps lacking in comparison to others, tracking the statistics across a number of years demonstrates an active improvement. My most significant lament regarding this web series is that I did not have the time or resources to track across more years and truly hone in on these implied patterns, to see whether less diverse publications would remain so, or whether, like The Georgia Review, subsequent editions reflect change.

Beyond the numbers and statistics, examining these publications, and The Georgia Review in particular, was illuminating in terms of the trajectory of a writer’s career and exposure that can be supported or even launched by a literary magazine. When I did a test-run of the data collection and charting process on a few issues of Windmill, I ran into more difficulty, as a lot of the authors were being published for the first time or had only a sparse publication history and very little online presence that might reference their identity beyond pronouns in their bio. For the rest of the project, on the other hand, I was surprised to see some of the names coming up again and again, either through different issues of the same magazine or in some cases, even in two or more of the publications I examined. It was interesting to look at a lot of these bios to see reference to many other magazines, to see an author’s influence on the larger literary world. On the opposite end of the spectrum, it was exciting when I came across bios that noted it being their first published work. Looking at so many authors who have been supported by literary magazines was eye-opening when considering that only a small fraction of this already very narrow study would be given a platform in more traditional publication.