Katherine Marsh On The Double Standards As An Author

Guest post written by Medusa author Katherine Marsh
Katherine Marsh is an award-winning author of novels for middle-grade readers including Medusa: The Myth of Monsters (Book One); The Lost Year, a finalist for the National Book Award; Nowhere Boy, winner of the Middle East Book Award; and The Night Tourist, winner of the Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery. Katherine’s books have been Junior Library Guild selections, New York Times Notables, ALA Notables, Bank Street Best Books, and on numerous state lists. Her books have also been published in over sixteen languages. 

Medusa is a fantastical adventure about Ava, whv o attends a boarding school for the descendants of Greek monsters and uncovers a terrible secret that could change the world forever, think Percy Jackson meets The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy!

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No one likes a complainer. I’ve been thinking about this widely held American sentiment for a while now, but especially after I saw the much-discussed Super Bowl photo of Travis Kelce bumping and shouting in the face of Kansas City Chief’s coach, Andy Reid. While Kelce admitted to his brother Jason he’d gotten too “fired up,” Coach Reid assured the press that his behavior was “not a selfish thing:” “He was really coming over (and saying) ‘Just put me in, I’ll score. I’ll score.’ So that’s really what it was. I love that.”

That Reid saw a man aggressively complaining as an unselfish display of passion hit me with the force of a 250-pound tight end. I’ve been writing a children’s book series reimagining the monsters of the Greek myths, many of whom were purposely depicted as female. Most famous among these, of course, is Medusa, a stand-in for the supposed ugliness of women’s self-expression. Even today, women and girls who complain are rarely given the grace of being seen as unselfish team-players or as heroic defenders of their skills and rights. This is particularly true of women and girls of color. The real message we give them is that no one likes a complainer…unless the complainer is a man, in which case he’s not complaining, but acting out of passionate enthusiasm to save the day.

Every woman has had to watch a male counterpart pull a Travis Kelce. My most recent experience took place on a panel at the National Conference of Teachers of English (NCTE), an important space for middle grade authors to share our work and be seen. Each of the authors on the panel was given two minutes to say a few words about their latest book. Women authors, in my experience, bend over backwards to play by the rules, even legends like Lois Lowry, who very conscientiously kept to her allotted time at another recent event we did together.

But at this panel, a male author started talking about his book…and kept on talking. Minutes ticked by… He was full of charm, but the message was the same as Kelce’s: “put me in, coach!” When he finally gave up the floor with an “aww shucks, I just couldn’t help it!” grin, the hostess simply reminded those coming after him to be brief. Was it just a coincidence that his book earned an important accolade not long after?

To give some additional context, children’s book world is filled with female and non-binary writers, editors, librarians, and teachers who are in the majority at conferences like NCTE. And yet, cisgender male writers, especially in middle grade, have had a more than equal share of success this year: The Newbery Award, National Book Award (of which, full disclosure, I was a finalist and which no women won in any category save for a translator of a man’s work) and six of the nine New York Times 2023 Notable middle grade books were written by men. (This year’s Caldecott winner, Vashti Harrison, was a welcome exception for her picture book, Big.) Male authors such as Jeff Kinney, Rick Riordan, Alan Gratz, Jason Reynolds and Kwame Alexander have had multiple titles on the bestseller lists. This is not to say that many female middle grade authors haven’t also done well and had bestsellers since JK Rowling made kidlit into big business, but a disproportionate piece of the economic pie goes to men.

This extends to school visits and speaking opportunities where my fellow female authors have learned after-the-fact that they were offered less than their male peers. Once, a publisher mistakenly sent me a message meant for one of these male authors promising a first-class international ticket. The women authors I know got a laugh out of this story: none of us have ever flown anything but coach.

Many of us are also caretakers of children or parents (in my case, both) and cannot afford the time away from home that our male peers can. I remember one highly successful male author sharing how he travelled around the country doing hundreds of school visits early in his career when his children were small. I’ve had my own fantasy of doing this, like Loretta Lynn and her husband in The Coal Miner’s Daughter, showing up at schools and bookstores across the country to pitch my wares, but I don’t have the childcare. And yet, like men who are the primary parent, male authors are routinely given bonus points just for showing up in a space frequented by women and children.

That this double standard trickles down to the kind of stories authors are encouraged to write goes without saying. When I started out in this business, there was an unspoken rule that writing books with male protagonists was the way to become a commercial success because girls would read books that center on boys, but boys would not read books with female protagonists. (This, despite that some of the nicest, most well-adjusted men I know grew up on female-centered books such as Anne of Green Gables.) The industry has evolved since then, most notably and admirably when it comes to racial representation—at least all those men on stage at the National Book Awards weren’t all white. But there’s still plenty of room for improvement in making books that pass the Bechdel-Wallace Test and are written by female authors, as well as non-binary ones, into the kind of big commercial business that has given male authors paid opportunities and the financial security that comes with them.

To say any of this out loud risks sounding bitter. To not say it at all, however, means holding in a whole lot of anger that is corrosive to self-esteem. This is the conundrum my every-girl protagonist, Ava, faces when she raises her hand to claim the goddess Athena for her 7^th grade Greek gods project and a boy in her class shouts out his claim to Athena first— once again, it’s “put me in coach!” Owen is so charming, explaining to his teacher that more boys should chose strong women as role models, that his teacher lets his failure to play by the rules go. Ava is furious but to give voice to these feelings makes her fear coming off as a sore loser or as another girl or woman who is taking things too seriously and needs to “calm down.”

This is the implicit message of the Medusa myth and it’s one that too many women and girls have internalized. What I have described is not limited to female children’s book authors—I have heard stories from female friends in other professions that mirror this frustration as well as from girls (who are suffering a teen mental health crisis), too. We live in an era in which women and girls are actively losing their rights, including to their own bodies. There’s been a normalization of disrespect toward women and girls at the highest levels of our society, including by a candidate for President who may well win. Perhaps it’s time to challenge the narrative, to ask whether we’ve gotten our gods and monsters confused. It’s okay for Travis Kelce to want Coach to put him in. But it’s also okay for women and girls to speak up now on how they see the world and what they want and deserve.