I looked down at my name tag, having already forgotten what I’d written. “Who’s Bonnie?” a woman, who I later learned worked for a glossy women’s magazine, asked me. At the bar, I ordered an “I Get to Decide” cocktail and surveyed the room, hoping to spot someone I knew. On other women’s lapels I spotted the names of publishing executives and famous writers. I hastily scribbled something in Sharpie before heading into the private room already packed with writers and media professionals. The arriving guests began to bottleneck behind me as I stood, second guessing. Taylor and Gertrude Chandler Warner probably did more to make me a writer, during those important elementary school years, than Flannery O’Connor did in college, when I was already committed.
Carson McCullers had inspired me, but so had many others. “It can be anyone.” I ran through some of my favorite writers in my head. “Or a woman who has inspired you,” said the woman behind the table, perhaps sensing I was drawing a blank. At the door, the guests, mostly women, were asked to write their name as well as the name of their female mentor on their name tags. I n October of last year, I attended a press event for Meg Wolitzer’s new novel The Female Persuasion. Sign up for our newsletter to get submission announcements and stay on top of our best work.
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