Slow, laboured, but steady progress for women’s writing since the 1980s

News Snapshot:

As students in 1980s Dublin, the part-time job we coveted above all others was Waterstones bookseller, where a respectable £3-something an hour was augmented by a generous 30 per cent staff discount. When I emigrated to LA in 1989, I bagged my dream job in The Upstart Crow, a bookshop-coffeeshop run by a team of 20-something book-lovers. We organised readings and children’s story hours, doling out book recommendations along with pecan pie and rugelach, and flavoured coffee-of-the-day. Our customers were tourists, locals, and sailors from Long Beach naval base. One of us married one of them; another took off in...