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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Book agents aren’t stupid — I would bet cold hard money one has already signed Dawn, and that in due time, we will hear about a book of hers coming out. Maybe memoir, maybe fiction, who knows, but I will be buying, and I know others in here will be too. [/quote]

The discovery shows Dawn writing to an agent and mentioning sending novel pages, so it is quite possible she already has representation. If so, that was another way Kolker's articles slammed her. They implied she was less talented than Sonya Larson, though it seems she may have been getting fellowships and residencies, as well as agent, through her novel pages. And, as we've already gone over here, a lot of Sonya's successes seem dubious given that they were facilitated by powerful friends. [/quote]

I know from one of the screenshots of Dawn's Facebook that she was selected for one of the Tin House residencies. I'm a writer and have applied to that residency several times and never been accepted. But all but one of the writers I know personally who have done that residency have published books, many of them originating from the residency.

I know it's hard for people outside of the litfic world to conceptualize, but Dawn is actually fairly successful within this world. Not as successful as the CMs, but that is an elite level. To make a comparison, if litfic were the NFL, Celeste Ng is a starting quarterback, most of the other CMs are on active team rosters, and Dorland is on a practice squad and might get pulled up to the roster. It's easy, if you aren't a football player or don't care about football to scoff and say the player on the practice squad has failed. But if you are familiar with the industry, you understand that getting to that point means having a stellar high school and college career, getting drafted, and surviving NFL training camps and doing well enough to join an organization. Is it as impressive as being Tom Brady? No. But almost nobody is Tom Brady. It's still very, very impressive and more successful than 99.999% of people who aspire to become a professional football player.[/quote]

I noticed in the discovery messages that Sonya and one of the other Chunky Monkey were hoping The Kindest would be published before Tin House. I didn't understand the reference at first because Sonya hadn't been published there, but now it is clear they wanted Dawn to see the story and be hurt so that she would feel bad during the residency.

I'm honestly starting to wonder how much of this animus was predicated on jealousy. That is, Sonya was jealous of Dawn and spiteful about it, not the other way around as Kolker tried to insinuate. [/quote]

Oh wow, I missed that. That's awful! And if true, I do think there is professional jealousy involved.

That doesn't mean they thought Dorland was the better writer. Sometimes people are jealous because they think someone doesn't deserve what they have. In a profession like writing where rewards are so limited (book deals, story acceptances, fellowships, residencies, grants), people get very possessive. If Dawn has a TH residency, that means another writer doesn't. If they didn't think Dawn was worthy of that reward, they are still jealous, just not of her writing.

But I get a clear sense from the CM's comments about Dawn that part of it was that they didn't think she had a worthwhile "voice". Meaning they did not feel like she had something of value to say as a writer. That's a complicated accusation and it's one writers (mostly privately, sometimes publicly) level at each other all the time. And it's a question that is particularly fraught these days because the industry is reckoning with a long history of excluding POC, women, LGBTQ+ persons, immigrants, non-native English speakers, etc. Some groups have been excluded more than others. I get the sense that Larson and Ng felt that in part because Dorland was white, her voice was less valuable. To some extent I get that -- POC experience a ton of discrimination in publishing and that's real.

But it's not like it's easy or straightforward for writers from impoverished backgrounds, or people who come to writing later in life, or people without MFAs. Many older women who find success as writers find it in genre work (romance and mystery in particular) because litfic is so hard to break into. You need "credentials" for litfic, whereas for genre, you just need an audience. Talented writers can find an audience for their work. Most people will never have the right credentials, especially if they weren't born into a class that made them easier to get or didn't start early enough. And Dorland is a part of all that. If she got a residency at Tin House, it's because she writes well and the work she submitted was of interest to the people on staff. That doesn't mean she didn't benefit from being white (thought TH absolutely selects POC and other underrepresented writers). But you don't get picked with crap work. It's a very tough get.[/quote]

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