Bad Women: A Discussion About Women, Character, and Likability, featuring, from left to right, Anna North, Emily Shultz, Chloe Caldwell, Jenny Zhang, and moderator Isaac Fitzgerald.

In 2013 actress Anna Gunn wrote in the New York Times about the mass online anger directed at the character she played on Breaking Bad. She had realized “most people’s hatred of Skyler White had little to do with me and a lot to do with their own perception of women and wives.” This panel of novelists and essayists will talk about the onus of likeability placed on women and whether women are allowed to be flawed, in fiction and life. Presented by Buzzfeed Books and Joyland Magazine.

Emily Schultz is the co-founder of Joyland Magazine, host of the podcast Truth & Fiction, and creator of the blog Spending the Stephen King Money. Schultz’s newest novel, The Blondes, was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2015 and will be available in paperback from Picador. It was selected for NPR as a Great Read of 2015 and Kirkus declared it a Best Fiction Book of 2015. She lives in Brooklyn.

Chloe Caldwell is the author of the novella, Women, and the essay collection Legs Get Led Astray. Her upcoming essay collection, I’ll Tell You In Person, will release fall of 2016 from Coffee House Press & Emily Books. Her work has appeared in VICE, Salon, The Rumpus, Nylon, The Sun Magazine, Jewcy, and Men’s Health. She lives in Hudson, New York.

Anna North is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and her writing has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, The Atlantic, Glimmer Train, Nautilus, and Salon; on Jezebel and BuzzFeed; and in the New York Times, where she is a member of the editorial board. The author of the novels America Pacifica and The Life and Death of Sophie Stark. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Jenny Zhang is a poet, fiction and non-fiction writer who has published work in Bomb, Iowa Review, the Hairpin, Glimmertrain, Rookie, and Poetry Magazine. Her poetry collection Dear Jenny, We Are All Find was released from Octopus Books, and her forthcoming collection of short stories We Love You Crispina, will be published by Random House in 2017. She was born in Shanghai and raised in New York. She is a graduate of Stanford University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Moderator Isaac Fitzgerald is the books editor of Buzzfeed and co-founder of Pen & Ink.

April 21st, 2016