Weave Magazine Counts

Following the release of VIDA's 2010 Count, we shared Weave's gender breakdown for each of our first five issues. The numbers were as we expected with female-identified writers making up more than half of each issue's contributors. We gathered this information based on the gender pronouns authors use in their bios. If a contributor used "their", gender-neutral pronouns, or no pronouns at all, we count them in an "unspecified" category. Given the dismal numbers shown in VIDA's 2012 Count, we hope our latest count will lift your spirits. The following is the gender breakdown for issues 06, 07, and 08, as well as our total count of all previous contributors.

Issue 06: 67% female / 33% male
Issue 07: 69% female / 29% male / 2% unspecified
Issue 08: 64% female / 32% male / 5% unspecified

ALL ISSUES: 66% female / 33% male / 1% unspecified

Our staff continues to discuss the overall diversity of our the work we publish in terms of aesthetic, genre, subject matter, and themes. We have also conducted internal surveys in order to gain a better understanding of whose stories are being told, as well as whose aren't. Non-heterosexual writers are strongly represented with more than a third of our contributors in our first seven issues identifying as asexual, bisexual, gay, homosexual, lesbian, and/or queer. We also seek to improve our overall diversity in other areas. In particular, we'd like to encourage submissions from writers of color, writers with disabilities, writers without higher education, emerging writers, imprisoned writers, as well as English translations of international writers. Let this serve as a call for submissions to those whose work is marginalized; perhaps your writing can find a welcome home within Weave's pages.

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by Laura E. Davis