THIS WOMAN’S WORK is a collection of essays by 16 female writers, writing about the female artists, movements and pioneers that matter to them and about their own personal experiences. For a long time, the narrative of music and music writing has been written by men, for men. Male dominance and sexism have been hard-coded in the canons – in literature, film and music – and women have had to fight pigeon-holing or being sidelined by carving out their own space. To speak up. To shout louder. To tell their story – like auteurs and ground-breakers Wendy Carlos, Linda Sharrock, Iqbal Bano to Sis Cunningham, the women of Trap and Yoshimi.

The instrument makers, the experimentalists, the avant-garde, the genre-breakers, the pop queens – by Anne Enright, Fatima Bhutto, Jenn Pelly, Juliana Huxtable, Kim Gordon, Leslie Jamison, Liz Pelly, Maggie Nelson, Margo Jefferson, Megan Jasper, Ottessa Moshfegh, Simone White, Sinéad Gleeson, Yiyun Li and Zakia Sewell. This book is for and about the women who kicked in doors, as pioneers of their craft or making politics central to their sound: those who offer a new way of thinking about the vast spectrum of women in music.

Contributors: 1.Kim Gordon – writing about Yoshimi 2.Sinead Gleeson – writing about Wendy Carlson 3.Ottessa Moshfegh – writing about her own ventures into the music world 4.Juliana Huxtable – writing about sound, noise art, sex, orgasms, blackness 5.Maggie Nelson – writing about Lhasa 6.Rachel Kushner – writing about Wanda Jackson 7.Anne Enright – writing about Laurie Anderson 8.Yiyun Li – writing about learning to love American music 9.Leslie Jamison – writing about mixtapes 10.Fatima Bhutto – writing about the power of music in cultures that suppress it 11.Liz Pelly 12.Jenn Pelly 13.Megan Jasper – writing about working at Sub Pop 14.Simone White 15.Margo Jefferson – writing about jazz and blackness 16. Zakia Sewell