FAQ

On "Chick Lit"

When you were working on your first book, did you know you were writing chick lit? How do you feel about the label? Although somewhere deep down I believed in myself, I don’t think I fully imagined that my novel would one day be published. So I wasn’t thinking in terms of genre or marketing or the hue of the cover as I wrote Something Borrowed. I was simply telling a story of love and friendship and how complicated both can be. In fact, my original title for Something Borrowed was Rolling the Dice, which my editor decided sounded too much like a book about gambling—certainly far from your typical chick lit title. Since that time, my work has often been described as “chick lit” and for the most part the term doesn’t bother me. I think it simply signals to readers that the book is about women, written for women (although many men enjoy my books), about issues that concern women (relationships, careers, etc.) The only thing that bothers me is when the label is use disparagingly, to imply that all chick lit is, by definition, superficial, beach-read fluff because I believe that this is akin to saying that all women are devoid of substance and the issues that concern us, are fundamentally trivial ones. And I take issue with that. Bottom line, I try not to get too hung up on labels as I think they can be very limiting.

I did think NPR presented a very interesting take on the debate ...