Marian Keyes Quotes

Chick-lit may be staggering on its heels, but women's fiction is alive and kicking.

I don't think anyone sits down and thinks, 'I know, I'll be a chick-lit writer.' You write the book that you want to write and then other people say, 'Oh, that's chick-lit.' You say, 'Okay.' But it's not like you look around and go to a careers fair and there will be someone at the chick-lit author stand.

I love smart commercial fiction. Susan Isaacs, for example and the readers who interest me are, in the preponderance, women. I am one of them; I like the books they like.

I don't think my first book was chick lit.

Chick lit was amazing, and I was thrilled to be part of it.

My real name is Madeleine Wickham, under which I write dramas with an edge of humour. As Sophie Kinsella it's fast, all-out comedies, such as the 'Shopaholic' series.

I always thought 'chick lit' meant third-person contemporary funny novels, dealing with issues of the day. I mean, it's not the ideal term; when I'm asked to describe what I do, I say I write romantic comedies, cause that's what I feel they are. But I'm quite pragmatic.

I would be rejected if I submitted any of my novels as romance novels.

It's funny, we started writing chick-lit when it was just becoming a crowded marketplace, and now the same thing is happening with YA. It really used to just be one shelf at the library - Nancy Drew and Judy Blume.

People will say, 'I really don't like romance,' or, 'I don't read it - at all!' So how do they know? Weirdly, I think that the 'Fifty Shades of Grey' phenomenon introduced women to romance who would never have read it. And that means that they then go on to read my books, and that would be great.

Literary fiction is kept alive by women. Women read more fiction, period.

'In the Cut' was not what readers expected of me. Before it was published, I was seen as a women's writer, which meant that I wrote movingly about flowers and children.

I was never a 'Mills and Boon' kind of a person.

My stories are known for featuring fun, fearless Cosmopolitan-type heroines as well as delicious, dangerous heroes synonymous with Harlequin. Afterburn and Aftershock will be no exception. I'm excited to share these sizzling new romances with readers and to do so hand in hand with Harlequin and Cosmopolitan, beloved brands known for giving women exactly what they want.

Maybe just as many women writers as male writers could be billed as the next great American writer by their publisher. Maybe book criticism sections could review an equal amount of female and male writers. Maybe Oprah could start putting some books by women authors in her book club, since most of her audience is women.

I don't think I'm interested in writing women's novels anymore.

If you want to talk about a subject that is important to women, romantic fiction is the place to talk about it because that's where your audience is.

Before novels written by women were relegated to their own 'genre,' I was introduced to Jane Smiley by a dear professor who raised my awareness of what female authors were bringing to the table of contemporary fiction.

Female authors were still using male names when I was young, or they were neatly shoehorned into 'women's books' except for those few that men could always point at when the disparity was pointed out.

Nicholas Sparks and John Green are very different writers.

I know a lot of crime writers feel very underrated, like they're not taken seriously, and they want to be just thought of as writers rather than ghettoised as crime writers, but I love being thought of firmly as a crime writer.

In the end, I want to spend my 60s writing bonkbusters like Jilly Cooper.

Since my romance novels had all been thrillers as well, it wasn't such a leap for me to move into the straight thriller genre. The most difficult part, I think, was being accepted as a thriller writer. Once you've written romance, unfortunately, critics will never stop calling you a 'former romance author.'

If you write chick lit, and if you're a New Yorker, and if your book becomes the topic of pop-culture fascination, the paper might make dismissive and ignorant mention of your book. If you write romance, forget about it. You'll be lucky if they spell your name right on the bestseller list.

Certainly, there is a tendency to lump women who write similar types of books together, and it's not just in crime, is it? Women's fiction is supposedly a whole genre of itself. There's no male equivalent.