We talk about women and writing.

We talk with women and non-binary people about writing and reading, and particularly about process: the thinking, planning, plotting (or not), research, drafting and editing that writers do.

We talk about things that affect women and non-binary people as writers, illustrators, readers, publishers, editors, critics, academics, booksellers and literary programmers.

And we invite women, genderqueer and non-binary people to talk with one another about their work.

Why?

Simple. There isn’t enough of it. We all know (and it’s proven beyond doubt by the VIDA and Stella book review and award data) that women don’t have as many opportunities as men to discuss, review, be reviewed, and engage in literary communities or, for that matter, in public conversations.

Which is weird, isn’t it, given how many women write and how many more women read? Weird and wrong.

It also means that readers don’t get as much opportunity to hear from women about writing.

They hear even less from women whose voices, no matter how loudly we shout, are silenced or ignored because of how we look or live or identify or who we love, perhaps because of the ways we perform gender or the things we write.

Our conversations on Unladylike aren’t limited by form, genre, experience, profile, or confined to the social classifications that so often bind and define us, including gender. We don’t define “women” in a traditional binary sense, and we don’t define “writing” as text on paper. We’re based in Australia, but we travel, writers travel and we have technology – we’re interested in writing from all over the world.

So here we all are. Talking, questioning, laughing (we apologise in advance for the bad jokes), challenging, wondering, ranting and enabling (but in a good way).

We are unladylike.

That’s not an apology.

Adele and Kelly