Around The Web: Examining a strong female lead, a literary prize and a historical heist.

Hello all, welcome back to Around the Web, your weekly roundup of all things story, literary, and bookish from across the internet.

This week, I’m sharing an examination of the strong female lead, a new literary prize, a manuscript heist story, and a writing blog post. Hope you enjoy!

The Strong Female Lead

I love strong female protagonists (like, I designed my own independent study course on them in undergrad), but the older I get, the more I question them and what they say about our culture. That’s why I enjoyed this New York Time’s opinion piece by filmmaker Brit Marling, which examines the roles available to women actors.

Carol Shields Prize

A new literary prize named after The Stone Diaries author, Carol Shields, has been announced. The award is meant to raise the profile of women authors and address the economic inequality present in the literary world. Check out CTV News for more details.

Medieval Manuscript Heist

Image: Hildegard von Bingen. Line engraving by W. Marshall. Iconographic Collections Keywords: portrait prints; Hildegard von Bingen; engravings; W. Marshall

If you’re in the mood for a heist tale, I present to you The Conversation’s summary of how two women in post-war Germany managed to steal a St. Hildegard of Bingen manuscript from a bank vault in Dresden to return it home.

Avoiding Reader Rejection

And finally, I leave you with a blog post by fiction editor and award-winning author Jodie Renner. This post goes over reasons a reader might reject your novel and provides some insight that may help you self-edit your writing.