Editors

Anna Beer [+–]

Oxford University

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Anna Beer is a cross-disciplinary scholar, working at the intersection of literature, history and the arts. A Fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford University and former Director of that university’s Creative Writing MSt, she is the author of a number of biographical studies of major literary figures, John Milton and William Shakespeare among them.

Anna Beer’s particular interest is the relationship between gender and culture. Her Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music, Oneworld 2016, shortlisted for the RPS Creative Communication award, has led to several media initiatives, including a BBC Four documentary and a couple of series on Classic FM. She collaborates with a range of performers to showcase and celebrate the work of female composers.

Alyn Shipton [+–]

Royal Academy of Music, London

Alyn Shipton has co-authored many musicians’ biographies, including most recently, that of chart topping jazz bandleader Chris Barber. His life of singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson won the 2014 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for pop biography.

This new book series will create a platform for ground-breaking studies which offer new insight into any and all aspects of women in music. Building on Equinox Publishing’s established lists in popular music, film music and the wider industry, the series will be of interest to the scholar, practitioner, and general reader.

Women in Music aims to be inclusive, seeking to publish historical and critical studies, cultural analyses, life-writing, traditional musicology and more. The series as a whole will work to challenge some of the less helpful divisions in music scholarship – for example, between ‘popular’ and ‘classical’ – by welcoming submissions which range, where appropriate, across genres, eras, and disciplines. The common thread, however, remains women’s lived experience, whether as individuals or groups, and/or cultural understandings of the category of ‘woman’.

Almost all areas of the music industry are now waking up to women’s under-representation, and not just as a historical phenomenon. Change nevertheless remains slow. Through the dissemination of the latest scholarship in the field, Women in Music will not only celebrate and explore the often hidden contributions of specific individuals and groups, but by contributing to a richer, more complex, picture of women in music, will provoke some important questions for the industry now.