With literature still, it seems, in thrall to the old boys' club, this week's Books podcast heads for Highbury Fields – a north London school for girls which hosted a panel discussion on women in writing.
Claire Armitstead joins the publisher Lynne Drew and the author Barbara Taylor Bradford to discuss why women are still under-represented in the world of books.
Back in the studio, the Canadian writer Sheila Heti explains how she started trying to live as the central character of her novel How Should a Person Be while she was writing it. Heti says she wanted to write the book from within the ordinary world instead of retreating from life to write a book, and asks why the deep questions of existence shouldn't be examined from the perspective of a seemingly-frivolous young woman.
Reading list
How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti (Vintage)
