Chick Lit’s Re-Packaging of Plagiarism: The Debate Over Chick Lit’s Influence on Authorship and Publishing

E-mail: smydra@oakland.edu

Abstract

A public charge of plagiarism involving Harvard undergraduate Kaavya Viswanathan ignited a discussion about the creative process of “chick lit” books, and as a result, the validity of the “chick lit” genre itself. Viswanathan’s case involves much more than plagiarism by a first-time author; the case has made many take a closer look at the publishing industry—how it operates, the pressures that may lead to plagiarism for “chick lit” writers, and behaviors that ignore the use of authors’ intellectual property in the pursuit of revenues and profits. Because of the influential role of book packagers, the rehashing of plots, and collaborative authorship, the value and place of the genre on bookshelves and in the classroom are in question. “Chick lit” supporters contend that the genre allows writers to construct texts with contemporary plots that further engage readers to rethink and contribute to feminist discourse. Critics contend, however, that book packagers are manipulating authors, editors, publishers, and even the stories themselves. Consequently, the genre is altering not only readers’ expectations, but also the cultural framework of what constitutes acceptable behavior by those involved in publishing.

 
In 2006, the story of a Harvard University sophomore initiated a discussion that has grown into something much larger than many anticipated: a debate that has publishers and scholars contesting the ethical ramifications of the phenomenon that has become known as “Chick Lit.” Emerging in the 1990’s, chick lit has academics and readers of the books divided over not only the literary value of the genre but how the creative production of chick lit is tarnishing the credibility of publishers as well.

Scrutiny surrounding the actions of publishers has critics debating the legitimacy of chick lit because they contend that the methods publishers are using are degrading the industry. Many reference the incident with Kaavya Viswanathan as justification for their charges.

The story is much more complex than the plagiaristic actions of a first-time author. The unraveled details provide key insights into the publishing industry, how it operates, the pressures that may lead to plagiarism for chick lit writers, and behaviors that ignore the use of the intellectual property of others in the pursuit of revenues and profits. According to many in academia, these factors undermine the legitimacy of chick lit as a bona-fide genre.

The $33,000 College Consultant and a Harvard Wanna-Be

In 2006, Kaavya Viswanathan, a third year student at Harvard University, finished her first novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. Many in the publishing field greatly anticipated the publication of the book because of the $ 500,000 contract Little, Brown and Company awarded Viswanathan prior to her writing one word of her book.

The highly anticipated chick lit book arrived in bookstores to an enthusiastic market but shortly thereafter, the book became one of interest as plagiarism charges surfaced and involved not only a first-time author but experienced professionals in the publishing industry as well. Initially, The Harvard Crimson, Harvard’s daily student newspaper, broke the story. Capturing the attention of the national media, the details surrounding the writing of the book unfolded on the front pages of many national newspapers.

At first, Viswanathan and her publisher denied responsibility for her use of unattributed phrases not only from Megan McCafferty’s Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings, but several other writers as well. At the outset, Viswanathan did not acknowledge responsibility for the allegations. However, the scandal escalated as Viswanathan announced in an interview with Katie Couric on NBC’s Today show that she unintentionally plagiarized. She offered an apology with an assortment of phrases attached, such as “may have internalized,” “phrasing similarities,” “completely–unconscious,” and “unintentional errors” (Mehegan, 2006). Many think she did not take full responsibility for her actions; instead, they contend that she blamed her unintentional weaving in of words and passages on her experiences of reading chick lit books during her years as a teenager. Sympathizers, however, have claimed that Viswanathan is a victim of publishing and marketing moguls and blame her youth and inexperience for her “unintentional” copying of others’ works. Table 1 on the following page highlights five of twenty four passages that Viswanathan may have borrowed (Poser, 2006). In addition to borrowing text and ideas from McCafferty, close readers of Viswanathan’s text have also noted similarities between Viswanathan and other writers. Table 2 exhibits some additional passages and authors Viswanathan may have plagiarized.

The charges of plagiarism received a great deal of attention: questions surrounding Viswanathan’s writing ability motivated the media to search for resolutions of many unanswered questions. As evidence emerged, the intrigue of the story quickly shifted to focus on the roles of outside influences in publishing that may have affected the writing of her book. Reviewing the series of events that led to Viswanathan’s story involves what appears to be a number of self-aggrandizers pursuing their own interests.

The roles these outside influences played in the situation shifted the attention from Viswanathan to Katherine Cohen, a college consultant; Susan Gluck and Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, literary representatives at the William Morris Agency; Claudia Gabel, an Alloy Entertainment editor; and Asya Muchnick, an editor at Little, Brown and Company. Did they place too much pressure on the inexperienced Viswanathan who succumbed to their demands that resulted in a plagiarized product? Did Viswanathan lack a strong moral code, and did she exercise enough discretion to guide her through the situations she encountered? Was she oblivious to her unethical behavior and its implications?

Both of Viswanathan’s parents—Viswanathan Rajamran, a neurosurgeon, and Mary Sundaram, a gynecologist— achieved great success. Born in India, Viswanathan moved to Scotland with her parents and eventually to New Jersey. Attending Bergen County Academy at Havensack, she experienced some success with writing; a few of her early poems and stories were published in children’s magazines. Her ambition was not be a writer; it was to gain admission to Harvard University to pursue a degree in finance. In an effort to help Viswanathan achieve her dream, in her junior year in high school, her parents sought the services of Katherine Cohen, a college consultant “to give their daughter a leg up on the blisteringly competitive American college-admissions process” (Lui, 2006).

Cohen graduated from Brown University in 1989 and earned a Ph.D. in Latin American literature from Yale University in 1997. She founded her business, IvyWise, that same year. Today, she advises about 20 clients at a time, at a rate of $33,000 each (Gardner, 2001).

According to John Gardner (2001), “In order to enhance their chances of achieving glory, families are chasing their dream by employing that most American of strategies for success — marketing.” With Cohen’s assistance, Viswanathan began her college career at Harvard in September 2004, but their relationship did not end there.

While organizing her application materials, Viswanathan showed Cohen a collection of her short stories and poems. Cohen, an author herself, noticed Viswanathan’s promise as a writer and passed along some of the materials to Suzanne Gluck, Cohen’s literary agent at the William Morris Agency. Viswanathan “soon found herself on the fast track to a book deal most professional novelists could only dream of” (Gardner, 2001).

Table 1. Samples of Passages Viswanathan Allegedly Plagiarized from Sloppy Firsts

Table 2. Additional Samples of Allegedly Plagiarized Authors and Texts

A Vision of Opportunity: Young Author In the Making

After reading through the material that Cohen had forwarded to her, Gluck indicated that she was not all that impressed with Viswanathan’s initial work, which was a dark story paralleling Alice Sebold’s Lovely Bones (Hulbert, 2006). Even though Gluck thought that Viswanathan should attempt something lighter, she forwarded Viswanathan’s work to Jennifer Walsh, another literary agent at William Morris. According to the Boston Globe, Walsh said she knew “right away that Viswanathan had the talent. What she lacked was a ‘commercially viable’ work” (Mehegan, 2006).

Given an absence of commercial experience, Walsh referred Viswanathan to Alloy’s 17^th Street Productions to help her develop her story ideas. Viswanathan notes, “After lots of discussions about finding my voice, I sat down and wrote them a fun, chatty email about myself, which is where the voice and idea for Opal came from” (Mehegan, 2006). Alloy shopped the book package and the author to Little, Brown and Company, which is owned, ironically, by media mogul conglomerate Time-Warner Brothers.

Alloy Entertainment Repackages Viswanathan and Her Story

Alloy’s 17^th Street Productions repackaged Viswanathan’s ideas and sent them back to Walsh, who was immediately impressed with not only the story idea but with Viswanathan’s marketability as well. Walsh notes, “They sent it to me and I flipped over it. We all recognized that Kaavya had the craftsmanship, she’s beautiful and charming, she just needed to find the right novel that would speak to her generation and to people beyond her years as well” (Mehegan, 2006).

Founded in 1997, Alloy Entertainment is a subsidiary of Alloy Media + Marketing, one of the country's largest providers of targeted media and promotional programs. According to Alloy Media + Marketing’s website, Alloy Entertainment specializes in assisting companies with the packaging and selling of books to teenage and pre-teen girls, by consulting with companies to get their products and services mentioned in fictional works.

Publishing more than 40 books a year, in 25 languages, 90% of Alloy Entertainment’s products focus on the teenage girl market (avastconspiracy.com). Marketing to young teenage girls has always been lucrative, but with the broadened opportunities, Alloy sees a bright future with older readers because of chick lit’s skyrocketing market share.

Alloy’s basic strategy is to hire or approach would-be writers with a book or series idea that will appeal to young female readers. To have the products gain mass appeal, staff members are involved in everything from creating the ideas to finding writers, to designing eye catching book covers (Long, 2005). According to Colleen Long, “Alloy Entertainment operates more like the romance novel industry than a traditional trade publisher. It has a staff in New York of about 10 editors who diligently research what's hot in the teen world—what girls are wearing, the music they like, and the TV shows they TiVo.”

According to Rachel Plummer, an author who has worked with Alloy, “Writers for hire are commissioned to write a specific piece of work and are paid for that work without receiving any rights to [it]. As a writer for hire, I’m pretty much told what the book packager wants me to do. In other words, I’m given a plot outline, and the characters and setting are already developed” (Lui, 2006, “Inside 17^th Street”). Viswanathan’s status in this relationship was, however, not “work for hire.”

Unknown prior to the scandal is that Alloy in non “work for hire” situations, quite typically negotiates with a publisher and author to share the copyright and the rights of up to fifty percent of all movie and television deals and any other rights (Long, 2005). As with other Alloy books, both Alloy and Viswanathan are listed on the copyright page of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. Consequently, the copyright information signifies that the work is jointly owned by the two entities because of one of two stipulations: (1) the two entities are joint authors because they each contributed copyrightable expression to the final work and both had the right to control the work’s final form, or (2) the author of the work might assign partial copyright ownership to another entity in return for money or something else of value. In Viswanathan’s case, either scenario is plausible (Litman, 2007).

As a result, both Alloy and Viswanathan may have arrived at either one of the following methods to write How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life: Alloy commissioned a ghost writer to create the book and assigned half the copyright to Viswanathan in return for her promoting the book as her own, or Alloy and Viswanathan agreed that Viswanathan would create the book and assign half the copyright to Alloy in return for its editing, promotion, and packaging services. Either arrangement is indicative of a collaborative effort.

If she did indeed collaborate, Viswanathan most likely continued to work exclusively with editors Asya Muchnick from Little, Brown and Company and Claudia Gabel, an Alloy employee. Both acknowledged and then retracted that they worked with Viswanathan to flesh out the story. Claiming that she had committed contractually to write two to three new chapters for her book every two weeks in addition to her five courses a semester at Harvard as a freshman, Viswanathan noted the difficulty in finding time to write 50 pages every two weeks. She notes, “In the last two weeks of school, I was studying for finals while trying to get the last 50 pages done” (Mehegan, 2006). If she was responsible for writing the majority of the text, the pressure of trying to finish the book quickly in addition to her course load most likely caused her to rely heavily on outside influences to craft the story.

Besides writing the book, Viswanathan encountered the additional pressure of weaving in product references, which are elements Alloy required for marketability purposes. As a result of Alloy’s contractual terms, Viswanathan’s book includes the mention of a few name brands: Manolo Blahnik, Habitual Jeans, and La Perle bras. Even though the details surrounding the contract terms are not known, most likely Alloy negotiated the addition of these products into the manuscript. Although Alloy’s strategies are legal, Viswanathan’s inexperience as a writer most likely required a great deal of direction as far as weaving in these required contributions.

The Fall Out

After the charges of plagiarism became widespread, Little, Brown and Company finally pulled Viswanathan’s book from the bookshelves, but the media continued to unravel the complexities surrounding this plagiarism charge. As a result, after Viswanathan acknowledged her unintentional plagiarism, many parties involved with arranging the book deal, writing the book, and marketing the book started to change their stories. Consequently, deciphering how much intervention Alloy Entertainment had in repackaging her ideas is difficult, but many unanswered questions lead back to Alloy employees. What kind of role did they play in shaping the book and how did they share in the labor of actually writing the book?

Even though Little, Brown and Company pulled the book from the shelves in early May, sales of both Viswanathan’s and McCafferty’s book continued to climb following the controversy. According to Boston.com, Little, Brown and Company’s senior vice president, Michael Pietsch indicated in a released statement that they had canceled Viswanathan’s two-book contract, choosing not to rework the book to eliminate the plagiarized passages.

The discussion surrounding the topic did not die down after the announcement. Many in the media continued to seek information regarding the creative process involved with the writing of the book. Apparently, however, the discrepancy as to how Viswanathan’s writing samples made their way to Little Brown indicates that the path Viswanathan’s book followed from infancy to publication is unclear. Those at Alloy insisted Viswanathan wrote every word, although Alloy President Leslie Morgenstein notes in an e-mail that his firm ''helped Kaavya conceptualize and plot the book." One wonders how much of the book she did write and whether she is solely responsible for the plagiarism.

Why Viswanathan did not save herself and point the finger at Gabel and others in the corporate publishing field is difficult to answer. Most likely, the situation presented itself as a catch-22, with no way to exit the situation without consequences. If she turns the table on Gabel and indicates that Gabel contributed heavily to the book, she then has to deal with the repercussions of the public announcement that she indeed did not write the book. After talking with legal counsel about the ramifications and her future, Viswanathan, most likely, was urged to accept the responsibility for the authorship. Her photographic memory takes the blame for the plagiarism and everyone at Alloy and Little Brown is satisfied (Gumbel, 2006).

What makes Viswanathan’s story differ from those of past plagiarism cases is the role of several players with self-interests. Reconsidering each player’s role in the crafting of Viswanathan’s book undermines the idea that Viswanathan was solely responsible for the plagiarized passages. What is most surprising in this case, however, is the number of online blog postings that note that this should be a non-issue and does not deserve attention because of the type of genre in which the incident occurred – chick lit.

Chick Lit: A Bona Fide Genre?

Ironically, the most comprehensive definition of chick lit is noted on the controversial website of Wikipedia. According to the site, “Chick lit is a term used to denote a genre of popular fiction written for and marketed to young women, especially single, working women in their twenties” (“Chick-Lit”, 2006). In the past few years, chick lit has morphed into several different subgenres; for example, lady lit, teen lit, ethnic lit, black lit, chica lit, which targets English-dominant, middle-class American Latinas, and a male equivalent known as lad lit, guy lit, or nick lit, which includes such authors as Ben Elton, Mike Gayle, and Nick Hornby. International publishers are also trying to generate interest abroad. In India, throngs of readers are pressing publishers to seek more writers who can craft additional chick lit books to capture a captive audience.

Catching the attention of millions of readers worldwide, chick lit stories are quick, enjoyable reads. Helen Fielding’s 1996 publication Bridget Jones’s Diary is one of the books that spawned the genre aimed primarily at young women. Even though Fielding’s book received little media attention until it was developed into a movie, her book and those by Meg Cabot and Marian Keyes are the foundation of the genre and continue to serve as paradigms for writers who mimic the chick lit rubric.

Most of the stories revolve around a similar theme: A girl, usually of high school or college age, lives in a big city, searches for Mr. Right while shopping, hanging out with friends, and attending parties, gets dumped, and finally finds or almost finds the man of her dreams (Donadio, 2006). Most chick lit plots do not depend on originality in story development, so the plot is one that is repeated again and again. Recognizing a niche, however, publishers are modifying the plots to some degree so that they appeal to audiences of different ages and cultures, in addition to writing sequels for the books that sell well.

Chick lit is also making its presence felt in the academic world, but scholars are divided on its literary merits. The discussion is prolific on college campuses as younger faculty members weave the material into their course discussions and assignments. The fallout from this action means that faculty and students – undergraduate and graduate – are lending their voices to the conversation and in a sense, contributing to the legitimacy of the genre.

Those opposed to the legitimacy of chick lit focus on the content and its lack of rich, thought-provoking topics. Because of this lack of substance and the very narrow takes on real life issues, many feel that the books are offshoots of romance novels and even though they are selling, the books are not literary in content and thus should not be placed alongside literary works.

Primarily, scholars argue that a lack of consequences for characters and the fantasy-like solutions to real life problems undermine the significance of the material (Olen, 2006). Well-known author and academic, Doris Lessing dismisses the genre as degrading to readers who demand more from books other than the rehashing of a character’s shopping and sexual exploits. Lessing argues, “It would be better, perhaps, if [female novelists] wrote books about their lives as they really saw them and not as these helpless drunken girls, worrying about their weight” (Ferriss, 2006). Lessing’s comments indicate that she believes that chick lit has little to do with contemporary women. Some scholars argue, however, that the argument surrounding the intrinsic value of the material revolves around different generational takes on what constitutes real issues for today’s woman.

Supporters argue that chick lit does explore real issues for contemporary women and because women of older generations do not understand these issues, they do not understand the merits of chick lit. They argue that chick lit is “a type of post-feminist fiction that covers the breadth of the female experience and deals unconventionally with traditional romantic themes of love, courtship, and gender” (“Chick-Lit”, 2006) and thus are akin to the work of Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf, both of whose work critics initially shunned (Martin, 2006). Since the plots revolve around essential issues relevant to women, such as personal issues, work-related problems, and societal pressures, chick lit allows readers to live vicariously through these young fictional characters and explore their roles as females in the 21^st century. As a result, younger readers are introduced to relevant issues regarding feminism while older readers revisit their own youthful experiences through a new set of perspectives that the books offer.

Scholars Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young (2006) acknowledge the skepticism regarding chick lit’s content: “The question is particularly relevant given chick lit’s focus on a number of the issues dear to the hearts of cultural critics: the relationship between identity and sexuality; the contemporary fixation on consumer capitalism, and the concerns of race, ethnicity, and class.” However, Mallory and Ferris contend that the books are not merely “froth.” Instead they maintain that the books contain substance that allows women of any age to explore contemporary topics that deal with issues important to today’s woman who is trying to do it all. Fielding’s character Bridget Jones says it best: “These are not the flawless women of romance fiction, waiting to be recognized by the ‘perfect’ man, but women who make mistakes at work, sometimes drink too much, fail miserably in the kitchen, or fall for any of the following: alcoholics, workaholics, commitment phobias, people with girlfriends or wives, misogynists, megalomaniacs, chauvinists, and freeloaders” (Fielding, 1996).

In the spring of 2006, the level of discussion escalated with the publication of two anthologies; editor Elizabeth Merrick’s This is Not Chick-Lit and editor Lauren Baratz-Logsted’s This is Chick-Lit. Merrick’s collection of non-chick lit stories from various writers, such as Jennifer Egan and Aimee Bender, stems from her frustration with chick lit and its limited viewpoints because the genre ’numbs our senses’ and “shuts down our consciousness, whereas literature grants us new access to countless new cultures, places, and inner lives.” She also notes that a vast amount of women literary writers are “being obscured by a huge pile of books with purses and shoes on the cover” (Clark-Flory, 2006). Consequently, Merrick and her contemporaries think serious literary writers are not getting the recognition or the shelf space they deserve.

Lauren Baratz-Logsted’s This is Chick Lit is a direct response to Merrick’s publication that markets itself as “original stories by America’s best women writers.” Baratz-Logsted’s collection of seventeen female chick lit writers celebrates the genre that does engage women with contemporary issues. Well known chick lit writer Jennifer Weiner notes, “ the best chick lit books deal with race and class, gender wars, and workplace dynamics, not just shoes and shopping (Olen, 2006). Many chick lit writers contend that their work explores many topics prevalent in literary fiction. Olen argues, however, that even though this may be relevant, many of the chick lit books are formulaic and always end on a happy note with utter resolution.

The discussion surrounding the validity of chick lit presents itself not only in academia, but it has taken up residency in the publishing world as well. Publishers recognize that readers like the reliable entertainment value that chick lit offers its readers. Many, however, take issue with the collaborative efforts between writers and marketers to develop plots in addition to the mass marketing blitz that come attached with chick lit books. Similar to other contemporary genres, chick lit is propelled onto bookshelves by book packagers such as Alloy that work to help shape the plot and secure contracts with companies to promote products in the books.

In defense of their actions, publishers maintain that the number of book buyers is shrinking. In fact, because of the availability of wireless adaptations, Americans are using more and more media to access information and entertainment. The data from the Census Bureau’s annual Statistical Abstract of the U.S. indicate that American consumers are spending up to 9.5 hours a day with some sort of electronic medium. The time dedicated to reading a newspaper, magazine, or a book has decreased considerably (“EPM’s Profiles...”, 2006).

In response to shifts in market share, publishing houses, which are owned mostly by big conglomerates, have also shifted decision making authority to accountants who ask first about potential sales rather than literary content. Publishers are also customizing books and running the very smallest quantity that they can. Charles Melcher, founder and president of Melcher Media, a book packager, states, “It reflects a growing trend in the publishing industry as a whole towards creating cheaper widgets. Keeping a small, focused list is a real asset in this marketplace” (“Content for Hire”, 2000). Chick lit printing runs counter to this trend, however— many chick lit books initial print runs are at 100,000 (Smiley, 2006).

Chick lit sales have encouraged publishers to increase their efforts. Requesting sequels to best sellers, publishers hope to attract even greater market share by using bright colors, mostly pink and chartreuse green, and images of scantily dressed women who are shopping or a picture of a high-heeled shoe on the cover. Many publishing houses have even created imprints solely devoted to the publication of chick lit, including Harlequin’s Red Dress Ink, and Simon & Schuster’s Downtown Press and Kensington’s Strapless (Gyenes, 2006).

Bookstores are rethinking the placement of books as well. Most bookstores sell several chick lit and romance novels, but they are not shelved in their respective categories. Instead some stores have shifted the books to a weekend fiction section. According to one bookseller, "When we had a romance section, we never sold anything out of it. But after adding some lighter weight fiction, romance was mixed together with some fiction and moved across from mysteries and thrillers. People are not embarrassed to buy bodice rippers when they're not in the romance section” (“Holiday hum”, 2005).

The Changing Cultural Framework

Viswanathan’s case offers an interesting opportunity to reflect on many challenging issues involved with the case surrounding the publication of her book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. Even though book packagers have been in business for some time, the questionable strategies that Alloy and other marketing firms employ in creating chick lit fiction continue to alter traditional roles of publishers and authors. Why publishers outsource their material to packagers is easy to ascertain: Packagers do it all. They search for writers, develop story lines, edit the manuscripts, design the covers, and meet deadlines all in the name of huge financial gain. Rather than having an editor assist and guide a reader through the creative process, book packagers act as a medium between the entities of author and publisher and are involved in many facets of the process, including helping to shape the content to fit the genre’s formulaic marketing criteria. How much they shape or reshape the content, however, is at the heart of the argument surrounding the validity of chick lit as a legitimate genre.

The legitimacy of both the chick lit genre and the chick lit writer are suspect because of the growing influence that packagers have over publishers. Because they have the ability to take large financial risks and to be more selective about what of projects they assume, book packagers have able to streamline the publishing process by creating literary assembly lines. To this end, chick lit has become another media niche that book packagers are trying to fill. Yet at the same time, book packaging strategies are leading the publishing industry down a deleterious path in addition to altering the cultural framework that exists for readers of texts.

Readers have some expectations of originality as they move from book to book and genre to genre. However, savvy readers also understand that in most cases, originality in certain formulaic fiction genres is minimal. New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell notes that the lack of creativity and originality is inherent in the chick lit genre itself. He goes on to note that Viswanathan’s behavior is “acceptable in light of the genre itself and how it produces on purpose, cookie cutter characters that appeal to mass readers of women who are lost in the struggle of trying to figure out what it is they exactly want” (Gladwell.com). This misperception, however, that readers do not take issue with creativity and originality is problematic. Are readers concerned only with final product? Have they become so disillusioned with media hype that they care little for the creative process itself? For most readers and writers, the process still does matter Writers adhering to a genre’s formula is one thing, but influencing the cultural framework where readers do not object to a team of writers producing a text—in Viswanathan’s case, a text patched together with passages of other writers’ work—is quite another.

Viswanathan’s case of plagiarism is far more complicated and nuanced than first depicted by the media as a simple case of an author borrowing from another. Her autonomy as an author was comprised from the very beginning (Pfeiffer, 2007). In other words, she lost control of her creation. As a result, one could argue that she is void of any responsibility and should not be held accountable for the final product in light of Alloy’s intervention. In this case, the traditional framework where writers are ultimately responsible for their final project is tested. But what is an author’s role in this corporate drive world of publishing? Does a writer surrender to the packager all of his her responsibility for the final product?

For most involved in writing, regardless of the genre, integrity and the craft of writing itself do matter. For this reason alone, perhaps chick lit should have a place in the classroom discussion not because it has initiated another track in the conversation regarding feminism but more importantly, perhaps, because it exemplifies the importance of the creative process, artistic integrity, and originality, and finally, because it furthers the discourse between reader and writer.

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Rachel Smydra, a member of the English Department at Oakland University for the past 15 years, has taught upper level writing courses in both traditional and online environments.  She is a member of the Academic Conduct Committee, a committee that hears cases involving unethical student behavior such as cheating and plagiarizing.  Smydra has previously written about “Ethics Under Attack,” and “The Challenge of Plagiarism Control in Universities and Colleges.”