The Committee

 In What I Think I Did, Larry Woiwode quotes a conversation with his professor Charles Shattuck:

"So often I'm asked to chair the departmental committee that awards the writing prizes. This year it was no question with the committee on short stories--the pair of stories, submitted by 'number 19' were beyond measure the best of the season."

"Once we agreed on that, we hurried to the office to discover who the author of these brilliant revelations of a feminine imagination could be--so sensitive, so delicately phrased, so poetic, yes, in the highest sense!--I run out of terms we were using to characterize my nineteen-year-old feminine author, and in our hurry to find out who, this honestly came to me: that lovely young woman my feature actor [again, Woiwode] has been captivated by!"

"But no, Larry, it's you! You're the one. Dear Larry, good Larry, fine Larry, you've won it! How could you keep this from me?"

 I wonder how many women were on the committee that year, 1961? The question would not have occurred to at 20, or perhaps at 30, but it does now. I am happy to suppose that professors who read and grade the work of many young women every semester do know more about the feminine imagination than most male civilians would; still, I wonder.