There are plenty of midlist writers of all genders, but the unspoken assertion in Gioia’s piece was that male midlist authors had disappeared. In addition, multiple other “woe to the state of publishing” articles have asserted that the literary male author has disappeared which is just…demonstrably false. Please, anyone thinking of writing these articles, talk to a bookseller. You might have to look a little bit harder than you used to just because of the sheer volume of options, but there are plenty of books for literally every single person and identity that you could think of in those stacks. And lots of them are written by midlist authors.