Expect trouble at the AGM for the Society of Authors in mid-November, which has suffered deep divisions over free speech, “cancel culture”, racism and (inevitably) trans issues.
The romantic novelist Julia Williams was elected last month to the society’s management committee on a. “free speech” ticket, pushing back at the ousting of former president Philip Pullman. (His offence was to stand up for Kate Clanchy when her memoir of working with refugee children was accused of white saviourism). Committee member Katherine Quarmby and the late Virago publisher Carmen Callil also both resigned over the row.
On the other side of that divide is the outgoing chair, Joanne Harris, who supported the pile-on against Clanchy – as did Nikesh Shukla, who was elected to the committee at the same time as Williams. The trio will now duke it out to decide how the society deals with authors accused of moral transgressions or insufficient sensitivity to minority groups such as Rachel Rooney, who wrote, “My Body Is Me!”, about children accepting themselves just as they are, which a fellow author claimed would, “undermine support for trans and gender-enquiring children”.
When Rooney complained that Harris and others at the society were retweeting criticism of the book, CEO Nicola Solomon wrote privately to a colleague that the statements were indeed, “potentially defamatory”. But Solomon didn’t share this information with Rooney and continued to give her the brush-off. (In the end, the cancellation campaign was so fierce Rooney left the literary world and became a care worker).
Harris’s second term as chair ends next year, when Solomon will also retire after 13 vears in charge. The rebels think the AGM offers the chance to argue that, under the two women’s leadership, the soaiety has not been run as a trade union for authors, taking their side against censorious publishers and literary festivals, which are often over-reacting to social
media pile-ons but what romance author Michelle Styles described to the Eye as “a cosy club for the benefit of a few”.
by LS6789