Much as been said of the “outrage” of some Feminists and female literati that more men get published than women, and that more men receive awards than women. Recently, Kamila Shamsie, an award winning author (who your humble author has never heard of) demanded that publishers refuse to publish anything by an icky male.
To reiterate: Kamila Shamsie supports sex-based discrimination by publishers.
Who would take her up on this call for discrimination?
Yes, it's true: we accepted @kamilashamsie's challenge to publish only women in 2018. @guardian breaks story http://t.co/YzBLncSyAR #YPW2018
— And Other Stories (@andothertweets) June 11, 2015
A publisher called “& other stories” has taken up the call to refuse to publish any male author for a year:
“A small publisher, And Other Stories releases 10 to 12 new titles a year. ‘We’ve realised for a while that we’ve published more men than women,’ said [publisher Stefan] Tobler. ‘This year we’ve done seven books by men and four by women … We have a wide range of people helping us with our choices, and our editors are women … and yet somehow we still publish more books by men than women.’
“Tobler’s colleague Sophie Lewis, a senior editor at And Other Stories, said she expected the team would be ‘rescheduling male writers’ books for other years [and] digging harder and further than usual, in order to find the really good women’s writing that we want to publish’ in 2018.
“But the main thing she wants to do over the course of the year is ‘to examine the selection and promotion process, the production of their books from commissioning to reader’s bedside’.
Good to know that & other stories doesn’t care about publishing dreck just as long it’s written by a woman.
But lo and behold, guess who is celebrating this discriminatory move?
That’s right, the United Nations:
Small press @andothertweets will only produce books by women for 1 yr to beat gender bias in publishing: http://t.co/zXsiWh9maX v @guardian
— UN Women (@UN_Women) June 15, 2015
Who is surprised by this?
At least we know the level of quality to expect from “& other stories” (Warning NSFW):
