Canelo / Arts Council England

Canelo / Arts Council England | 

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Literature in the 21st Century: Understanding Models of Support for Literary Fiction

Carty-Williams from 4th Estate said of the award: ‘It’s increasingly 

important that we run initiatives like this, both for prospective authors, 

and for the industry. We are constantly looking to broaden the scope 

of voices that we publish.’ BAME writers have launched a new literary 

prize, the Jhalak Prize for Book of the Year by a Writer of Colour, worth 

£1,000. Started by Sunny Singh and Nikesh Shukla, it takes in a wide 

variety of entrants from graphic novels to big non-fiction. Supported 

by The Authors Club, the prize aims to promote diversity in publishing. 

Meanwhile movements such as BAME in Publishing, founded in 2016, 

raised the profile of the issue and campaigned for greater diversity 

within publishing houses, and initiatives such as the bestselling The 

Good Immigrant anthology emphatically make the case for the audience 

for BAME writing.

And there are still of course plenty of prominent BAME writers – from 

Hari Kunzru and Zadie Smith, to Salman Rushdie and Ben Okri, to more 

commercial writers such as Dorothy Koomson or the crime writer A.A. 

Dhand. Other recent examples of big auctions in the area include those 

for Sunjeev Sahota, NoViolet Bulawayo and Taiye Selasi. Out of the 

20 writers on the prestigious 2013 Granta Best Of Young British 20 

under 40 list, 8 were from a BAME background and included writers of 

Bangladeshi, Chinese, Somali, Ghanaian, Nigerian, Pakistani, Indian and 

Jamaican heritages. Everyone we spoke to was acutely conscious of 

the sector’s lack of diversity and was very keen to change it. 

But beyond the question of race is the more general question of 

marginalised writing. Not just race but class, gender and geography are 

all factors. Stefan Tobler, Publisher and Founder of And Other Stories, 

reminded us that there is ‘also an issue of the respect and importance 

given to women writers’, which is why And Other Stories have joined 

a Year of Publishing Women in 2018, though others have argued that 

women are well represented in terms of literary books and publishing 

staff; or that such an initiative is not the best way to gain equality 

even if we accept women writers are disadvantaged with regards 

to recognition. More significant and widespread was the awareness 

that class and geography create serious obstacles for authors seeking 

publication. Novelist Kit de Waal talked about this and is worth quoting 

at length: 

Class and race play into this – it’s never been more difficult to be 

working class in writing. Both of my parents were immigrants and 

came from a background in poverty. Certainly the subject matter of 

what I write about is about sub class or working class people. There 

is zero chance of taking two years out of life to concentrate on writing 

for many people. All the big questions for writers from my background 

are about writing in your spare time. If you have to take time to write, 

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