Jael Richardson
For publishers, agents, editors, educators, and booksellers who serve as gatekeepers in this industry, diversity should be an essential part of every group of storytellers within your reach or control. This needs to be done with careful thought and meaningful intention.
In this blog post, Jael Richardson goes over the meaning of diversity and its importance in the publishing industry.
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Find Jael on Twitter: @JaelRichardson
Jenn Baker
[T]he more I conversed with others who identified in multiple ways, the more we found commonalities and a respect for our differences.
Read Jenn Baker’s blog post “More conversations lead to more understanding.”
Listen & subscribe to Jenn’s podcast, Minorities in Publishing.
Find Jenn on Twitter: @jbakernyc
Jael Richardson and Jenn Barker
We really have to elevate the voices of queer writers, of Muslim writers, of writers of colour, of disabled writers because those voices need to balance out the underrepresentation. They need to show and inform us that we've done things wrong in the past and we need to balance it out or some of the problems of our past are going to repeat themselves in the present which we see happening.
In this podcast episode, Jael and Jennifer have an open discussion about publishing, and formulating equity within the literary community.
Anyka Davis
It’s now clearer than ever that the Canadian publishing industry has to shift in order to reflect Canada’s changing cultural landscape. We need to publish more diverse books, and while it’s true that we’ve gotten better, there’s still more work to be done. We can’t pat ourselves on the back because we now publish more diverse books than we did 10 years ago.
In this blog post, Anyka Davis makes a call to action to overcome roadblocks and produce more diverse books.
Léonicka Valcius
I’m not expecting CanLit to abandon white people as its primary audience. But if we can start acknowledging and respecting other groups as valuable consumers we can identify major gaps and opportunities in our selling process.
In this blog post, Léonicka Valcius goes over what must be taken into account when selling diverse books.
Learn more about Léonicka’s work.
Find Léonicka Valcius on Twitter: @leonicka
A note from Léonicka:
I do not want to be contacted to discuss this any further. I’ve been saying the same shit across the country for 8 years and no one has taken action to back up their commitment to “listen and do better.” In the words of Beyoncé, “Until I see my notes applied, it doesn’t make sense for me to make more.”
Panel: Best Practices for Equity-Driven Acquisitions
A lot of the ways we conceive publishing and how the processes work are very much like gates, right? They’re gatekeepers, and we either call ourselves that or people call us that. But there’s the idea that there are doors to be entered (…) The obstacles in publishing are not the same for everyone because of people’s individual lived experiences, they do not affect them in the same way. So a person with disabilities has a different capacity to overcome those obstacles than someone who does not. A person who wears a hijab has a different capacity to overcome those obstacles than a person who does not. And so, how do we acknowledge and make room for those people?
In this panel presentation, Léonicka Valcius, Founder of DiverseCanLit, Annie Gibson, Publisher at Playwrights Canada Press, Scaachi Koul, Senior Writer at Buzzfeed and Bhavna Chauhan, Senior Editor at Doubleday Canada and Appetite discuss how the publishing industry has to shift from gatekeeping to spacemaking.
The BISAC to Thema translator has been updated.