Canelo / Arts Council England

Canelo / Arts Council England | 
35

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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