THE AUTHORS Are yousimpatico? I


n 14 years I have never had a Black editor,” says bestselling children’s author Malorie Blackman. “I walk into my agent or publisher and I don’t see Black and Asian people there,”


observes Hari Kunzru, award-winning author of The Impressionist. “It is odd,I must admit, when I go to something like the Nibbies to find a complete lack of Black faces. It is a very, very white industry,” says Mike Gayle, bestselling author. When Black and Asian writers make contact with the publish- ing industry they are encountering an environment where they will be edited, marketed, sold and publicised almost exclusively by white publishing staff. There is a sense among authors that this mismatch affects the publishing process and their own careers.


Persistent question A persistent question is how receptive publishers are to Black and Asian authors, and to the full range of their writing. Certainly, in the early 1990s there were many doors to be opened and preju- dices to overcome. Malorie Blackman said no publisher would take more than one book at a time from her in the early days of her career, because there was uncertainty about how well they would sell. In one incident she was asked by a publisher to change the identity of the family in a story she had written from Black to Asian, because the publisher already had one book about a Black family on its lists. Andrea Levy, who has published her four novels with Headline, remembers “one-and-a-half years of rejection” before her début was accepted. “Because most of what was being pub- lished then by Black writers was guns and Yardie stuff, publishers didn’t know what to do with a family story,” she says. “There was a fear that there was no universality in the story, that only Black people would buy it and there were not enough of them.” Much has changed in the past decade, most obviously when the big commercial and critical successes—Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and Monica Ali’s Brick Lane—created new templates in publishers’ eternal search for bestsellers. Yet publishing may still not offer a level playing field. Black writers need to be better than their white counterparts to be accepted for publication, believes Levy: “I know a lot of books are less than good—white writers are allowed to be that, but Black writers aren’t.”


There is also a widespread belief that publishers are happier


with novels that deal with issues of race, effectively ghettoising writers. “If you do go to a publisher with a book about a subject other than a multicultural society, you’re going to have a hard time,”Levy argues. Hari Kunzru makes the same point: “Will people accept it if Monica Ali chooses to set her next book in Hampstead, with no Black characters?” Nineteen agents rejected Luke Sutherland before his début


Jelly Roll was published by Transworld. It went on to be short- listed for the Whitbread First Novel award. He conjectures that it was not obvious how to place a novel that did not play to precon- ceived ideas of Black literature (Jelly Roll is written in the Scottish vernacular). “But reviewers’ responses were mostly free of pigeonholing,” he says. Bernardine Evaristo had a positive experience when her novel-


in-verse, The Emperor’s Babe,was published by Hamish Hamilton three years ago: “I really don’t think that this risky book, which is radically outside the box in terms of expectations of ‘Black litera- ture’, would have been published in, say, 1989. Our society is more inclusive and more open-minded; so too is the publishing


12 MARCH 2004 breaking the mould first person: Alison Morrison IS OF MIXED RACE AND IS HEAD OF MARKETING AND ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR AT WALKER BOOKS


I have been very fortunate in my career and always worked with very good colleagues. People in publishing tend to be quite open-minded and any issues of racism I have encountered are more to do with business decisions about what will and won’t sell. I've sat in meetings at adult publishers, when people have said that we can’t put a Black face on a cover because it won’t sell. I’m not convinced about that. Earlier in my career, I wouldn’t have been able to vocalise how I felt. Now, when someone asks my opinion about a book we are publishing I am perfectly happy to put forward my views. I’ll say “I think this . . .” or “I don’t like that cover because . . .” I think that there is an assumption that books from Black authors don’t sell. America is much further


ahead than we are in terms of representation of writers from ethnic minorities. It does make you think, don’t we have these writers? There is a perceived wisdom that a few ‘background characters’ from ethnic groups make everything all right—but this is far from the case. I am interested to see if anything concrete comes of this. I joined publishing over 12 years ago as a direct result of an Arts Council traineeship aimed at encouraging people from ethnic minorities to enter publishing. I think this review is long overdue as I did the traineeship 13 years ago and I have seen little to suggest that the situation has changed drastically since. Interview by Aislinn McCormick


IN FULL COLOUR 13


What is it like to be a Black or Asian author published by a mainly white industry? Benedicte Page investigates


world. My editor actively encouraged me to write the kind of books that I want to write.” She agrees, however, that the jury is out on the wider situation: “Time will tell whether the breakthrough [made by Smith and Ali] is sustainable, or just fashionable, and whether only books that reflect contemporary multi-cultural Britain will be well-pub- lished and well-received.”


Subtle networks Kunzru links the issues of race and class when he talks about the subtle social networks that assist an author first in being pub- lished, and then in making a success of her or his career.Kunzru was Oxbridge educated,as were Ali and Smith. “Getting an agent and editor is about your social skills, and because of the enormous predominance of Oxbridge-educated graduates, knowing how to work in a world like that has been invaluable.An example is dealing with the softer end of your rela- tionship with your agent and publisher—meeting them for din- ner, going for drinks. It’s a world with its own rules, and you have to be able to ‘do chat’. If you do, people will find you simpatico and do you favours, but if you appear awkward and abrasive, they won’t. That’s an intimidating situation if you are a young writer.” Among Black writers Mike Gayle stands out by virtue of his


huge success in commercial fiction, and his insistence that race has never been an issue in his writing career. His first novel was snapped up swiftly by his agent and sold in a brisk auction. “My assumption was to write and not expect any problem,” he says. His novels do not specify the race of their characters. “Helen Fielding never says that Bridget Jones is white,”he says.“Everyone has only to look at the back of the book to see I’m Black and it has made no difference to sales.The only times when race has come up it has invariably been in interviews by liberal newspapers.” He accepts, though, that for whatever reason other writers do not feel a similar freedom: “I don’t think that the message has got out that if you’re a Black author you don’t have to write about being Black.”


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