An Interview with “And Other Stories” Publishing House

Talking with a Publisher that will ONLY Feature Women Authors in 2018

Note: This is a bit of a continuation of our interrupted literary month. We’ll be posting a few more interviews and profiles delayed from October in the next couple of weeks so be on the look out for that!

1. How did you come across Kamila Shamsie’s challenge and what were the conversations that led you to be the one to take it up?

My wife and fellow editor Tara Tobler and I read about her challenge in The Guardian. We talked about it with our colleague Sophie Lewis and felt that as well as writing about the issue of the publishing industry’s unconscious bias against women’s writing, we wanted to take up Kamila Shamsie’s challenge.

We had already recognised that we had published more male than female authors. Fascinating, adventurous writing from Latin American men seemed to be our forte so far. We have for a while been encouraging more submissions by women (e.g. in our submissions guidelines on our Contact page), but by taking up the Year of Publishing Women (YPW2018) we want to shout that all the louder.

It feels as if the unconscious biases against women writers are particularly strong in some countries — and that means that in English we publish fewer women than men in translation. Because those cultures are valuing their male writers more highly. By way of example: how many contemporary male literary writers from Spain or from Portugal can you name? There will be some. And female writers? Maybe none. There are barely any contemporary female writers from either country translated into English. Yes, we have Ferrante Fever now, and Clarice Lispector is taking America’s literary world by storm too, but these remain the exceptions among translated writers, sadly.

2. Has your network of readers been enthusiastic about the change thus far?

Yes, very much so!

3. Has there been any negative feedback from your authors who are men or are they okay with the wait on their titles?

No negative feedback so far. All the male authors on our list who we’ve talked to since the news, seem very supportive.

4. What type of criteria are you looking for with women writers? Are you hoping for a variety of voices and genres or is there some unifying thread for that year in 2018?

Yes, we are very keen to make it a real celebration of all kinds of literary writing by women. We envisage an anthology, a rediscovered classic author, contemporary writers who originally write in English and who have been translated, as well as a real variety to the kinds of novels and stories they write.

5. Author Nicola Griffith has pointed out that there can be a risk of setting up an us-vs-them mentality when we look at gender disparities. How are you working to counteract that or ensure that you promote women for your year but try not to as, Griffith worried about, end up accidentally “drawing battle lines” as well?

Perhaps because I’m a man, the us-v-them mentality doesn’t worry me. Of course, you can’t please everyone, but we’re not worried about the nay-sayers.

6. Will you consider other types of years in the future where you publish predominantly LGBTQ+ authors or only authors of color?

Our YPW2018 is not just about helping create a women’s writing boom. Only publishing women in 2018 means we will be able to carry out a thorough investigation of how different books reach us, and how we can encourage more underrepresented voices to be heard.

Why it is that in publishing, including the many women editors and the many women translators and agents and publishers, we often hold up white men as the most important writers? Because it’s not just us — this is happening across the publishing industry. But why? So we hope our exploration will help us think about all our submissions. We don’t aim to do another ‘Year of’ immediately, but of course we continue to publish LGBTQ+ books. Among our recent titles are The Alphabet of Birds by gay writer SJ Naudé, as well as writers of color: Esperanza Street by Niyati Keni, Nowhere People by Paulo Scott, and By Night the Mountain Burns by Juan Tomas Avila Laurel.

7. Similarly, how do you define a “woman” author? There are a wide variety of gender identities. We were wondering if you were being fairly open and staying away from a classic and outdated binary for 2018 and would also be allowing trans and gender non-conforming women writers to be considered as well.

Yes, we would be open to considering them!

8. Besides the fact that more critics and reviewers seem to identify as men, why do you think that stories in which the protagonists are also identified as men seem to be more highly rated and positively reviewed? Is there some systemic or internalized belief that women’s stories and adventures are somehow lesser?

Nicola Griffith’s research does suggest that. It is sad to recognise that there’s another prejudice there. We are going to be paying attention to this.

9. Finally, after 2018, how do you hope to continue supporting women authors in the future?

Through YPW2018, more women’s voices will be published, meaning that more will be eligible for awards. So we’re hoping to be taking some award-winning women authors on tour in 2019! Apart from that, we certainly do see this as an ongoing issue — we’ve started already and will continue after 2018.

For more information about the publisher and its movement, do check out their site.

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