Kate Clanchy’s memoir about teaching won the Orwell prize. Then, a year later, it became the centre of a storm that would engulf the lives of the author, her critics and dozens of people in the book trade. So what happened?
also quit, warning of a “climate of anxiety” among authors. By email, Pullman says what most dismayed him was “the instant and unthinking cowardice on the part of publicists, organisations, institutions, corporations – the rush to abase themselves, and to try and make people like me abase ourselves, too, in the face of politically based criticism”.
Georgina Kamsika is a sensitivity reader for south Asian characters in everything from adult fiction to picture books. She checks for historical accuracy, authenticity and anything that instinctively makes her wince. “The general idea is to make sure that it will do no harm – there’s nothing in there that’s offensive or wrong or will give the wrong impression.
Since there is no officially recognised qualification for sensitivity readers, standards may well vary. Clanchy, who initially rewrote parts of Some Kids in response to the controversy,Picador commissioned last autumn to double-check this new version: one, she wrote scornfully, even suggested she capitalise the name of the poet e.e.cummings. The version she took to Swift was strictly her own work.
She still doesn’t know, she says, why Picador initially decided against defending the book; her editor, who was about to leave the imprint, wasn’t party to the decision to issue an apology. But it was her Prospect essay that triggered her final exit. Picador asked her not to write it, after the PR disaster of Gwyn Jones’s interview, but she didn’t see why she shouldn’t; after that, she says, both sides concluded it was over.
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The book that tore publishing apart: ‘Harm has been done, and now everyone’s afraid’Kate Clanchy’s memoir about teaching won the Orwell prize. Then, a year later, it became the centre of a storm that would engulf the lives of the author, her critics and dozens of people in the book trade. So what happened?
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The book that tore publishing apart: ‘Harm has been done, and now everyone’s afraid’Kate Clanchy’s memoir about teaching won the Orwell prize. Then, a year later, it became the centre of a storm that would engulf the lives of the author, her critics and dozens of people in the book trade. So what happened?
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