CanLit made headlines last week because of sexist and racist comments by Canadian novelist David Gilmour. The drama began with his interview in Hazlitt magazine where he said he didn’t teach books by women, only “serious heterosexual guys,” then continued in the National Post where he made a bad situation worse. The Canadian publishing industry… Read Post
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#DiverseCanLit TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award
I often rely on anecdotal information when I speak about the lack of diversity in Canadian publishing. I’ll talk about the demographics of my publishing class, my difficulty finding diverse books on shelves, and compare the number of books about black children to the number of books about dinosaurs. However the work by Cooperative Children’s… Read Post
6 East Asian Writers
The third milestone in my Heritage Reads Challenge is not only complete, but also exceeded. I read books by six East Asian writers rather than than the requisite five and found some new favourites. Ruth Ozeki’s Man Booker longlisted work was stunning and powerful; Jeannie Lin’s historical romances were fun and steamy, and a welcome… Read Post
Why I Focus on Diverse Authors, not Characters
In last year’s POC Reading Challenge, the goal was to read as many books written by people of color or that included characters of color. This year my Heritage Reads challenge focuses solely on the number of authors of color I read. For example, Beverly Jenkins only counts once even though I read two of… Read Post
