Hounded Out: Does Publishing Have a Freedom of Expression Problem?
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- Опубліковано 10 лют 2025
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Monday 14th October, 2024
Hounded Out: Does Publishing Have a Freedom of Expression Problem?
with poet Jenny Lindsay, author Kate Clanchy and literary agent Matthew Hamilton
For the past 35 years, the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and the eventual murderous attack it inspired have served as the ultimate warning to authors. Such extreme threats to the safety of writers have not gone away but as Bradbury realised, literary censorship can take many forms. Our highest profile children’s author, J.K. Rowling, has had her books boycotted and even burned not by regimes but by readers.
And there seems to be a problem within the publishing industry itself. Authors report the subjection of their manuscripts to oversight by sensitivity readers; publishers resile from contracts when controversy arises; grant-giving bodies withdraw support when recipients speak out of line; booksellers, shop staff and librarians have refused to stock or display books with which they disagree; authors are no-platformed from literary festivals and literary societies which are supposed to defend authors have turned against them.
This event was the launch of a new book (www.primrosehi...) by award-winning poet and essayist Jenny Lindsay which offers a detailed account of the culture of ‘hounding’ that those accused of holding heretical beliefs have experienced, many of them writers and including herself. Hounded: Women, Harms and the Gender Wars is described by academic Professor Sarah Pedersen as ‘an excellent and profoundly angering analysis’ and by philosopher Kathleen Stock, who really was 'hounded out' of academia, as a ‘shocking compendium’.
Jenny Lindsay discusses the issues in the publishing world with literary agent Matthew Hamilton and Orwell prize-winning author Kate Clanchy.
Matthew has gone to bat for numerous fiction and non-fiction authors who have been threatened with cancellation and is on the Free Speech Union’s Writers’ Advisory Council. In 2021, Kate Clanchy notoriously had her contract ended by her publisher of 25 years, Picador, after online reviewers accused her bestselling teaching memoir Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me of ‘racism’ and ‘ableism’. Despite the support of many of the former pupils described in the book, all her works were de-published, in a case which sent concerned waves throughout the publishing world.
About the speakers:
Jenny Lindsay is a poet, performer and essayist based in Scotland. A formerly celebrated and award-winning producer of live literature events in Scotland, she is also the author of two full-length and two pamphlet poetry collections, two poetry/ theatre stage-shows, and has produced commissioned work across poetry, prose, and theatre for numerous publications and institutions including The Dark Horse, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Irish Pages and the Daily Mail. Her film-poem The Imagined We won the inaugural John Byrne Award for Critical Thinking in 2020. Hounded is her debut non-fiction book.
Kate Clanchy was first published by Picador in 1996. In the following 25 years she won a Forward Prize for Poetry, a Somerset Maugham and Saltire Award, the National Short Story Prize and VS Pritchett Award, the Writer's Guild Award and Orwell Prize among many others. In 2018 Picador published England, Poems from a School, an anthology of her school pupils' poetry, to great acclaim. In 2021 Picador apologised for ‘the emotional anguish experienced' by people reading her best-selling teaching memoir, Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, and subsequently depublished all her books. Kate is currently working out why and enjoying the experience of being published by Swift Press.
Matthew Hamilton is a literary agent and the founder of the Hamilton Agency which represents serious and popular non-fiction, with a particular interest in political writing from across the ideological spectrum, music, literary memoir, biography, football and entertainment. Recent bestsellers include The War on the West by Douglas Murray, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning by Nigel Biggar, An Immigrant’s Love Letter To The West by Konstantin Kisin and The New Puritans by Andrew Doyle.
www.primrosehi...
Great discussion. I agree that class is a huge part of the problem. I’m a former librarian, organised many book festivals in my time. I’m a visual artist now and also a published author. I reckon a book festival for the cancelled is order of the day. So fed up of the toxicity neo religious crapology! Well done to all of you for standing firm.
Festival of the Cancelled would be an amazing literary festival! ❤
Moving and terrifying discussion, wish I could have been there in person.
I can't afford to buy books so l order them from my local library, this leads to educative conversations with the librarians.
I’m writing a memoir about the women’s community in the 1970’s. I dread having it classified with the LGBTQ+ acronym or called a queer story.
I so wanted to come down from Middlesbrough for this, but I couldn't even sit down at my computer for it. Very good discussion. We need more and more of them.
It was a good discussion until Clanchy made the tedious 'stale, male' comment, then I switched off. It's a sad fact that there are unfortunately too many women that drive these pile-ons and cancellations, and the fanatical progressive agendas; that fact has to be faced.
In 1989 my Gender Study group at Central School of Art and Design always started with a five minute slide show of pictures from Police or at the same time as Police at death photographs
of obliterated bodies
straight from London current murders
At Kings Collage London 1990 library I met a gentleman who told me he was ploughing through the library looking for imperial past misdeeds and he and them were going too take over the country
The first question from the floor most pointed : very trustworthy answers from the stage and chair
Earth and Heaven aline themselves well in to the future
With all this good work
Thank you Toby and Team
Henry Doughal Maguire
I wanted out, and ran away
❤💯%
Free Speech Union: No Heckling, Thank You.
Talking about silencing, can anyone see this comment? Let me know.
Yes, you are SEEN!
@@jillraymond2394Thanks.
Let’s hear it for sex realism!
Trigger warning on Chaucer? 🤣
I wonder if its happing in France
it's even worse. Look up Dora Moutot. We are hoping to have her speak next year.
It’s happening in France, Spain and Germany to my knowledge
@@catherinerobilliard7662 I can attest it is happening in every country where the ideology has mainstreamed. Australia, New Zealand, the States, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway... Basically everywhere. The online outlet Reduxx is the place to follow it all. It's global in scale. Jan is right: France is worse than the UK is. And it has been bad enough here!