Lionel Shriver dropped from prize judges over diversity comments
Lionel Shriver has been dropped from the judging panel for a writing competition run by magazine Mslexia, after the author slammed publisher Penguin Random House for its diversity and inclusion policies.
Debbie Taylor, editorial director and founder of Mslexia, said that Shriver’s comments in a piece for the Spectator magazine were “not consistent with Mslexia’s ethos and mission” and would “alienate the very women we are trying to support”. Consequently, Shriver would no longer be a judge on their annual short story competition, she said.
“Since our launch in 1999, Msxlexia’s raison d’etre has been to provide a safe space for all women writers – whatever their circumstances – to develop their craft. We actively encourage submissions from marginalised writers and frequently draw attention to the issues they face,” Taylor said.
Shriver, a UK-based American writer who won the 2005 Orange prize for We Need to Talk About Kevin, made headlines after dismissing Penguin Random House’s goal to have a more diverse staff and author list by 2025 as a sign that the publisher was “drunk on virtue”.
“From now until 2025, literary excellence will be secondary to ticking all those ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual preference and crap-education boxes,” she wrote. “We can safely infer from that email that if an agent submits a manuscript written by a gay transgender Caribbean who dropped out of school at seven and powers around town on a mobility scooter, it will be published, whether or not said manuscript is an incoherent, tedious, meandering and insensible pile of mixed-paper recycling.”
Shriver’s comments were widely condemned over the weekend – one author called the piece “deeply embarrassing” – but gained support from journalist Toby Young. On Monday, Penguin Random House stood by its policy, saying: “We firmly believe that giving a platform to more diverse voices will lead to a greater richness of creativity and stories, rather than stifling them.”
Taylor said that a new judge for the short-story competition, one of five writing contests Mslexia is running this year, would be announced shortly.
In its 10th year, the Mslexia short story prize sees the winning author receive £5,000, a trip to a writing retreat and a day with an editor from publisher Virago. The winning story is published in the magazine.
Shriver told the Guardian she stood by the position she had adopted in her column.
“I am not anti-diversity, and I have no problem with the programme that PRH runs to encourage the development of a broader range of voices. But statistical targets perfectly mirroring the UK population in race, gender, class, ethnicity, and disability are quite another matter.
She added: “The US has had much more experience with affirmative action (positive discrimination) than the UK, and the policy has had unfortunate consequences. Even the US has moved consistently away from numerical diversity targets.”