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Sexual harassment allegations against a range of powerful men have rocked the literary world in the past week.
On Friday, the Swedish Academy announced that it will not hand out the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2018 amid an ongoing sexual harassment scandal. It’s the first time since the 1940s that the literary prize has been postponed.
That same day, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Junot Díaz was accused by multiple women of sexual harassment and misogynistic behavior. Just last month, Díaz wrote a much-circulated essay for the New Yorker detailing his own sexual abuse — in which he also admitted that he had hurt women.
The allegations against Díaz also prompted author Mary Karr, who had a relationship with the writer David Foster Wallace (who died in 2008), to remind people on Twitter that she has said Wallace abused her, stalked her, and even tried to push her from a moving car (in incidents that are corroborated by his biographer) but that he was lauded by the literary world all the same.
Put together, these recent events highlight an ongoing struggle in the book world as readers, authors, and publishers contend with allegations new and old. It’s a moment long overdue for an industry in which women are the overwhelming majority of workers but men are often the coddled “geniuses” with power.
It’s not the first time the #MeToo movement has hit literary circles
Over the past year, a string of high-profile male authors have been accused of harassment, assault, and abusive or misogynistic behavior.
They include National Book Award winner Sherman Alexie, who was accused by at least 10 women of making inappropriate comments and unwanted sexual advances; James Dashner, a best-selling children’s book author, who was dropped by Random House after several people accused him of sexual harassment; and author of the YA novel Thirteen Reasons Why Jay Asher, who was dropped by his literary agent after being accused of harassment online.
And after journalist and best-selling author Mark Halperin was accused of sexually harassing several women while he was the political director at ABC News, Penguin Press canceled the release of a forthcoming book he had co-written.
Alexie, Dashner, and Halperin have since responded publicly with written statements apologizing for their past behavior. But as the New York Times points out, several publishers have issued vague statements acknowledging the accusations against authors and continued to publish them or ignored the allegations completely.
In October 2017, when the #MeToo movement was just gaining steam, Publisher’s Weekly spoke to several women in publishing who described experiencing harassment from authors, other editors, and managers. Their experiences range from receiving unsolicited dick pics to unwanted touching in the workplace to physical assault. In some cases, the women’s complaints to HR were ignored, and in others, the harassment increased as a result of the complaint.
Amy King of VIDA, a nonprofit that tracks gender disparity in the literary world, told me that sexual harassment is a big problem and has been for a while. “I think anybody who has been active in the publishing world knows this. There’s always been the whisper network, where women have tried to alert each other. I’ve seen it happening in various subgroups on Facebook, on private listservs,” she said. “The problem is a lot of these men are in positions of power, and when women try to report this stuff, there’s a sort of collusion [to keep things quiet] that takes place at all levels.”
The problems within the publishing industry are all the more remarkable when you consider the lopsided gender ratio: As of early 2016, women accounted for almost 80 percent of employees in publishing. When it comes to positions at the executive and board level, however, 40 percent are men. A 2018 study looking at major publishing houses in the UK also revealed a persistent pay gap between men and women.
One issue, according to Brooke Warner, the publisher of She Writes Press, is that men in the industry don’t seem to think their behavior is out of line. “[They] think they’re being charming, or flirtatious. It’s not something they would identify as sexual harassment,” she told Publishers Weekly.
The children’s book publishing industry in particular has come under fire. In February, children’s book author Anne Ursu wrote on Medium about rampant sexual harassment in the industry, after conducting an online survey and finding that many respondents had been objectified, harassed, and assaulted. One female author described being cornered by a male author at a conference who blocked her exit from the room and made sexually suggestive comments. Others described being groped at book events or festivals.
Several of the women didn’t report the behavior because it was often their word against those of the harassers, who tended to be popular, powerful men. When they did, there was seldom any consequences. Known harassers were repeatedly invited back to conferences and festivals. People made excuses for them, saying things like, “He’s just going through a rough time in his marriage.”
Women frequently didn’t speak up before because “nobody cared to hear about it,” Ursu told me in an interview. “But we’re having a cultural moment. At least for now, people are listening.”
Last week’s news emphasizes that point.
The Swedish Academy’s announcement that it would not hand out one of the most prestigious prizes in the literary world this year was not wholly unexpected. In recent months, 18 women have come forward and accused a French photographer with close ties to the academy of sexual harassment or assault. Other complications ensued, and several members of the academy have stepped down.
In a statement, the Nobel Foundation wrote that the decision to postpone the award “underscores the seriousness of the situation and will help safeguard the long-term reputation of the Nobel Prize.” This is an uncommon move and one that highlights the importance of this particular cultural moment. But there was more yet to come.
That same day, author Zinzi Clemmons criticized Dominican American author Junot Díaz and described how he had forcibly kissed her when she was 26 years old. In response, author Carmen Maria Machado tweeted that Díaz had acted aggressively when she questioned him during an author Q&A about some of the misogynistic aspects of one of his books. Another author, Monica Byrne, described how he had “shouted the word ‘rape’” in her face to silence her at a dinner.
Later that day, Alisa Valdes, a writer and former reporter with the Boston Globe, wrote a blog post describing her own relationship with Díaz, in which she describes him as misogynistic and dismissive, and details how he asked her to “clean his disgusting kitchen before I left back to Boston, telling me his severe depression made it hard for him to pick up after himself.”
Díaz responded to some of the claims via a statement made through his agent to the New York Times, saying that he takes responsibility for his past. “This conversation is important and must continue. I am listening to and learning from women’s stories in this essential and overdue cultural movement,” the statement said. “We must continue to teach all men about consent and boundaries.” He’s since withdrawn from the Sydney Writers’ Festival.
On Monday, the Pulitzer Prize board announced that it stood by Díaz and would not remove him from the board. As the Washington Post reports, the committee also handed out an award last month to two publications for work that exposed “powerful and wealthy sexual predators.”
“We’re so used to seeing men as protagonists in our society”
Amid this turmoil, the question remains for many readers and employees in the publishing world: Where do we go from here? It’s not an easy one to answer.
Much of the conversation in the literary world and Hollywood, and everywhere where high-profile men have been accused of sexual misconduct, tends to revolve around the accused and what’s at stake for them.
But this seems to be where the discussion ends, which is problematic itself. As several female authors have pointed out, this narrative ignores the women who have endured this type of harassment day in and day out for decades — women who have left jobs, industries, and careers because of its harmful emotional and mental impact.
“We’re so used to seeing men as protagonists in our society,” Ursu told me. “But one of the problems with sexual assault is that women’s stories don’t get told, they’re invisible. Nobody is talking about how to take care of the victims. These women have suffered serious career consequences. They’re dropping out. You don’t want to go to a conference where the speaker is the guy who harassed you.”
There’s also the fact that several of the men accused, like Alexie and Díaz, are writers of color — and have been lionized in the writing world and the media for that fact. But as Monica Castillo wrote in the Washington Post, readers have other options.
“This can also be a moment to open up our shelves to other writers from these communities and do away with the old notion that only one Latino writer represents millions of our stories,” she wrote. “It’s a chance to look up the books by Clemmons, Machado and other women perhaps ignored by an industry that didn’t take their art as seriously as that of Díaz. He doesn’t have the last word on the Latinx experience. It’s time for the publishing world, readers and teachers to acknowledge that.”
Other women in the literary establishment have weighed in to encourage victims to keep sharing stories of assault and harassment, as uncomfortable as they are.
As the author and cultural critic Rebecca Solnit points out in a February LitHub essay, we are still a society in which huge segments of the population are victims of harassment, sexual assault, and rape. In the workplace, three-quarters of employees don’t report harassment “for fear of disbelief, blame or retaliation.” And for those who do report it, the majority experience retaliation.
It’s a sobering statistic. But the fact that people are coming forward now is a good sign, said King. “I feel like it’s just amping up, now that women are feeling more empowered to speak out,” she told me. “I think we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg.”
