A new literary agency, which aims to discover “the next generation of diverse writers” and “blow open the pipeline” for them, is being launched by the editor of The Good Immigrant, Nikesh Shukla, with more than £500,000 in funding from Arts Council England (ACE).
The Good Agency, the brainchild of author Shukla and literary agent and Julia Kingsford, intends to work with “exceptional” writers who identify as black and minority ethnic, working class, disabled or LGBTQ. It will “identify, nurture and promote” these authors, with the intention of making the UK’s literary landscape more representative.
ACE, which published a report last week identifying the lack of diversity in literature, is allocating The Good Agency £581,542 from its National Lottery-funded Ambition for Excellence programme, to support three years of activity, it announced on Thursday.
“Our funding of The Good Agency represents the Arts Council’s commitment to do more to promote and sustain diversity in the publishing sector in the wake of the Canelo report on literary fiction,” said literature director Sarah Crown. “We believe that Nikesh Shukla and Julia Kingsford are ideally placed to make a direct and meaningful intervention in this area, and we are glad to be able to support them as they go forward.”
As well as identifying a sharp fall in sales for literary fiction, the ACE report also found “literary fiction is dominated by ‘insider networks’”, and how “breaking into these still proves tough for many”. A survey carried out by the report’s authors found that 73% of respondents felt there was an issue with the representation of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) voices in literary fiction.
“There is a sense that over the past 15 years or so, the position of BAME writers within British writing and publishing, never robust, has in fact gone backwards,” said last week’s report. “In London, the proportion of BAME residents in the total population is at 40% (the proportion for the UK as a whole is around 15%), but comparatively few people work in the London book industry, and when they do tend not to occupy the top decision-making roles. Low pay, insider networks, unpaid internships, a perception that the industry caters to ‘white’ tastes and that it is not looking for writers and staff from a BAME background, all contribute.”
Shukla edited the bestselling collection of essays on race and immigration, The Good Immigrant, and, together with Kingsford, successfully raised £40,000 on Kickstarter earlier this year in order to launch a new literary journal for British writers of colour, The Good Journal. He said that the Good Agency would help “to continue and expand the work we started with The Good Immigrant”.
“I’m really excited to get the agency started and get some amazing people on board to help find the next generation of diverse writers who represent the many stories Britain has to tell. As we head towards an uncertain future, now is the time to find, nurture and platform the writers who will tell the stories of all of us,” said Shukla.
Kingsford said that the last year had seen “so much action” in the publishing industry to address under-representation.
“We conceived The Good Literary Agency to blow open the pipeline for these writers and we’re incredibly excited to have funding for three years to build a sustainable business that can help to finally redress this,” she said.
