Mass protests for racial justice prompted a reevaluation of publishing’s racist systems. A year later, a handful of organizations have made demonstrable change.

BY SAMANTHA EDWARDS ILLUSTRATION BY ELICSER

BY NEXT YEAR, Jen Sookfong Lee will have published 10 books with six different publishers, ranging from multinationals to small independents. Yet, during that time, she’s only ever worked with one non-white editor. At mostly white literary festivals and events, she’s been mistaken for other Asian-Canadian authors such as Madeleine Thien and Evelyn Lau. And when the hashtag #PublishingPaidMe, which highlighted the pay inequality between white and BIPOC authors, went viral last summer, Lee learned white authors she considers peers received advances that were sometimes 15 times more than hers. “#PublishingPaidMe was the worst hashtag,” says Lee. “I’ve literally never felt so bad about myself.”

Canadian book publishing has a diversity problem. This isn’t breaking news. In 2018, the Association of Canadian Publishers launched a survey to measure diversity within Canadian publishing and found that 82 per cent of respondents were white and 48 per cent of leaders – three-quarters of whom were white – said they had no future plans to support initiatives related to diversity and inclusion in their workplaces.

But in response to the murder of George Floyd and mass protests calling for racial justice, conversations about diversity within Canadian presses were pushed to the forefront. Publishers both big and small began announcing commitments to address the lack of diversity within the industry, from introducing anti-racism training for staff to publishing more books by BIPOC authors.