Our friends at Tilted Axis are joining us in having a Year of Publishing Women – Publisher Deborah Smith tells us why…
When I decided to set up a publishing company, the first thing I did was to go around telling everyone I met just that; it was the best way I could think of making sure that I actually went through with it. And it was the same with all the subsequent big decisions: to focus on translations from ‘underrepresented’ languages; not to have an unpaid intern; to have books by women make up at least 50% of our list. Say it loud – preferably on social media – and somebody, somewhere, will hound you relentlessly if you ever show any sign of backsliding.
These were choices that made some people wince or shake their heads at my naïve idealism, but they made sense to me. Literary fiction from outside the euro-bubble, because my day job translating Korean literature means I know just how much fantastic writing never makes it through to English; no exploitative hiring practices, because coming from a working-class, northern background means publishing’s white middle-class bias will never not stick out like a sore thumb.
The women thing, though, was a bit different. True, I translate mostly women – Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, most recently – but this is mainly down to South Korea’s possibly-unique publishing landscape, where women almost always outnumber men on the top prize shortlists, and the idea of a Korean Bailey’s Prize would be seen as outmoded. If I’d had the idea for Tilted Axis earlier, I might have thought the same of quotas for publishing women. But this was 2015, when the #readwomen campaign headed by writer Joanna Walsh was blowing up my twitter timeline, simultaneously flagging up both the quality of the writing that was out there, and the pervasive nature of gender discrimination (backed up by this recent study showing that books about women are less likely to win prizes). Okay then, I told myself, 50:50 it is, but at this point I was starting to wonder whether I mightn’t be shooting myself in the foot with all these bold pronouncements. South Korea, I knew, was an anomaly. Was I really going to find enough daring, sophisticated, female-authored literary fiction in other non-European languages?
I needn’t have worried. Practically as soon as I started looking, I encountered books that seemed to fit our remit so perfectly I wanted to sign them on the spot – some by men, but the majority by women. Partly, I think, this was because I’d learned to be more conscious about the books I sought out, but I suspect the real reason was that, as a small, not-for-profit publisher, books were coming to us through a very different channel than they do for the big commercial houses. That channel was translators. Most of what gets published in Asia and Africa won’t have an international agent, meaning translators who work with these languages frequently have to act as scouts, pitching work directly to publishers. Unlike the majority of literary agents, whose primary consideration will always be commercial, many translators are already actively seeking to promote certain writers based on exactly the same aim as we have for Tilted Axis – to redress as many imbalances as possible.
But this should never be at the expense of creating new ones, and I agree with the publishing industry’s cautious response to author Kamila Shamsie’s recent call for a “year of publishing women”. Though our small size means we’re flexible enough to do a women-only year, I certainly don’t intend for Tilted Axis to exclude men beyond that. Fighting discrimination with discrimination seems a terrible idea in general, and besides, it makes little sense for us to refuse to publish a male author such as Prabda Yoon, when barely any Thai literature makes it into English. Commercial publishers’ inherent conservatism means a tendency to churn out more of the same, but for us it’s important to present a range if we’re to avoid lazy pigeonholing. In her ‘provocation’, Shamsie voiced concern for this year of publishing only women not to be interpreted as a “year of publishing young, straight, white, middle-class, metropolitan women”. Our translation focus means we’re in little danger of being too white, but we’ve also chosen our first-year titles with other issues in mind, such as social class, disability, and cultural stereotypes. More than anything else, what this amounts to is some seriously exciting fiction, bold, fresh, and distinctive. We’re planning, variously, an obliquely fantastical novel set in a Seoul slum; a Bengali novella melding hardcore sexuality with subtle social criticism; an environmentalist, anti-colonial narrative poem with Braille integrated into the artwork – an attempt by the writer, performer and disability activist Khairani Barokka to create “a sight-impaired-accessible art book”.
Of course, I recognise that this ‘year of publishing woman’ is hardly going to be feasible, or even desirable, for the vast majority of publishers. But I’m proud that Tilted Axis is the kind of company for which it is possible, and grateful to Kamila Shamsie for her clarion call. I only hope our books are as provocative.