Times Interview with Kate Clanchy - shared article in post

Just wondering. Are you one of the three? Your immediate stance on here was hostile, whilst clearly knowing the background. Personally I would normally take the view as a white poster (as ethnicity/colour seems to be impt) that if students from different ethnicities to mine describe themselves in terms, then the very minimum i can do is accept for those individuals their specific terms. As that doesn't affect others. If it did then I would have more of an issue. The author in this case is not applying almond eyes or chocolate skin to other indivs from that ethnicity. Using the students own terms. I work with a lot of Europeans who have their own phrases. I am not a white saviour if I use their phrasing. I do have my own exception to my own rule: I will never use N**r, despite that word being reclaimed by some members of the community where it was and is used as a slur. Sorry just can't do that.

I'm glad to see Janice Turner mentioned Baroness Nicholson in. her article. Her treatment by the Booker and various authors, yes I'm looking at you Damian Barr, was one of the worst things I've ever seen. Designed to hurt, cruel, unforgivable.
I have no sympathy whatsoever for witch burners. And if you're comparing a woman whose book you don't like to Jimmy bloody Savile you're the problem.

As I said, authors are constantly encouraged to engage and respond to readers.

But when they get a bad review, or skewered, or insulted, or lies spread about them, they must instantly shut up. It's a frankly weird expectation.

'Should they not just cope'

What is it that makes an author impervious to getting upset, do you think?

Any critics should definitely read the whole thing. It’s one of the best books about teaching I’ve ever read. (I am a teacher, no longer in the job).

She helped those children to find their own poet’s voice - about their memories, feelings, lost languages, homes left behind. Usually there isn’t time or space in schools to do the kind of work that she did with those students. It’s all about getting those GCSEs, moving along the factory conveyor belt on to the next stage, and then on to becoming a productive economic unit. There’s no time to find your own voice or express yourself in a way that doesn’t fit into the curriculum and get you a higher grade. Clanchy moved far away from that. She also made it clear how much she learned from the young people she worked with. That’s true teaching, not just the one-way transmission of knowledge or skills from tutor to student that most non-educators think that teaching is all about.

Why would an author need to respond to negative reviews? Should they not just cope? It's not the reader's fault if the author has to have another job.

Ultimately, it's hard to make money as a writer and people don't have to enjoy their output, authors have to stop being so precious. I've got a list of writers in my head whose books I totally despised and even felt insulted by wasting my time on reading them, all got 1 star ratings on goodreads and I, along with other readers, am entitled to do and think that.

Rachel Rooney has posted a screenshot of some of the vile tweets that were posted about her at the time. I noticed the children's author Sophie Anderson joining in with the pile on. I won't be buying my dds any more of her books.

Pubishers should stand by their authors. At the very least, they should defend freedom of speech and expression.

The SoA should fold. A net bad thing for writers, and since they widened their entry requirements to absolutely anyone, an utterly pointless organisation.

What authors should do is a far more complex question.

Social media has turned the dynamics on their heads.

Authors are expected and encouraged to 'engage' with readers, but not ever respond to anything critical.

It can in some cases mean expecting a writer to become a public punchbag, with no right of reply, and for fuck all in the way of compensation. Authors/writers mostly live a very precarious existence, and many if not most have a day job or supplementary work. (Unless already loaded/privileged, but that's a whole other discussion).

I don't know what the solution is.

I read extracts from Clanchy's book more than four years ago and was shocked and disturbed. Later, after the online fuss, I read the book; it was an unpleasant experience, a glimpse into an exploitative and dehumanising mindset I would rather not have been exposed to. I do not choose to read anything else she has written (reading that Times article was a mistake).

Her use of children to peddle herself makes it worse not better.

My opinion, one that I am entitled to hold.

Omigod, it’s just popped up on my X feed. JFC, what an excruciating thing for a grown woman to do. Dear oh lord. That’s the worst fake crying I’ve ever seen.

Aha! And she blocked me years ago on X.

She's presumably made it private in the past couple of hours.

Her insta is private and I don’t think she’s on X?

@Ddakji I presumed Arabella was referring to Monisha Rajesh?
The video is on her Instagram or X

Oh, I haven’t seen the video, her insta is private!

I imagine the claims are spurious in an attempt to avoid any criticism of Kate Clanchy's cancellation. Typical DARVO of the online witch hunters .

I find it mind boggling that someone would refuse to read poems by suffering Afghan girls because they have some kind of personal beef with the person sharing them. And then trying to justify their prejudice by making a disgusting suggestion that to do so would be akin to reading something shared by Jimmy Saville. Truly beneath contempt.

That weeping video is extraordinary.

Yes - her lack of self-awareness is truly extraordinary. However now she’s been on the receiving end maybe in future she will be more circumspect about attacking others.
I wonder if ‘Brenda’ will be outed.

There's nothing on Goodreads to show Clanchy hounding people or trying to get anyone sacked. There are reviews that make claims that this happened, but not any direct evidence.

That weeping video is extraordinary.

Ok that seals it for me. You're not posting in good faith and you are sabotaging the whole anti racist movement along with it.Perhaps you're just lightheaded from the thin air around the moral high ground you're trying to claim.

From what the article says, the external PR company used by Pan Mac didn’t redact their emails required by the SAR (unlike Pan Mac) and the truth of the publisher’s actions is now there for all to see.

thank you @Ddakji
So l suppose Pan Mac wouldn’t have apologised had this not come to light.

back atcha

What a despicable post. No wonder you side with the foul bullies.

Suppose it wasn't Kate Clanchy, suppose it was a resurrected Jimmy Savile? Would not doing anything to endorse that person's contact with children be despicable? It would not be a criticism of the children, but of the bad adult.

Obviously she isn't a sex abuser, but she an exploiter, using hand picked children for personal gain. I feel sorry for the children and hope they survive the experience, but I'm not going to support her.

Brilliant slap down of one of the bullies by Janice Turner:

The strangest form of Instagram post is the “public cry”, wherein a person films themselves explaining, through a veil of tears, some terrible thing that has just happened, almost always an online pile-on. Such confected sobs are designed to rally sympathy and make their beastly adversary lay off.

The cancellation of the author Kate Clanchy was among the most vicious, egregious and all-consuming of the Great Purge (2018-2024). But the cultural wind changed and there’s no longer social clout in wantonly destroying a reputation. Even the BBC realises this, having commissioned a six-part Radio 4 podcast, Anatomy of a Cancellation.

But Clanchy’s persecutors are aghast at being asked to explain themselves now. The writer Monisha Rajesh, who said Clanchy’s gentle book was “rooted in eugenics and phrenology”, set up her phone camera and took out her onion. What awful tragedy befell her? A BBC researcher had rung her up: “I told them it was violent behaviour to dredge up an issue from four years ago.” Violent? A podcast? This hyperbolic nonsense doesn’t wash any more. It just makes us laugh.

If the BBC fancies a second series, it could feature the 2020 cancellation of Baroness Nicholson, then 80, from the Booker Prize Foundation created by her late husband after an online witch-hunt. Her public shaming was signed off by the foundation’s chairman, Mark Damazer, ex-controller of Radio 4.

www.thetimes.com/article/bbbd2362-106d-4c43-bc2f-a646ca60b0aa?shareToken=4d2f7934adf7eb257cb3fc3bf7f3ea8c

From what the article says, the external PR company used by Pan Mac didn’t redact their emails required by the SAR (unlike Pan Mac) and the truth of the publisher’s actions is now there for all to see.