How trans activists in publishing hijacked a children's book competition to pursue a personal vendetta

[PurgatoryOfPotholes]

The Phoenix Book Award is an initiative to encourage reading amongst children of the borough of Lambeth, London, launched in 2007. Back in 2017, it described itself as This exciting South London based Book Prize targets Year 5, 6, 7 and 8 pupils in Lambeth, encouraging them to read through the transition years. Phoenix is a unique book prize as students are involved in every stage of the award; from picking the shortlist, to shadowing the award and then finally voting for their favourite. It is open to all schools in the Lambeth area.

This year it's "judged by children from Years 6, 7 & 8 in Lambeth."

Children at participating schools read the books from a long-list (a very long list: as many as 32 books!) over a period of months, and whittle it down to from there. It sounds like an absolutely amazing concept for generating enthusiasm about reading.

Let's hear from the adults who do the paperwork for it:
After a break due to the pandemic we are delighted to announce that the Lambeth #PhoenixBookAward is returning for 2022!

This year, children were asked to nominate books that helped them get through lockdown. The result is a fantastic, diverse, and hugely competetive shortlist.

twitter.com/LambethPhoenix/status/1496789801718059011?s=20&t=F1f0NO5YFo712FQS40-3-w

Sounds lovely, right?

Yesterday, the twitter account for the prize posted the shortlist:

Boy in the Tower by Polly Ho-Yen
When Life Gives You Mangoes by Kereen Getten
The Wolf Wilder by Katherine Rundell
The Boy at the Back of the Class by Onjali Q. Raúf

twitter.com/LambethPhoenix/status/1496791630476722184?s=20&t=aQmwjEpxiId-FatE21miAw

(Now another round of voting begins, and we'll know the winner on the 12th May 2022!)

This was accompanied by a little graphic showing the shortlist.

And that's where this wonderful heartwarming story of children enjoying reading went wrong.

One author's publishing agent took issue with the children of Lambeth having shortlisted another author with whom she disagreed, and decided to falsify that graphic to remove any record that Onjali Raúf and her book The Boy at the Back of the Class had been shortlisted by the children of Lambeth. Then she tweeted her false version from the business twitter of the literary agency she runs, for other people to unknowingly circulate.

You're probably wondering how we can know this. Well, we know, because she boasted about doing exactly that from her personal twitter account.

Transcript for those using a screenreader

Tweet 1 from Agent: Am I petty enough and procrastinating enough to amend a shortlist image to take out the shortlisted terf. Probably.

Tweet 2 from Agent: Turns out I am.

If you go here, you can read the incredible thread from Gillian Philip explaining this mess in more detail. Gillian's the one who explained events in the first place.

twitter.com/Gillian_Philip/status/1496907435830919172?s=20&t=aQmwjEpxiId-FatE21miAw

If you are struggling to view twitter threads without an account, go here. Graham Linehan has made a version of the thread that you can scroll through without a twitter account.
grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/there-will-always-be-women-who-hate?utm_source=url

Here are some other things you should know: Onjali Raúf founded an organisation that campaigns to end modern slavery and trafficking. makingherstory.org.uk/contact/

She also founded O's Refugee Aid Team which supports refugees in Calais; in fact, 50% of the royalties from that shortlisted book, The Boy at the Back of the Class go to their projects to support refugees! Yep, this is the same book that agent is trying to suppress positive publicity for.

www.osrefugeeaidteam.org/

This is a thread of some of the books Onjali Raúf has published: twitter.com/Dora_Callisto/status/1496988662806032386?s=20&t=aQmwjEpxiId-FatE21miAw which is where I found out that children are involved in the awards process.

At this point, I can only echo Dora's thread and ask, how do you think you'd feel if you were a child who'd nominated The Boy at the Back of the Class as one of the "books that helped [you] get through lockdown"? How would you feel to find out that another shortlisted nominee's agent had edited your nomination out?

It's despicable behaviour.

Also something that’s interesting is that although some writers have been cancelled / dumped in various ways for having t*rfy views, a whole lot more haven’t. That’s because publishing, especially big, corporate publishing, cares more about the bottom line as well as about other initiatives like promoting more black and Asian writers, and understands the importance of having a wide reader base. It’s smaller, newer, younger, more right-on publishers and agents who are more likely to push trans ideology and cancel authors (and Alice s-h is a very young, new agency).

I’m really shocked to read about this. My children are too old for the book but I shall be ordering a couple of copies anyway out of solidarity for the author. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

A TRA being a proudly dishonest bully? Shocked, I tell you.

(It's grim, and thanks for the thread)

Just posting my utter shock at this despicable behaviour.

Its 99p on kindle

So ive bought it

And theyeve got an offer for two paperbacks for £7

So ive bought them

Dreadful situation, thank you for bringing to my attention purgatory

Jesus Christ.
Does anyone know if Onjali Raúf's publisher or Kereen Getten's have made any comment?

Utterly reprehensible from start to finish; & she thoroughly deserves to suffer reputational damage for being so utterly unprofessional. How could any author trust her to represent them when she pulls stunts like this?

Yep

Gender ideology in general uses “intersectionality” as a shield and is supposedly all over BLM, but it’s only to serve the purposes of trying to seize the moral high ground. Actually it doesn’t give a crap about anyone who’s dealing with actual oppression, because it’s all about trying to grab the “most oppressed” prize from them. And it’s privileged people who are the worst for this because they want to feel morally pure instead of feeling bad for being white, rich and western.

This.

I know the children themselves vote for the winner if this prize, but I REALLY hope the award organisers are aware of this. If ASHawes client won the award it would send a very bad message after her doing this.

"Are people really that lacking in self-awareness??"

Oh yes they really really are

Will be buying a copy of Boy at the back of the class right now

@MoonOnASpoon

Still it’s breathtakingly appalling behaviour like this that helps to draw back the curtain. Gender ideology in general uses “intersectionality” as a shield and is supposedly all over BLM, but it’s only to serve the purposes of trying to seize the moral high ground. Actually it doesn’t give a crap about anyone who’s dealing with actual oppression, because it’s all about trying to grab the “most oppressed” prize from them. And it’s privileged people who are the worst for this because they want to feel morally pure instead of feeling bad for being white, rich and western.

Alice S-H lays this all out on a plate. I hope more people see it and wake up.

www.feministcurrent.com/2018/03/23/leftist-women-uk-refuse-accept-labours-attempts-silence-critiques-gender-identity/

Link to Feminist Current article from four years ago which includes (near the end) an account of how Goldsmiths students tried to derail the Deptford People's Project. Similar points made. So depressing.

Bought a copy in solidarity with Onjali. I'm sure DS will enjoy reading it!

The arrogance and downright rudeness is staggering.

JK Rowling is a "privileged white woman" but it's worth remembering the whole she's transphobic hoo haa really blew up when a load of disgusting TRAs tried to derail her Ikabog project, which was intended to be something nice / distracting for children to do, in lockdown in the middle of a pandemic.

Concerns raised regarding racism, misogyny, censorship, fairness, professionalism etc etc - is just bigoted apparently.

As long as you’re not a “bigot” (as defined by a nonsense, unscientific, misogynist ideology) you’re a good person! So it doesn’t matter if you do bad things! FFS.

@DevonTF

Concerns raised regarding racism, misogyny, censorship, fairness, professionalism etc etc - is just bigoted apparently.

Do you think Alice means a hobby as lovely as hers is?...

Just had a look at Ash's list of authors.

ashliterary.com/#authors

First up, a 'wife and wife duo' who haven't actually published a book yet?

I will be buying a copy for DS and a copy for his cousin who is a similar age, and one for his younger cousins when they are a bit older.

Especially since refugees are going to be an even bigger topic of conversation soon.

I guess it kind of makes sense if you're consciously marketing yourself as a religious agency?

If you loudly and publicly denounce all the right sinners, it means the devout believers will be comfortable working with you.

Not sure about the mass-market appeal, if it means this sort of toxicity, but working in a niche is a viable strategy.

@PurgatoryOfPotholes

It's a weird extension of command theory - what these woke types do is good by virtue of them doing it. It's a religion

Copy bought. Awful awful behaviour and absolutely par for the course that this sheltered privileged little girl can’t see what she’s done and apologise because she’s absolutely in the right. After everything that has happened in the last 48 hours this is quite upsetting, ultimately it hurts the children who voted for this author. It’s designed to hurt a support fund for refugees and by goodness we are about to watch another group of people lose their homes.

Raif wrote a book a couple of years ago for World book day and it’s just gorgeous. I read it often with kids because there aren’t many really nice short books in our library at school.

So much cod diversity! Remove a Muslim woman who helps end human trafficking in order to protect men in dresses (most of whom are western, white men ) who identify as trans.

Wow.. so progressive! Diversity and representation for women is now about white, western men in dresses. What a time to be alive!

From the Twitter feed of the person responsible for 'branding' at Ash literary

What a nasty piece of work. The racism of trans activism - along with the vile homophobia and misogyny - is nauseating.