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.

It’s the moral superiority even when doing something awful. I just read earlier about young journalists emailing Jesse Singal and pretty much telling him to commit suicide and they still think they are in the right. It’s staggering.

I cannot actually believe this agent is real. Who the heck would want to do business with someone who is publicly petty and vindictive? It's a recipe for disaster and reputation damage. She could tank her authors' careers with moves like this.

These people don't seem to realise they are in the adult world now where actions actually have consequences. It's bizarre how blinkered they are.

I mean, this agent edited a shortlist to remove a black author.

That kind of stunt is normally only found on certain fringe forums on the internet.

Copy bought also ..... I doubt this is the outcome that silly, silly woman imagined.

Can I clarify ...this individual deliberately falsified a document listing shortlisted authors, for circulation then openly bragged about it? Have I got that right? How can this be acceptable behaviour, surely she should face some sort of consequence for that?

Thanks for this thread, Purgatory.

It’s the moral superiority even when doing something awful. I just read earlier about young journalists emailing Jesse Singal and pretty much telling him to commit suicide and they still think they are in the right. It’s staggering.

It's the worst thing about it, the performative wokery, and the thing that most ensures I will never ever stand by and let these types of hideous, narcissistic, amoral bullies win.

I am stunned by this, and have real concerns that her actions may undermine the award in future years. Why should children / schools take part if their nominations are erased in this way? I'd be suggesting individual schools hold their own reading challenges if this is the way that borough wide awards are manipulated. Dreadful behaviour.

Thank you @PurgatoryOfPotholes for posting about this. I saw Glinner's update on this last night and just felt depressed. But also happy that the amazing Gillian Phillip is still speaking up for women. Thank you for expanding on what has happened. That a publisher and an author of children's books that are about bullying is engaging in, what can only be called, bullying, really beggars belief.

Kereen Getten is the author - black, Jamaican - who joined in with her white, privileged, middle class publisher (no double the beneficiary of inherited money/connections/nepotism). This is the blurb from Kereen Getten's book, Two Sisters, A Story of Freedom:

Ruth and Anna are inseparable, but Anna’s light skin allows her freedoms that her sister Ruth cannot enjoy. When they are both shipped off to grey Georgian London their differences force the sisters apart. But with whispers of freedom on the city’s streets, will Anna find the courage to stand up for her sister before it’s too late. A journey of sisterhood, struggle and survival from Jamaica to Britain as part of Scholastic’s Voices series.

Where is your sisterhood, Kereen, for your fellow woman of colour? If not for her, what about the people who share your skin colour whom Onjali Rauf helps? What happens to them if Onjali is cancelled and her organisation trashed in the process? For whom are you joining in with this witch hunt?

Asian/African/muslim women, who do not enjoy an equal place in popular culture, music, sport, modelling and all the other glamour public spaces that seem to attract the TRA movement and their acolytes are, I think, a big threat to TRAs. This is because their experiences, in war zones, in period huts, at the hands of genital mutilators, forced marriage, child marriage/rape, forced dress codes, removal of freedom to work, to drive, to have a relationship with whom she wants to; all of these visceral experiences of pure misogyny, 21st Century oppression at it's darkest, exposes the rights of a man to wear a frock and call himself a woman and claim supreme oppression as being the most luxurious, the most white, the most western centric, the most culturally imperialistic of beliefs. It's much easier for them to latch on to the experiences of black people living in the West, who live lives like everyone else in the West, but who suffer discrimination based largely on skin colour and educational failures, and find parallels (albeit spurious ones) with their experiences. Women that come from strong cultural and religious backgrounds, whose culture and religious beliefs have not been co-opted by white westerners, whose experiences are far removed from anything most people in the West are ever likely to experience, is far too much of a reach for them to ape and mould and shape into their own. So they have to be silenced.

Book bought in solidarity.

This is really despicable behaviour.
I will order a book each for my neice and nephew as soon as that paycheck arrives!

@cocoapopfan

Onjali Raif has been targeted before, when she was chosen for something by Booktrust. A bunch of children’s authors were openly boasting on twitter about how they were trying to get Booktrust to fire her.

There was also some kind of fall out because a children’s author who wasn’t even GC, but had congratulated Rauf or liked one of her tweets or similar was then hounded off twitter.

Horrible behaviour.

I was just trying to remember what happened previously cocoa - I've been buying her books and supporting her charities since then.

Onjali Rauf is worth 100 of these online idiots calling her out and it makes me furious. She gets good things done and really makes a difference in the world. Her TRA critics have nothing.

@cocoapopfan

Onjali Raif has been targeted before, when she was chosen for something by Booktrust. A bunch of children’s authors were openly boasting on twitter about how they were trying to get Booktrust to fire her.

There was also some kind of fall out because a children’s author who wasn’t even GC, but had congratulated Rauf or liked one of her tweets or similar was then hounded off twitter.

Horrible behaviour.

Yes, I remember that - only then the gang must have realised it looked a bit racist to target Rauf directly so instead the pile-on was aimed at another white, female children's book writer who had the temerity to congratulate Rauf on her appointment. That the writer was actually a TWAW-type and all that didn't matter - she and her children were targeted with TRA hate tweets and she left social media for a while, then returned defiant and furious. At the same time, a more well-known male children's author also congratulated Rauf and there was no hostility directed at him whatsoever.

There's a disturbing pattern of talentless, spiteful unknowns trying to use this debate to make a profile for themselves by creating attention seeking shit on social media about feminist women, too. Look at all the publishing scandals, and Milli Hill etc.

White, middle-class, privately-educated woman knows that white, middle-class, privately-educated women have been under the spotlight in publishing for the past few years because there are murmurings about why white, middle-class, privately-educated women dominate the publishing world in the UK. So this white, middle-class, privately-educated woman needs to find an angle that allows her to continue working in publishing but that cloaks the fact that she is just another white, middle-class, privately-educated woman in publishing. And she finds her grift:

"We are actively seeking voices that have historically been underrepresented, particularly with tropes that are often said to be “over done”. For example, we are not interested in stories about white able bodied WW2 evacuees but would welcome that story from a disabled, LGBTQ+ or BIPOC perspective."

Cynical much?

LilithofEden - excellent post. I sincerely hope those hateful bullies are here, reading this thread.

Which author and book is this rouge agent representing?

Kereen Getten, When Life Gives You Mangoes. That's her laughing away on Twitter with her publisher.

Leaving aside the shitting on a minority woman trying to make the world a less miserable place for refugees, how can somebody do something so unprofessional as falsify data at work, and then BOAST about it?

I work at a university and there are plenty of academics and a few students I find deeply annoying. I don't leave them off lists out of spite because I'm not 12.

"We are actively seeking voices that have historically been underrepresented, particularly with tropes that are often said to be “over done”. For example, we are not interested in stories about white able bodied WW2 evacuees but would welcome that story from a disabled, LGBTQ+ or BIPOC perspective."

That is so stupid it's almost funny. I assume if this is about Britain, we're talking about Britain, where the term BIPOC is meaningless. And then the idea that children who are "white able bodied" are somehow not worthy of attention, when the vast majority of those children came from deeply under-privileged, impoverished backgrounds, and were wrenched away from their families to experience the loneliness and terror of staying with complete strangers for five years - well, that idea could only have come from an immensely privileged person who has never experienced anything like that.

@SwissBall

It’s the moral superiority even when doing something awful. I just read earlier about young journalists emailing Jesse Singal and pretty much telling him to commit suicide and they still think they are in the right. It’s staggering.

I agree it's staggering. Though from a purely academic view, it would make a great case study for a textbook. The belief that if one believes oneself to be virtuous, then whatever one does, however immoral, cruel or wicked, must also be virtuous, is a well-known phenomenon in psychology.

@LilithOfEden

Kereen Getten, When Life Gives You Mangoes. That's her laughing away on Twitter with her publisher.

Interesting. I've had my eye on that book as it has been prominently displayed at Waterstones, we are suckers for books and buy anything and everything we like. Dc have heaps of books relating to diversity but neither avid reader dc nor me have ever been tempted to read When Life Gives You Mangoes. I dismissed it, quite frankly, as some soppy motivational fake resilience promoting fluff based on the blurb and a couple of chapters I scanned during my Waterstones visits. Whenever I offered dc, shook their head, not interested. The boy at the back of the class on the other hand is very well loved by dc and has ben read many times. I shall now order it and donate it to the school library. Others might consider doing this.

I don't leave them off lists out of spite because I'm not 12.

This is compounded by the list being an award nomination list.

Some people would be honoured to be on an award shortlist, but apparently this lot feel so entitled that their first thought is to complain about the people they have to share it with.

(And, by way of comparison with their nemesis - can you imagine JKR doing such an uncouth, ungracious thing?)

For example, we are not interested in stories about white able bodied WW2 evacuees but would welcome that story from a disabled, LGBTQ+ or BIPOC perspective."

I don't understand this at all. What has your skin colour and being able-bodied or not got to do with your sexuality?

People note this type of behaviour. Who would want an agent who not only has a prejudiced, mean-minded, petty and vindictive mindset but is stupid enough to share that fact publically?

I agree it's staggering. Though from a purely academic view, it would make a great case study for a textbook. The belief that if one believes oneself to be virtuous, then whatever one does, however immoral, cruel or wicked, must also be virtuous, is a well-known phenomenon in psychology.

Self-Serving Justification, I think.

Anyway, thanks, OP, for sharing this author and booklist. The Phoenix Book Awards sounds like such an excellent idea, I'll look out for the books on the list.