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.

Rachel's books: www.waterstones.com/author/rachel-rooney/529109

Gillian's books: www.waterstones.com/author/gillian-philip/168067

I've just finished reading the book "The Boy at the Back of the Class" which I bought to show support to Onjali Rauf.

I've no young people in my family now, so the author and the book were new to me. It's not a children's book it's MY book (*) and I loved it. There's now a queue of grown ups waiting their turn to read it.

Highly recommend that you all buy it so it's also YOUR book.

(*) cheers to Eddie Izzard for the inspiration (if nothing else).

Having read the full thread, I am hopping mad. I want to do something to register how unacceptable Ash's behaviour is BUT what? It also occurs to me that if we all so the same thing, it might have an effect. Do we email the organisers of the competition registering our disgust? Do we deluge her company email with complaints? The coy tweet from her dipshit chum nearly tipped me over the edge. I am less interested in engaging with her. She can't even use the word procrastinating correctly - she is clearly very dim and insulated from reality. I would, however, like to dent her livelihood and publicly dent her reputation.

Really disappointed by the author of …Mangoes joining in with her loathsome agent’s behaviour

My preferred outcome @PelvicFloorTrauma is Kereen Getten publicly walking, withdrawing from the prize in solidarity with Onjali, and signing up with someone else.

Emailing her company is really emailing her, and I don't see the point of writing to her. No matter how politely it's phrased, she will just see it as personal harassment from "bigots" on the internet and then claim that she is the victim.
Her business is making money from children's literature and YA, yet she doesn't respect children enough to allow them to enjoy books by people she dislikes/disagrees with; not even when they're also promoting a book she makes money from! She is not going to respect the viewpoints of some mere parents who buy their kids these books. If she ever wants to understand why we found her actions deceitful and disrespectful towards the children that voted, Onjali Raúf and Onjali's refugee charity, she knows where we are. She can seek out our opinions via vanity google searches.

It doesn't really seem fair to notify the award organisers of our disgust either. This is a wonderful initiative to promote reading, and I don't want us to add to the organisers' workload because a woman in the publishing industry responded to their twitter announcement in such a crass, manipulative way. As it is, I'm worried that in the long-term, people like Alice S-H might mean librarians, award organisers and so on simply quietly avoid putting Onjali Raúf on longlists in the first place. If we could do something nice to support the Phoenix Award, though, I'd like that. I wonder if any London mumsnetter could wrangle a company into sponsoring the costs of the award.

I suppose we can donate to O's Refugee Aid Team, and buy all her books. I've lifted that list of them off twitter.

www.thealligatorsmouth.co.uk/product-page/the-boy-at-the-back-of-the-class-2

www.thealligatorsmouth.co.uk/product-page/the-star-outside-my-window

www.thealligatorsmouth.co.uk/product-page/the-night-bus-hero

www.thealligatorsmouth.co.uk/product-page/the-lion-above-the-door

www.thealligatorsmouth.co.uk/product-page/the-great-food-bank-heist

It’s always the same script with these nasty bullies, isn’t it? They do or say something so revolting that the majority of people call them out on it so they cry bullying and make themselves the victim.

Exactly what’s happened here. I imagine Alice felt terribly pleased with herself when she typed out her spiteful, sickening tweet, gleefully anticipating all the lovely headpats and virtue cookies that would rain down on her from the equally spiteful TRAs and MRAs who would approve of her despicable behaviour. It didn’t quite play out like that for her, much to Alice’s surprise, as most decent people are disgusted by privileged brats who stamp down on a woman of colour who wrote a wonderful, sensitive book about a child refugee. Onjali has more talent in her little finger than Alice has in her entire being.

So like all cry bullies, Alice has gone full DARVO. There will not be a shred of introspection there, either. Not for one moment will she question whether maybe she’s the one in the wrong. She’s so high on her own virtue she genuinely thinks she’s the good guy here.

I’d highly recommend The Boy at the back of the class. DD read it over lockdown and loved it - we read bits together and it’s absolutely beautiful.

@Tiddlesthecat

In fairness, many of the authors that ASH publishing represent are also young Muslim women, so I wouldn't assume that this is necessarily racially motivated. And I'm not sure that their trans activism is necessarily relevant. What it does show is highly unprofessional and ungracious conduct by some petty woman who doesn't like to lose. And it will almost certainly back fire on her.

How is the trans activism not relevant? She explicitly says she's 'amend(ed) a shortlist image to take out the shortlisted terf.'

Purgatory, I take your point about adding to the organisers' workload. On the other hand, I would like to know what they're doing about it. Does anyone know if they've said anything?

Rise above, wims. Show the graciousness of Onjali and let natural consequences play themselves out. I agree that the prize needs no extra hassle or stress about this. Support the prize, the kids, the good writer.

Supporting Onjali in her charity and by buying her books (and those of Rachel Rooney & Gillian Philip) is the best response.

My four books by Onjali Rauf have arrived. I’m going to read them

I’d be very surprised if Trish Cooke doesn’t know what a woman is as well as how to write beautiful books for children that draw on her Caribbean heritage, should anyone be looking for some. It was her retellings of the Anansi stories I was read in school; & I loved “Mammy*, Sugar Falling Down” so much that I bought myself a copy as an adult.

• Absolute revelation to 6 year old me that people who weren’t Irish used “Mammy”…

Just a bump to say that The Boy at the Back of the Class is available on Audible for £3 at the moment.