TW: racism, incest, antisemitism
This is a short statement regarding Emily A. Duncan et al. If you’ve been on book Twitter earlier this week, you probably know they’ve been facing up to past actions, including bullying fellow authors in Slack chats, attacking victims of CSA and incest, antisemitism, and participating in some really heinous things. Apparently this has been passed around through whisper networks for years, but I had no idea. Consequently I read and loved their novels, publishing numerous posts about them and sharing content on social media. Complicit in this behavior are Rory Power and Christine Lynn Herman, whose books I have also publicized in the same manner. I am shocked, to say the least. By no means am I a public figure, but I do owe it to you all to address this given my previous support of this friend group, Emily above all. I cannot accept any of their apologies or judge their sincerity, since I am not an offended party or a victim here and therefore am completely removed from the situation. The real victims here have been Jewish authors, authors of color, and queer authors, who already face racism and bias in publishing every day. Please support the books of Rin Chupeco, Hafsah Faizal, Ava Reid, and Ashley Shuttleworth. Doubtlessly I am missing names here, but I’ve seen their accounts specifically during this past week. As a blogger, I make it my priority to support marginalized authors and as a QWOC, I am incredibly disappointed in Emily et al. Please know that I am not a mindless consumer and I do think critically about whose content I consume. That being said, I also don’t believe in retconning my feelings about books and authors. I have never been so personally invested in books written by bullies in the community--when I say I adored their novels, you know I am being honest because you have read my reviews and promotion. Those reviews and posts have to stay up. They are date stamped, and were 100% true to my feelings at the time. I believe in honesty, and I can’t curate my past feed to match every new development regarding whose behavior has been revealed as reprehensible. I will say this: just as I do for other authors whose behavior and creed I find not to match my standards, Emily’s books will no longer appear on my feed until such a time as I deem appropriate. That could be never (it certainly is for some others) or there could be a time when they truly own and make reparations for their actions. Either way, don’t take this as an indication of my forgiveness. This isn’t that. This is me saying not yet. Me saying I don’t condone this in our community. As a public voice, I am capable of providing a consequence for Emily’s actions, albeit a small one, and it is the termination of my public support of their work. I will be adding a disclaimer to my reviews to clarify that at the time they were written, I had no knowledge of Emily's behavior behind-the-scenes. I welcome any and all thoughts on the matter. Please let me know if you feel this is insufficient given my past enthusiasm, or if there is anything else you would like to see me do or acknowledge. I don’t bow to demands, but I am open to constructive conversation. Thank you for reading. If I recommended you one of Emily’s books and you were affected by the subject matter or their actions, I am truly sorry for putting this in your path. Again, please feel free to reach out.
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The BaronessHey, I'm Shreya! I love to read, write, travel, and drink tea. Disclosure: I am an affiliate of bookshop.org and I will earn a small commission if you click the above link and make a purchase.
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