Kristin Nelson Looking for Males

I thought I would pass this on for any guys writing MG or YA. Kristin Nelson posted on her blog this week that her list is woefully underrepresented by male authors. She is particularly looking for those writing MG and YA. She said if the query letter is "solid," she will certainly request sample pages. Mine must stink to high heaven. I queried her a few weeks ago and received a form rejection in quick order. Perhaps others will have better luck.

I agree that subjectivity should not include gender, but it does. The publishing industry is replete with bias. Just a few months ago a senior editor at Scholastic confessed on her blog her own prejudice against writers of color. She didn't say the work wasn't any good or that she never received submissions from Asians, Latinos, African- and Native-Americans, but that her own life's perspective was rooted in her WASP upbringing. She didn't say anything that surprised me, though I was surprised she actually admitted it.

Two years ago I received a candid rejection letter from an agent who said she simply wasn't signing any black clients. I suppose I could've been outraged and bitter, but this is America. I've lived 40 years in this country as a black man. My head hasn't been in the sand. I just pull the letter out every now and then to remind myself what I'm dealing with trying to get published.

I don't know if Kristin has deliberately gone out of her way to sign women predominately, but it's certainly possible. Maybe like the Scholastic editor she too has suddenly developed a conscience. I can't say. What I can say, however, is that her admission has gotten a lot of her female blog readers pretty upset. Some have even said they plan to submit manuscripts under male pseudonyms.

It's sad that this is reality. I mean, if the work is good, it's good. The species of man still has a lot more evolving to do, if you ask me.

kellion92 said:

I am embarrased to admit that I always pictured you as a white woman, because that's what I am.

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Stop, girl. You're killing me!

Seriously, this very issue has been raised surrounding the whole Bloomsbury cover fiasco. While some people feel the publisher is flat-out racist, others attribute the mistake to the cover designers having not read the book and, like you, simply imposed their own image onto the covers. Who knows?

As for my queries, my name is Kevin, and so there's the gender thing. And sometimes at the bottom of my letter I'll list my past publications, several of which include essays in Essence.

As for Kristin, I also didn't find anything offensive about her post, and not simply because I'm a man either. I gathered she merely expressed an interest in making her list a bit more balanced. As most of her clients are women, she feels that some male writers may not approach her, perhaps thinking she does indeed harbor a gender bias. It thus becomes a vicious cycle, and I give her props for recognizing it and taking the initiative to set the record straight.

One writer on the blog (male) said he frankly didn't feel most female agents could connect with "boy" books. While I don't completely agree--there being many female agents who rep male writers writing books with boy MCs--I do see how this could be true here and there. It's simply another level of subjectivity. I know there are male agents who would never consider taking a look at a female who wrote chick lit or women's fiction no matter how good the query might be. If she's writing about things he knows nothing about, or cares nothing about, it's almost impossible for him to get excited about the work.

But, Ink, I disagree that men writers do not face discrimination in this field. I know of one particular agent (a real powerhouse) who is an open lesbian. And guess what? Nearly all her clients are women. Do I think prospective male clients see her list and choose not to submit? Nope. Do I think she's a ball-busting man-hater who only keeps a few guys in her stable to maintain a facade of fairness? Nope. Do I think her political and social views influence how she approaches the work that shows up in her inbox? Absolutely. How can they not? She was a gay woman before she ever became an agent. If this is a woman who lives her life consciously aware of the marginalization of women in American society, I don't doubt for a second she is just as conscious of the work she chooses to represent and, hopefully, present to this society.

JudScotKev said:

Hedge, I can't believe an agent would actually tell you she wasn't signing black clients. I mean, I know people think that way, but it's always a shock when people have so little shame.

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Yeah, I was shocked too. I often rant about receiving form rejections instead of a personal note telling me what specifically doesn't work, but I certainly didn't expect something that personal.

In the agent's defense, however, I'm compelled to clarify some things. I feel my earlier post may have been a bit misleading. It wasn't as if she said something like, "I don't represent black writers, so please stop querying me and tell all your black writer friends to scratch me off their list as well."

Her frankness was more a reflection of the publishing industry as a whole (editors and marketing directors) rather than her own personal prejudice. Basically what she said was that she has stopped signing African-Americans because publishers are too resistant to stories that show blacks in a positive, universal light. Here's a quote from the letter:


[FONT=&quot]Dear Kevin:[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]You have reached me at a time when I am not actively submitting projects to publishers for acquisitions consideration. In most instances it is quite difficult to find publishers that will respond to moral stories that focus and tell the stories of African American life and culture. The state of affairs in the current publishing marketplace is quite depressing. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]I am certain that if you survey any bookstore you will quickly determine that there is little diversity among the overall titles representing African American writers of young adult fiction. [/FONT]



And she's right. My own research has found that an overwhelming number of books featuring black children have something to do with slavery or Jim Crow or the Civil Rights Movement. Race is the overarching theme. With young adult titles, the works often depict blacks in a very negative manner. The mothers are drug addicts, the fathers are abusive or absent, the teenagers hate themselves because their skin is too dark or their hair is too coarse, the girls always end up getting pregnant, blah blah blah blah blah. As the agent pointed out, publishers act like there are no black kids growing up in loving, stable, nurturing homes.

We saw the same thing back in the 1990s with Hollywood. Black screenwriters and actors were lamenting the dearth of quality projects coming their way. And yet at the same time Hollywood was quick to churn out all those Boyz in the Hood type movies. The publishing industry has sadly decided to cater to the same stereotypes.