Bear with me, this is going to be a long one. Today, I want to talk about something I feel is incredibly important; how readers of UKYA & MG should support our authors of colour. When it comes to diversity, although the US still has quite a way to go, the UK is very far behind. A lot of the diverse books published in the UK? They're books written by US authors. In 2017, CLPE launched a study,
Reflecting Realities - A Survey of Ethnic Representation within UK Children’s Literature 2017, which found that only 1% of children's books in 2017 featured a BAME character. The study looks at all children's books, not just YA & MG, and it doesn't say how many of that 1% of books were written by BAME authors, but you can bet that some of those authors, if not the majority, were white.
Continue reading Why We Need to Support UKYA & MG Authors of Colour
