“We don’t want to hear anything else from you”: Culturally “diverse” authors and the Australian literary industry
- Publisher:
- Australasian Association of Writing Programs
- Publication Type:
- Journal Article
- Citation:
- TEXT, 29, (2)
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The past ten years have seen more attention paid towards diversity in creative industries globally. In literature various initiatives have attempted to capture the rate of publication and reviews of books by authors from marginalised communities. While such identities are contextually situated and therefore may differ between countries, some of the cohorts that have received this attention in activism and research include women, LGBTQIA+ people, First Nations groups, and those of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse backgrounds. In this paper, we introduce findings from a series of interviews with First Nations and culturally diverse authors in Australia, examining their experience of the publishing industry during this time of diversity activism. We focus on the expectations that are placed on them and their creative work as a result of their ethnicity, and the personal and artistic costs this entails. Our results demonstrate that marginalised creators are faced with the responsibilities of cultural representation in ways that other writers are not. The Australian publishing industry is not unique in this but, nonetheless, we suggest that the pressure existing authors feel from audiences could be lessened over time with an increase in the number of authors from culturally diverse backgrounds being published.
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