• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Login
  • Register

Publishers Lunch

The Publishing Industry's Daily Essential Read

  • Publishers Marketplace
  • Site Guide
  • Help

Briefs: Tody Eady Dies, Plus Sensitivity Questions

December 28, 2017
By Michael Cader

In the UK, literary agent Toby Eady died on December 24. David Higham Associates, which acquired Eady’s agency in 2015, noted in a statement, “With great sadness we have to announce the death of our colleague, Toby Eady. Toby was a maverick, a passionate champion of his authors and advocate of their work.” He started Toby Eady Associates in 1968, and Bernard Cornwall was his first client.

Self-published hit Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls has become the focus of complaints for featuring Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi as one its 100 great women. As British Labor MP and shadow justice minister Yasmin Qureshi tells the Guardian “I often wonder how it can be possible to go from being one of the most admired and respected civil rights champions, a symbol of courage, patience and principle, to someone who shows such lack of compassion. I have no doubt that history will remember her as the leader who watched on while mass killing, systematic rape and ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands who were forced to live in squalid refugee camps. I’d encourage the authors to consider that there is an entire generation of young Rohingya children who are stateless and hopeless, suffering a miserable existence. Aung San Suu Kyi’s refusal to condemn makes her complicit.”

Authors Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo told the Guardian in a statement, “We’re monitoring the situation closely and we don’t exclude the idea of removing her from future reprints.” They published the book through their Timbuktu Labs, raising over $1.1 million through Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms. They sell the hardcover directly, and through Barnes & Noble.

As an apt pairing, the NYT ran a page one look at the use of sensitivity readers in children’s publishing. David Levithan at Scholastic notes, “There is a newfound fervor in children’s publishing to be authentic and get the story righ. When any author is writing outside their own experience, we want to make sure they’ve done their homework.” But the newspaper worries that “the role that readers play in shaping children’s books has become a flash point in a fractious debate about diversity, cultural appropriation and representation, with some arguing that the reliance on sensitivity readers amounts to censorship.”

Filed Under: Agency News, Free, Obits

sidebar

Primary Free Sidebar

Login


Forgot password
Quick Pass users click here to log in
Get Full Access
The publishing industry's essential daily read

Each Publishers Lunch Deluxe subscription includes full access to our searchable multi-year archive of industry news, a nightly email reporting 10 to 50 deal transactions, and our database of industry contacts, scripts, and posting privileges.

Learn More

RSS Automat

  • New Contributing Writers to The Washington Post's Book World October 3, 2023 Washington Post
  • How Lester Del Rey "Invented Fantasy Fiction As We Know It" October 2, 2023 Dan Sinykin Excerpt, Slate
  • John Grisham's "Enduring Charm" October 2, 2023 Time
  • Michael Lewis Writes Sam Bankman-Fried "Was Told" Trump Wouid Drop Out of Presidential Race for $5 Billion October 2, 2023 Washington Post
  • If or When Amazon Wants to Identify Books Made By AI, Software Detection Companies Say They Are Ready September 29, 2023 Wired
  • Cundhill History Prize Shortlist Announced September 28, 2023 Prize site
  • Nobel for Literature to be Announced October 5 September 28, 2023 NYT
  • With Sales Down 30% on Book Bans, Levine Querido Authors Raise Over $100,000 In Auction September 27, 2023 PW
  • Taylor & Francis to Make Voluntary Separation Offer; Threatens Layoffs to Follow September 25, 2023 Bookseller
  • Rupert Murdoch to Retire from News Corp and Fox Boards September 21, 2023 NYT
© 2023 Publishers Lunch. All Rights Reserved.