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Jude Cook, writer and writer of Conduit Books
In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, the languid Lord Henry broadcasts: “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
I’m no longer so positive. During the times after the announcement of my new small press, Conduit Books, the dialog in regards to the stability and illustration of men and women in publishing roared again into lifestyles. The reason why used to be that, first of all no less than, Conduit Books will submit literary fiction and memoir through male authors; a modest try to deal with the moderately fresh shortage of younger or new male writers within the small global of UK fiction.
By and big, the reaction to the clicking has been sure and inspiring, with greater than 1,000 submissions from world wide (a few of which can be from males referred to as Reaper Hound or Silent Oath, names their folks may no longer have given them). We’ve obtained give a boost to from many feminine novelists (and vocal feminists), in addition to ladies operating in publishing. There were remark items around the media.
Inevitably, there was pushback, but additionally legitimate complaint asking whether or not any such press is vital. There has additionally been an excessively small quantity of abuse, and makes an attempt to align the clicking with the poisonous axis of Donald Trump and Andrew Tate and the so-called males’s rights motion. This used to be wearying, regardless that possibly predictable. My personal politics are under no circumstances anti-woke and don’t align by any means with that sorry swamp of hate. I grew to become down a TV interview with GB News as I felt they sought after to speak much less about literature and extra in regards to the spurious tradition wars, with the chance that the talk may were twisted into an hostile contest between female and male authors and what sort of house they’ve been afforded, now and traditionally.
The reality is, a cursory take a look at the present literary scene will divulge that new male authors, for complicated causes, aren’t getting via. In April 2025, the Bookseller’s most sensible 10 fiction choices for the month integrated no males in anyway. The all-female literary prize longlist or shortlist has develop into extra commonplace – present examples are the longlist for the inaugural Climate fiction prize, and the shortlist for the 2025 Encore award for a 2d novel. Having simply judged a literary prize (the Republic of Consciousness prize for small presses), I do know that each one the ones long- and shortlisted entries had been the most productive books. It’s too essential (for each writer and writer) for it to be another way.
There used to be by no means any nefarious plot to exclude male authors, however the judges can solely draw books from what’s to be had. The state of affairs is simply symptomatic of the best way publishing has advanced over the past 15 years. Roughly 80% of fiction commissioning editors are ladies, and it’s comprehensible they would like paintings that resonates with them. And this steadily divides alongside gender traces. After all, to submit literary fiction, which doesn’t in most cases promote until it’s been prize-nominated or good points word-of-mouth traction, is steadily to place your process at the line.
Fifty-two years in the past, the intense Virago started publishing books through ladies with the aim of addressing inequalities within the wider society, a lot of which can be nonetheless with us. Conduit Books doesn’t have a political or polemical measurement. After 3,000 years of patriarchy, nobody is pretending males are exhausting executed through or no longer represented within the arts. But there may be the urgent downside of what younger males learn, particularly given the present political local weather. There are liberal and innovative narratives addressing fatherhood, masculinity, working-class male revel in, and negotiating the 21st century as a person, which can be merely no longer getting printed. I wish to learn them. I’d additionally reasonably younger males learn those than the web. I’ve an eight-year-old son. I fear about what he’s going to be studying in a couple of years’ time.
I’m nonetheless no longer positive whether or not Wilde used to be proper. To the trolls I say, there’s no scarcity of actual misogynists and racists in the market. Maybe move after them as an alternative? In the intervening time, grown-up debate is welcome. Conduit Books used to be began in just right religion, and I’m excited on the prospect of bringing some exceptional fiction and memoir into the arena that may another way were handed through.
Jacob’s Advice through Jude Cook is printed through Unbound. Submissions to Conduit Books are open till 31 May at conduitbooks.co.united kingdom
Anne Enright, writer
I’m positive people will indicate that ladies doing properly, and even higher, for 2 just right seconds after millennia of oppression will have to no longer be declared a disaster in masculinity – why would it not be? Also that male writers proceed to do thoroughly relating to status (there have been extra males referred to as Paul at the 2023 Booker shortlist than there have been ladies, and all that). The majority feminine readership is beneficiant to male writers, whilst male readers proceed to be reluctant about studying and praising ladies. My personal feminism has at all times integrated males, alternatively the dialog about gender has been one-sided for too lengthy, so I’m overjoyed to look them becoming a member of in.
You may just argue that probably the most functions of fiction is liberation, and males want that too. As a kind, the radical loves going underneath the outside and it loves an underdog – Irish writers have at all times recognized it’s nice at lifting other folks up. So I’d say to a men-only press, “Go for it!”, with one or two ideas at the aspect.
More books are being printed lately than ever ahead of, and this contains extra books through males. I’ve noticed publishers devour up novels through more youthful males (particularly Irish males, I’m happy to mention). I’ve noticed them fall on such books with reduction that they exist and that they’re just right. I don’t see any downside with males getting printed, when the ones males aren’t misogynistic, as a result of it’s in fact misogyny that has long past out of favor, no longer male writers. I fear about males who pass over all that, and who pass over the inflated, undeserved feeling of significance of the great outdated days. That mentioned, all writing comes to an quantity of self-belief, even of self-aggrandisement, and I’ve additionally noticed unhappiness and uncertainty in younger male ability taking a look to have the opportunity via.
Given the truth that there are a gazillion books through males in the market already, the men-only factor could also be much less a commentary about gender in overdue capitalism than a advertising ploy. I am hoping it’s greater than that. I am hoping this new press brings one thing to the celebration. I am hoping it captures and reinvigorates a male readership. It will likely be fascinating to look which authors are willing to be printed through any such press, and what they’ve to mention.
The Wren, the Wren through Anne Enright is printed through Vintage.
Nikesh Shukla, writer
If you need to understand how younger males are enticing with fiction, with books, with pop culture, ask kids’s writers, ask YA writers. We do weekly visits up and down the rustic, and I truthfully don’t know who is best positioned than a instructor or faculty librarian to speak about males’s studying behavior.
I keep in mind as soon as visiting a boys’ faculty to speak about my novel The Boxer. My communicate, in regards to the racist assault that spurred me directly to learn how to field, about psychological well being, about softness and vulnerability, about how anger could be a sure pressure when channelled through the precise other folks, at all times is going down properly. That at some point, I used to be instructed to make use of up the entire hour with speaking for the reason that boys wouldn’t actually have an interest and so they wouldn’t be asking questions. However, I may just really feel the power within the room, them leaning ahead as I instructed my tale. And so, midway via, short of to deliver them into the dialog, I requested if any of them had any questions. A child submit his hand and requested what product I utilized in my hair, and ahead of I may just solution, anyone on the faculty despatched the boy out of the room. Apparently that wasn’t a query to invite an writer. I requested that he no longer be despatched out, and famous that he used to be simply creating a connection, and I instructed him I used [redacted] in my hair.
It struck me as a captivating second. The place of writer is a respected one. An elite one. I used to be instructed afterwards that no longer many authors visited this college as it couldn’t manage to pay for to pay them. And I understood that possibly the article that’s appearing as a barrier to boys is the establishment of literature itself. It’s noticed as elitist. As white, heart category, one thing for people. Because no longer sufficient authors are going into colleges and speaking to those youngsters and making connections.
I’m excited about what Conduit Books does and the way it plans to interact with its target market. Finding and publishing the books isn’t even part the struggle; if the rest, it’s just a small fraction. It’s discovering the target market and tasty with them on their phrases that’s lots of the struggle. Ask any kids’s or YA writer.
Brown Baby through Nikesh Shukla is printed through Bluebird.
Leo Robson, writer
Anyone who is aware of the rest about the rest, or no less than in regards to the English novel, is aware of that it could possibly by no means be “too female”. When the literary critic FR Leavis set out his “great tradition” within the overdue 1940s, he recognized 4 “great English novelists”, solely two of whom had been English: Jane Austen and George Eliot. He used to be the usage of his favoured formula to imply one thing relatively particular: “the tradition to which what is great in English fiction belongs”, one thing local and unique which he referred to as “a vital capacity for experience, a kind of reverent openness before life, and a marked moral intensity”. Leavis named one, more moderen, creator: DH Lawrence. Finally, an English-born male! But Angela Carter, writing just a little over a decade later, insisted on Lawrence’s “‘feminine’ qualities: sensitivity, vulnerability and perception”. (Lawrence’s tragedy, she wrote, is that “he thought he was a man”.)
There were classes when male novelists ate up lots of the consideration: significantly within the 1980s and early 1990s, when it used to be deemed vital to discovered a ladies’s prize for fiction. But everybody knew that the main English novelists had been Penelope Fitzgerald and Iris Murdoch, who wrote steadily and brilliantly about males (all six of Murdoch’s first-person novels are written from a male standpoint). Any such listing lately would come with Deborah Levy, Zadie Smith, Gwendoline Riley, Claire-Louise Bennett, Bernardine Evaristo.
Of path I’m exaggerating, fairly. There were some respectable male novelists. If this weren’t the case, it could were moderately presumptuous or smug to have tried writing a unique myself. When I judged the Goldsmiths prize, we ended up with an all-male shortlist, and refused to apologise. Perhaps it’s true that fiction has lately been ruled through feminine writers: publishing is just too amorphous to resolve those patterns with actual authority, and for sure nobody may just learn sufficient to come to a decision if the dominance is reliable. But as a male reader and creator, I believe no reason for grievance, or starvation for correction.
The Boys through Leo Robson is printed through Riverrun.
Sarah Moss, writer
The thought of “correcting” ladies’s domination of literary fiction is troubling. Since Frances Burney and Jane Austen, ladies were the radical’s number one readers and writers. As Austen issues out in Northanger Abbey, fiction used to be steadily disparaged for its femininity. The extra critical genres of sermons and self-improvement handbooks of her technology worry that younger ladies waste an excessive amount of time hiding of their bedrooms studying romances that result in unrealistic expectancies of fellows and marriage, and there’s deep suspicion about what ladies may rise up to between the published sheets. Novels have at all times been the place ladies move wild.
I think that if there’s a downside with males’s literary fiction, it’s as a lot to do with studying as writing. The gender (im)stability of audiences at e book occasions means that males a lot like to learn nonfiction: most commonly rational, quantifiable truths about science, historical past and politics, regardless that additionally on occasion go back and forth and lifestyles writing, virtually at all times through males. If patriarchy signifies that some males fail to notice the fun of literature, that’s relatively low at the listing of its harms and in addition not going to be fastened through putting in place a males’s publishing area. I ponder additionally how a lot it is a British downside, as a result of I will straight away call to mind dozens of Irish males, established and rising writers, publishing very well-received novels.
I’ve on occasion introduced scholars a false binary (all binaries are false): some novels are mirrors, appearing us ourselves in a distinct gentle; some are home windows, letting us in to unfamiliar worlds. As an adolescent I learn the massive dicks of the 1990s, in part, on reflection, as a result of I sought after to understand how males idea, regardless that additionally as a result of a few of them wrote very good sentences. I may just no longer see that their standpoint used to be so normalised I had no wish to move taking a look.
That studying may were much less destructive to me had my pastime been reciprocated. Mostly males don’t learn fiction through ladies and so they for sure don’t purchase it. (There are exceptions, don’t write in. I are living with 3 of them.) Older males on occasion write to me announcing that whilst they’d by no means typically dream of selecting up a unique and particularly no longer one through a lady, their spouse insisted that they are attempting mine and in fact it’s unusually just right. They idea I’d like to grasp. Many males, it sort of feels, revel in no interest in regards to the feminine gaze, or ladies’s studies. Maybe ladies, who at all times used to learn males and purchase their books, are starting to go back the praise.
All binaries are false. Intersectionality issues, and gender is never our maximum essential feature. It’s more uncomplicated to assume and write from every other gender than every other category or nationwide or racial standpoint.
That mentioned, I’m excited about males doing the paintings on masculinity, poisonous and another way. Men want house and give a boost to to discover feelings past anger, to be open and interested by their very own and others’ lives, to check out out different eyes and different voices, all of which fiction may plausibly do. I’ve no objection to males having a room of their very own, so long as they do their very own home tasks.
