In April, Richard North Patterson-author of 16 New York Times bestsellers-published an essay in the Wall Street Journal about his difficulties finding a publisher for his first novel in nine years. The book, Trial, tells the story of a Black teenager charged with the murder of a white sheriff's deputy in rural Georgia, and the efforts of his mother, a prominent voting rights activist, to prove his innocence. According to Patterson, the novel was rejected by "roughly 20 imprints of major New York publishers" thanks to a "new ideology of identity authorship"-"literary apartheid"-dictating that "white authors should not attempt to write from the perspective of nonwhite characters or about societal problems that affect minorities."
Richard North Patterson’s Trial was rejected by the big publishing houses. Why?
3 July 2023
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