Diversity in writing Part 2

I am back writing about diversity in writing. Diversity is also about the authors who write the books. It is this that is the hot topic between authors because although BAME authors might get on the list for winning top awards, they might not win it in the end.

When I came to draft this post, I could only think of a few BAME authors who write for adults and children. As I write for children, I shall start with the few I have thought of.

Malorie Blackman, Patrice Lawrence, Catherine Johnson, Candy Gourlay, Chitra Soundar, Sarwat Chadda, Bali Rai.

After I drafted this post, I put a message on Facebook about this and got a few more names of children's authors in the Minor Ethnicity, and they are Jewish authors. Here they are: Keren David, Miriam Halahmy, Hilary Freeman, Judith Kerr, Meg Rosoff. It was raised that in traditional publishing authors might not be allowed by their publishers to write about Jewish events. Only a couple have recently.

For adults I could only think of Mike Gayle and Zadie Smith. If you can name more BAME authors who write for adults, let me know.

Next post will be another diversity post. Diversity is not just about BAME authors, there are disabled authors too, like me.

What is diversity in books

I always thought it meant different races and cultures eg Asian, Chinese etc and not just white characters written about. But since I've started writing about autistic children, I now know there is more to it. It can mean disabled children in books, not just physically disabled but hidden and invisible ones, too. Eg autistic children might look normal but they are not inside. Also, deafness and heart problems. They all affect people and are not visible, unless someone is wearing hearing aids.

There is another way to help diversity in writing, especially if you are an indie author like me. As well as writing about these different characters, you can choose which font to print in and how much space to have on the page, to make it easier for children with learning difficulties to read. My current children's books (The Rainbow School) has large font because I was told that was best for that age range (7-9s). When I published via Createspace, I found there were big spaces between some pages (where I had written long paragraphs which didn't fit on 1 page). I wasn't happy but then I got thinking. At the retreat in May, I sold a copy of Billy to a new friend, who bought it for her friend's daughter who was older than the target age but had learning difficulties. She liked the book. So, now I feel that even thought it wasn't intentional to have those gaps, it is a good thing to have, because it makes the books more accessible and available for a wider audience than I intended. I shall try to keep this in mind for the further children's books.

What does diversity mean to you with books?