Saturday morning, seated in an Aberystwyth café, awaiting a publishing colleague; checking my phone and up popped this opportunity in my LinkedIn feed: Bloomsbury Publishing announcing an academic writing fellowship for Black, Asian, and ethnically diverse writers; submissions open 1 July. Great news.
https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/Bloomsbury-Academic-Writing-Fellowship-2026-information
My mistake was reading the comments. Screwed up the cooled-out Saturday morning vibe entirely.
First, a white writer/artist had a question. “Will you also be running fellowships for people who are not ethnically diverse but might face different barriers in the publishing industry?”
Two comments down, a ’Reading Group Leader and Literature Specialist’, presumably white, had another: “What exactly does ‘ethnically diverse’ mean in this context, and does it purposefully exclude white native Britons?”
Between them, nine people considered these interventions to be likeable. They are not likeable. They are the same insidious idea, dressed up somewhat differently.
Start with the second, because it is the more transparent of the two. “What exactly does ‘ethnically diverse’ mean in this context” performs a level of confusion the announcement does not warrant. Bloomsbury’s writing fellowship is designed for writers who identify as Black, Asian, or ethnically diverse. The phrase appears in plain English in the third line of the fellowship’s description. A ‘Literature Specialist’ possesses the reading skills to parse this simple sentence. The question is not genuine – it’s resentful.
Then there is “white native Britons”. Native is clearly not a neutral term here. Native implies prior claim; rootedness by birthright; a belonging that pre-dates, and therefore outranks the belonging of others. Native frames Bloomsbury’s writing fellowship not as a correction to structural disadvantage but as a transfer of opportunity away from the people who were here first (irony alert, at 61, there’s every chance I’ve lived here longer than they have). This kind of predictable ‘they’re the problem we’re facing’ framing has a long history in right wing narratives and does not become less pointed when appearing in a LinkedIn comment beneath a publishing announcement. However resentful some individuals may feel, there is one thing we can be certain of – if a white British writer struggles to get published, it isn’t because a writer from an ethnically diverse background got their spot.
The first question seems softer in register. The questioner does not invoke nativeness or prior claim; she queries fairness. “Different barriers in the publishing industry”. Yes, class is a barrier. Geography is a barrier. Disability is a barrier. So what? None of these issues are relevant to a fellowship targeting ethnic underrepresentation. They are arguments for additional fellowships targeting those things. UK publishing has several. The Spread the Word London Writers Awards supports disabled, LGBTQ+, and working-class applicants across four genres. Curtis Brown Creative’s Breakthrough Writers Programme includes low-income writers and disabled writers. The TLC Free Reads Scheme offers manuscript assessments to writers from low-income households. The National Centre for Writing runs bursaries tied to financial need. A door opening for one group does not close one for another. The logic of “what about other barriers” only functions if you believe support for writers currently underrepresented in UK publishing is zero-sum, or an act of benevolence. It is neither. Mainstream publishers will figure out eventually that it’s in their financial interest to diversify their audience beyond one imagined reader.
Now consider what these questions would look like elsewhere. Imagine either comment appearing under the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize, which champions women and non-binary writers: what exactly does “women” mean in this context, and does it purposefully exclude men? Imagine them under Wellspring, the professional development programme for disabled and neurodivergent playwrights: will there be a version for able-bodied and neurotypical writers? Imagine them under the Disabled Playwright Support Programme run by Playwrights’ Studio Scotland: will people without disabilities who struggle with confidence get their own scheme? These questions would read as highly inappropriate and obviously misplaced.
The evidence base for this fellowship’s necessity is uncontested. The Publishers Association’s workforce surveys track the facts directly. As recently as 2024, ethnic minority staff represented 15% of the publishing workforce; down from 17% in 2022, with a specific decline in the numbers of Asian and British Asian staff. Narrow the lens from the workforce broadly to the editorial relationships that decide what gets published and how it is positioned, and the picture sharpens. The Rethinking Diversity in Publishing report, produced by Goldsmiths in partnership with Spread the Word and The Bookseller, drew on interviews across the industry and found that publishers conceive their core audience as white and middle-class, and that this assumption shapes decisions at every stage: acquisition, editorial, marketing, retail. Earlier research, drawing on Labour Force Survey data, found publishing to be the whitest of all the creative sectors. The gains since then are modest. The skewed structure persists.
This Bloomsbury fellowship addresses something specific within UK publishing: the deficit of editorial relationships, institutional confidence, and mentored access that shapes who arrives at a publishable manuscript with the support to pitch it. One fellowship, one recipient, one year of mentorship, £1,000. A small correction; not to the industry structure, but to one person’s trajectory, in one year.
What neither comment engages with is any sense of factual reality concerning UK publishing. The data is in the public domain. But then, both comments are not really about the writing fellowship. They are about discomfort.
When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression – anon
Unexamined discomfort is not malice; it’s not benign either. And when dressed in the language of fairness or confusion, discomfort becomes something that functions, whatever the intention, as hostility towards addressing a well-documented and long-standing diversity problem within UK publishing.
Bloomsbury, for their part, have not yet responded directly to negative comments beneath their own post. Disappointing. There is a phrase about talking the talk and walking the walk that applies here.
White people; take some responsibility and police your own community; every other group is expected to do so. So when you see comments like these, they’re not unusual, wade in. Don’t leave it to other communities to conduct your own housekeeping. The least you can do is make the comments section slightly less dispiriting.
Pens at the ready, Black and brown writers; the Bloomsbury Academic Writing Fellowship opens for submissions 1 July.
Gareth James – Chief Reader