Yeah I know, a touch late. But life has been meandering between chilling and digesting the first batch of manuscripts and poems submitted to M2M Books. If you have already sent us your writing, thank you, and you will be contacted within the next few weeks.
If you have not submitted, please do (Submission Guidelines). We want to see your writing, specifically:
Literary fiction – quality writing, novels, collections of short stories that will resonate with and appeal to marginalised audiences (predominantly UK).
Children’s books – we would love to publish (illustrated) children’s books for the diverse audiences found in all UK schools. In particular, we are looking for books that feature marginalised characters but with narratives that are not focussed on their diversity.
Poetry – definitely getting there with our planned poetry anthology but still want more poems. Get busy and please submit your contributions.
Prediction – 2025 is the year conversations shift away from marginalised writers and more towards marginalised audiences.
One of my favourite gigs, working with Hannah Loy (Read the Room Productions) recording for BBC Radio Wales, the Aberystwyth Book Club. An opportunity to read and review books that would not naturally find their way onto my bookshelves. For this Christmas special (airdate 20th December) we reviewed Terry Pratchett’s collection of short stories, A Stroke of the Pen.
Don’t forget, if you’re local to Aberystwyth, M2M Books is hosting a rum-infused launch party at Irie’s Rum Bar. The evening (14th November 7pm) will include Irie’s monthly spoken word open mic event.
Well, Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver finds himself in hot water this morning! His 400-page fantasy children’s novel Billy and the Epic Escape has been pulled from shelves worldwide after complaints the book stereotyped Indigenous Australians.
Much of the online furore revolves around the question of whether a ‘privileged’ white man should be writing about First Nation peoples at all.
My experience is, so long as a writer undertakes the necessary research and consultation, it is possible to write authentically and without controversy outside of one’s own cultural or identity ‘lane’.
Absolutely not, when an author relies on, for example, their singular primary school class on ‘the colonies’ – on preheld simplifications and anachronistic stereotypes. Absolutely not, when the narrative self-serves as a Eurocentric fantasy that feeds a comfortable and superior worldview. Absolutely not, when an author has not undertaken and completed all the necessary homework.
The question should not be who wrote the text, but does the text appeal to and resonate with the experiences of the community described. And in the case of Jamie’s lazy efforts with Billy and the Epic Escape, the answer appears to be a resounding no.
M2M books hopes to receive submissions and publish work that speak to (rather than about) children and YA from marginalised communities.
You have spent months if not years working on a draft that you are now submitting to a publisher. For this reason it is worthwhile spending the necessary time ensuring that your submission complies with a publishing company’s idiosyncratic guidelines, and so giving your hard work the best chance of being seriously considered. There is method in this madness.
Information & Guidelines for all Submissions
M2M Books welcome submissions from new and previously published authors, directly from authors or through their agents. Submissions must be English language, original, and unpublished. Make sure that your manuscript is edited and redrafted to the point where you feel you cannot improve the work further. All submissions will be acknowledged and writers will be notified of the outcome of their submission.
…as opposed to writing ‘about’ marginalised audiences
There is a framed picture of a middle-aged white guy overlooking this workspace. Who is he? Why is he there?
Flaubert scowls, primarily acting as a critic, a writing conscience. I write something, I lean back, Flaubert catches my eye. ‘Not good enough,’ his scowl suggests. I will need to do some more work – for there is no fooling Gustave Flaubert.
But occasionally as I lean back, as I catch Gustave’s critical eye, his countenance suggests, ‘not that bad’. And my work is done.
I think that everyone striving for their best efforts would do well to position a fierce critic directly in their eye-line.
Faubert also noted that
“the art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.”
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
An astute observation from Flaubert that leads us neatly into the origin story of M2M Books. For it was while writing the following section from my novel Love and Happiness that the absence of relatable reading material for marginalised audiences first registered. Harriet is marginalised from the mainstream by race and adoption:
Harriet is not at all engrossed in her reading. If she could, she would drop the novel like a hot rock; the story of an isolated half-caste girl slowly going bonkers. But she promised to digest the book over the holidays, and anyway, she has never abandoned a story before the last page, however awful, however troubling, however much she’s wanted to. She sighs. If only she had never opened The Wide Sargasso Sea.
Harriet has become a project. Since the second year, when Mrs Dawson notices her sitting in corners consuming ‘classic literature’, Mrs Dawson singles Harriet out for extra-curricular material that ‘you might find more interesting’. The books presented are singularly themed; Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Confessions of Nat Turner, an adaptation of Othello, and it has been made clear since day one that Harriet is expected to relate to these blood-soaked texts in a consequential manner. But Nat’s world and Jim’s world, Othello’s issues, Tom Robinson’s predicament have nothing to do with Harriet, and she has no cultural yearning to be associated with them. The truth is, like any other middle-class Cheshire resident, the base negro characterisations she finds in Mrs Dawson’s books are (apart from villains and one or two celebrities shown on the television) the nearest Harriet has come to experiencing black folk and their bewildering ways. And anyway, in Harriet’s class, in Harriet’s school, in Congleton, it is Harriet that least needs to absorb the message these alien tragedies provide. But Harriet won’t mention any of this to Mrs Dawson. Harriet’s only protest is to perform poorly in her essays and tests. Yet Mrs Dawson remains dogged; loftier considerations than academic results being the order of her mornings. So, at the end of last term, as Harriet’s English Lit class finishes dissecting Jane Eyre to the point of scholastic nausea, Mrs Dawson appears extremely proud of herself placing Wide Sargasso Sea on Harriet’s school desk.
Harriet marks the page, checks her progress, drops the miserable volume about the presumably doomed mulatto to the floor.
Love and Happiness – G James
So, when the submission window for M2M Books opens next week, we hope to receive manuscripts by marginalised writers that marginalised audiences, such as Harriet, will find relatable and immersive. Margin to margin.
M2M Books submission guidelines will be fully set out in our next post.
Writing for Marginalised Audiences? M2M Books are looking for you… M2M Books will be accepting submissions from 14th November 2024 – 14th February 2025.
This initiative aims to amplify diverse voices and encourage inclusive storytelling within the literary community.
Margin to Margin Books 