Publisher apologises to author Kate Clanchy four years after book controversy

A publisher has apologised to a prize-winning author following a literary scandal.

Kate Clanchy was caught up in a bitter online dispute in 2021 after being accused of using racist descriptions of children in her book Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me.

Four years on, global publisher Pan Macmillan has said sorry to the author “and many others” involved in the controversy.

It described the furore as “a regrettable series of events in Pan Macmillan’s past”.

Clanchy’s book won the prestigious Orwell prize for political writing in 2020. It’s the story of her 30 years teaching English and poetry in British state schools.

The memoir was a critical hit before winning the prize, but a year later it was caught up in an online storm. Clanchy was accused of racism, classism and ableism and of exoticising children in the language used in Some Kids.

People online criticised passages for focusing too much on children’s skin colour and other physical features.

It led to what some saw as a long overdue reckoning for the world of publishing – but to others was the unjustified cancellation of a prize-winning writer and teacher.

In 2022 Clanchy split from Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan and her publisher of more than 20 years.

She says through the controversy she “never felt supported by them for a minute, they were absolutely unsupportive”.

In a statement to the BBC, in response to inquiries for a new Radio 4 series which examines what happened, Pan Macmillan’s CEO Joanna Prior, who joined after it had parted company with Clanchy, said: “This was clearly a regrettable series of events in Pan Macmillan’s past.

“I’m sorry for the hurt that was caused to Kate Clanchy and many others”.

Clanchy – who rejects the charge of racism and other accusations about her writing – says she lost work, was ostracised by her peers and even considered suicide.

She told the BBC: “I really wanted to die for a very long time”.

Some of the book’s critics say they also suffered badly as a result of the controversy.

They say they were attacked and vilified for trying to call out a book they viewed as dehumanising and full of harmful stereotypes.

In redacted internal emails that have been seen by the BBC, we’re able to gain an understanding of some of the conversations that went on inside Picador at the height of the storm.

A year after the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, calls to address institutional racism were at the top of company priorities across Britain.

These emails offer an unfiltered glimpse of how the publisher wrestled with whether to support its own author or accept the online criticism.

On 4 August 2021, an early draft of a press release addressing the storm’s fallout appeared warm and supportive of Clanchy.

It reads: “Kate Clanchy has been a force for good in the worlds of education and publishing for many years. She has transformed the lives of many young people.”

That statement was never published.

Instead, on 9 August, Picador put out a different statement about the book, saying: “We want to apologise profoundly for the hurt we have caused, the emotional anguish experienced by many of you who took the time to engage with the text.”

Clanchy and her publisher parted company in the following months. But the fallout from the events have continued, both for her and her critics.

The new six-part series unpacks the events that took place from a range of different perspectives to consider how people now view one of the most controversial literary rows in recent memory.

It explores themes that are very much alive in our culture today.

These include how we navigate difference in our society, who can tell whose stories, and how social media has changed the ways that disagreements and arguments are prosecuted.

We also ask whether publishing has learned anything from what happened – both in giving voice to a broader range of authors, and in relation to the debate over free speech, and the right to offend.