Latest news with #JudeCook
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘Men need liberation too': do we need more male novelists?
Jude Cook, author and publisher of Conduit BooksIn Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, the languid Lord Henry announces: 'There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.' I'm not so sure. During the days after the announcement of my new small press, Conduit Books, the conversation about the balance and representation of women and men in publishing roared back into life. The reason was that, initially at least, Conduit Books will publish literary fiction and memoir by male authors; a modest attempt to address the relatively recent scarcity of young or new male writers in the small world of UK fiction. By and large, the response to the press has been positive and encouraging, with more than 1,000 submissions from around the world (some of which are from men called Reaper Hound or Silent Oath, names their parents might not have given them). We've received support from many female novelists (and vocal feminists), as well as women working in publishing. There have been comment pieces across the media. Inevitably, there has been pushback, but also valid criticism asking whether such a press is necessary. There has also been a very small amount of abuse, and attempts to align the press with the toxic axis of Donald Trump and Andrew Tate and the so-called men's rights movement. This was wearying, though perhaps predictable. My own politics are certainly not anti-woke and do not align in any way with that sorry swamp of hate. I turned down a TV interview with GB News as I felt they wanted to talk less about literature and more about the spurious culture wars, with the danger that the debate might have been twisted into an adversarial contest between male and female authors and how much space they have been afforded, now and historically. The fact is, a cursory look at the current literary scene will reveal that new male authors, for complex reasons, are not getting through. In April 2025, the Bookseller's top 10 fiction picks for the month included no men whatsoever. The all-female literary prize longlist or shortlist has become more common – current examples are the longlist for the inaugural Climate fiction prize, and the shortlist for the 2025 Encore award for a second novel. Having just judged a literary prize (the Republic of Consciousness prize for small presses), I know that all those long- and shortlisted entries were the best books. It's too important (for both author and publisher) for it to be otherwise. There was never any nefarious plot to exclude male authors, but the judges can only draw books from what's available. The situation is merely symptomatic of the way publishing has evolved over the last 15 years. Roughly 80% of fiction commissioning editors are women, and it's understandable they want work that resonates with them. And this often divides along gender lines. After all, to publish literary fiction, which doesn't usually sell unless it has been prize-nominated or gains word-of-mouth traction, is often to put your job on the line. Fifty-two years ago, the brilliant Virago began publishing books by women with the intention of addressing inequalities in the wider society, many of which are still with us. Conduit Books doesn't have a political or polemical dimension. After 3,000 years of patriarchy, no one is pretending men are hard done by or not represented in the arts. But there is the pressing problem of what young men read, especially given the current political climate. There are liberal and progressive narratives addressing fatherhood, masculinity, working-class male experience, and negotiating the 21st century as a man, that are simply not getting published. I would like to read them. I would also rather young men read these than the internet. I have an eight-year-old son. I worry about what he will be reading in a few years' time. I'm still not sure whether Wilde was right. To the trolls I say, there's no shortage of real misogynists and racists out there. Maybe go after them instead? In the meantime, grown-up debate is welcome. Conduit Books was started in good faith, and I'm excited at the prospect of bringing some outstanding fiction and memoir into the world that might otherwise have been passed by. Jacob's Advice by Jude Cook is published by Unbound. Submissions to Conduit Books are open until 31 May at Anne Enright, author I am sure other people will point out that women doing well, or even better, for two good seconds after millennia of oppression should not be declared a crisis in masculinity – why would it be? Also that male writers continue to do very well when it comes to prestige (there were more men called Paul on the 2023 Booker shortlist than there were women, and all that). The majority female readership is generous to male writers, while male readers continue to be reluctant about reading and praising women. My own feminism has always included men, however the conversation about gender has been one-sided for too long, so I am delighted to see them joining in. You could argue that one of the purposes of fiction is liberation, and men need that too. As a form, the novel loves going beneath the surface and it loves an underdog – Irish writers have always known it is great at lifting people up. So I would say to a men-only press, 'Go for it!', with one or two thoughts on the side. More books are being published today than ever before, and this includes more books by men. I have seen publishers eat up novels by younger men (especially Irish men, I am glad to say). I have seen them fall on such books with relief that they exist and that they are good. I don't see any problem with men getting published, when those men are not misogynistic, because it is actually misogyny that has gone out of fashion, not male writers. I worry about men who miss all that, and who miss the inflated, undeserved feeling of importance of the good old days. That said, all writing involves an amount of self-belief, even of self-aggrandisement, and I have also seen sadness and uncertainty in young male talent looking to find a way through. Given the fact that there are a gazillion books by men out there already, the men-only thing may be less a statement about gender in late capitalism than a marketing ploy. I hope it is more than that. I hope this new press brings something to the party. I hope it captures and reinvigorates a male readership. It will be interesting to see which authors are keen to be published by such a press, and what they have to say. The Wren, the Wren by Anne Enright is published by Vintage. Nikesh Shukla, authorIf you want to know how young men are engaging with fiction, with books, with popular culture, ask children's writers, ask YA writers. We do weekly visits up and down the country, and I honestly don't know who is better placed than a teacher or school librarian to talk about men's reading habits. I remember once visiting a boys' school to talk about my novel The Boxer. My talk, about the racist attack that spurred me on to learn to box, about mental health, about softness and vulnerability, about how anger can be a positive force when channelled by the right people, always goes down well. That one day, I was told to use up the full hour with talking because the boys wouldn't really be interested and they wouldn't be asking questions. However, I could feel the energy in the room, them leaning forward as I told my story. And so, halfway through, wanting to bring them into the conversation, I asked if any of them had any questions. A kid put up his hand and asked what product I used in my hair, and before I could answer, someone at the school sent the boy out of the room. Apparently that wasn't a question to ask an author. I asked that he not be sent out, and noted that he was just making a connection, and I told him I used [redacted] in my hair. It struck me as an interesting moment. The position of author is a revered one. An elite one. I was told afterwards that not many authors visited this school because it couldn't afford to pay them. And I understood that perhaps the thing that's acting as a barrier to boys is the institution of literature itself. It's seen as elitist. As white, middle class, something for other people. Because not enough authors are going into schools and talking to these kids and making connections. I'm interested in what Conduit Books does and how it plans to engage with its audience. Finding and publishing the books isn't even half the battle; if anything, it's only a small fraction. It's finding the audience and engaging with them on their terms that's most of the battle. Ask any children's or YA author. Brown Baby by Nikesh Shukla is published by Bluebird. Leo Robson, authorAnyone who knows anything about anything, or at least about the English novel, knows that it can never be 'too female'. When the literary critic FR Leavis set out his 'great tradition' in the late 1940s, he identified four 'great English novelists', only two of whom were English: Jane Austen and George Eliot. He was using his favoured formulation to mean something quite specific: 'the tradition to which what is great in English fiction belongs', something native and distinctive which he called 'a vital capacity for experience, a kind of reverent openness before life, and a marked moral intensity'. Leavis named one, more recent, writer: DH Lawrence. Finally, an English-born male! But Angela Carter, writing a little over a decade later, insisted on Lawrence's ''feminine' qualities: sensitivity, vulnerability and perception'. (Lawrence's tragedy, she wrote, is that 'he thought he was a man'.) There have been periods when male novelists consumed most of the attention: notably in the 1980s and early 1990s, when it was deemed necessary to found a women's prize for fiction. But everyone knew that the leading English novelists were Penelope Fitzgerald and Iris Murdoch, who wrote often and brilliantly about men (all six of Murdoch's first-person novels are written from a male perspective). Any such list today would include Deborah Levy, Zadie Smith, Gwendoline Riley, Claire-Louise Bennett, Bernardine Evaristo. Of course I am exaggerating, slightly. There have been some decent male novelists. If this were not the case, it would have been somewhat presumptuous or arrogant to have attempted writing a novel myself. When I judged the Goldsmiths prize, we ended up with an all-male shortlist, and refused to apologise. Perhaps it's true that fiction has recently been dominated by female writers: publishing is too amorphous to determine these patterns with real authority, and certainly no one could read enough to decide if the dominance is legitimate. But as a male reader and writer, I feel no cause for complaint, or hunger for correction. The Boys by Leo Robson is published by Riverrun. Sarah Moss, authorThe idea of 'correcting' women's domination of literary fiction is troubling. Since Frances Burney and Jane Austen, women have been the novel's primary readers and writers. As Austen points out in Northanger Abbey, fiction was often disparaged for its femininity. The more serious genres of sermons and self-improvement handbooks of her era fret that young women waste too much time hiding in their bedrooms reading romances that lead to unrealistic expectations of men and marriage, and there's deep suspicion about what women might get up to between the printed sheets. Novels have always been where women go wild. I suspect that if there is a problem with men's literary fiction, it's as much to do with reading as writing. The gender (im)balance of audiences at book events suggests that men much prefer to read nonfiction: mostly rational, quantifiable truths about science, history and politics, though also sometimes travel and life writing, almost always by men. If patriarchy means that some men miss out on the joys of literature, that's quite low on the list of its harms and also unlikely to be fixed by setting up a men's publishing house. I wonder also how much this is a British problem, because I can immediately think of dozens of Irish men, established and emerging writers, publishing very well-received novels. I've sometimes offered students a false binary (all binaries are false): some novels are mirrors, showing us ourselves in a different light; some are windows, letting us in to unfamiliar worlds. As a teenager I read the big dicks of the 1990s, partly, in retrospect, because I wanted to know how men thought, though also because some of them wrote excellent sentences. I could not see that their perspective was so normalised I had no need to go looking. That reading might have been less harmful to me had my interest been reciprocated. Mostly men don't read fiction by women and they certainly don't buy it. (There are exceptions, don't write in. I live with three of them.) Older men sometimes write to me saying that while they would never normally dream of picking up a novel and especially not one by a woman, their wife insisted that they try mine and actually it's surprisingly good. They thought I'd like to know. Many men, it seems, experience no curiosity about the female gaze, or women's experiences. Maybe women, who always used to read men and buy their books, are beginning to return the compliment. All binaries are false. Intersectionality matters, and gender is rarely our most important characteristic. It's easier to think and write from another gender than another class or national or racial perspective. That said, I'm all in favour of men doing the work on masculinity, toxic and otherwise. Men need space and support to explore emotions beyond anger, to be open and curious about their own and others' lives, to try out other eyes and other voices, all of which fiction might plausibly do. I've no objection to men having a room of their own, as long as they do their own housework. Ripeness by Sarah Moss is published by Picador.
Scroll.in
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
A new UK publisher will focus on books by men. Are male writers and readers really under threat?
A new publisher, Conduit Books, founded by UK novelist and critic Jude Cook, will focus on publishing literary fiction and memoirs by men: at least initially. Conduit is currently seeking its launch title, 'preferably a debut novel by a male UK novelist under 35'. It aims to publish three books a year from 2026. Diminishing attention is now paid to male authors, Cook feels, creating a need for 'an independent publisher that champions literary fiction by men'. This argument has been made closer to home [in Australia] too. Earlier this year, Australian poet and fiction writer Michael Crane bemoaned the diminishing space and attention for male authors, claiming to be unfairly overlooked as a white male author over 50. Prizes, working writers and sales While more focused on age than gender, Crane noted, 'most books published locally are by women'. He also argued that female writers have recently come to dominate the Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlist. There is some truth in this: since 2012, the year the Stella Prize was founded, there have been 12 women winners of the Miles Franklin and just one man. In the equivalent preceding period (1999–2011), there were ten men and three women. So, there has been a change – even a flip – in the past decade or so. That said, older male authors have historically been overrepresented in literary culture, both within Australia and globally. The shift seems, in part, a correction. Last year's overall top ten bestseller list in Australia reads similarly: seven titles were authored by women. Two of these, ranked first and second, were RecipeTin Eats cookbooks by Nagi Maehashi. In the UK, too, female authors are increasingly dominating publishing lists and the space and attention for male authors has dwindled. New and established male authors lack the 'cultural buzz' associated with female authors like Sally Rooney, who have arguably captured the literary zeitgeist, wrote literary critic Johanna Thomas-Corr in the Guardian. On the other hand, in the period when Australia's leading literary prize had 12 women and one male winner (2012–24), the Booker Prize was still narrowly dominated by men, with eight male and six female winners. (Two women, Bernardine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood, shared the 2019 prize.) And in the US during that period, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was heavily dominated by men, with nine male and four female winners. (The 2023 prize was shared between Barbara Kingsolver and Hernan Diaz.) The 2025 Pulitzer Prize for fiction winner is Percival Everett, for James. Do men need better stories? While Cook's project has its sceptics, it seems well-intentioned. As Cook notes, current conversations around toxic masculinity make it more important than ever to 'pay attention to what young men are reading'. Other commentators have argued the decline of male authors and readers is a cause for concern, too. In recent months, Las Vegas English professor David J Morris argued in the New York Times that dwindling interest in literary fiction represents emotional, cultural and educational regression among men in the United States. He notes women readers now account for about 80% of US fiction sales. The alienated, disaffected young men who have been drawn to the 'manosphere' and contributed to Trump's second election win 'need better stories – and they need to see themselves as belonging to the world of storytelling'. He makes a good case for the importance of literary fiction in developing emotional intelligence – and that the decline in male readership is therefore troubling. Cook seems to agree: he believes important narratives and voices are being overlooked. He is keen to publish novels and stories that focus on fatherhood, masculinity, working-class life, relationships and other topics that relate to 'navigating the 21st century as a man'. He stresses, however, that Conduit Books is not taking an 'adversarial stance'. It will 'not exclude writers of colour, or queer, non-binary and neurodivergent authors'. Women read more than men A February 2025 Australia Reads survey indicates 'avid readers' (who regularly start new books and read daily) are predominantly women, whereas 'ambivalent readers' and 'uninterested non-readers' were far more likely to be men. Furthermore, recent research suggests there is still a significant gender bias in male reading habits. Men made up less than 20 per cent of the readership for the top ten bestselling titles by female authors, Nielsen Bookscan data revealed in 2023. Conversely, the readership for bestselling titles by male authors was more evenly split: 56 per cent men and 44 per cent women. Women, on balance, read far more than men do, and are much more willing to read books by men than men are to read books by women. It would be fair to say all writers of literary fiction are largely dependent on a predominantly female audience – and have been for a long time. Back in 2005, when male writers were not exactly underrepresented in the literary marketplace, UK novelist Ian McEwan embarked on an experiment. Seeking to clear out some shelf space, he took a stack of novels to a nearby park and attempted to give them away to passersby. The free books were happily accepted by women, but he failed to give away a single title to a man. McEwan gloomily concluded: 'When women stop reading, the novel will be dead'. Publishing and demand Cook believes works by men that grapple with themes especially relevant to male readers are 'not being commissioned' in the current literary environment. A 2020 diversity study reported 78 per cent of editorial staff in the UK are women (though the same study indicates just under half of senior management roles in publishing are still occupied by men). An anonymous male publisher told the Guardian a few years ago, 'the exciting writing is coming from women right now', but this was 'because there aren't that many men around. Men aren't coming through.' Another publisher, from literary imprint Serpent's Tail, said: 'If a really good novel by a male writer lands on my desk, I do genuinely say to myself, this will be more difficult to publish.' Sales figures seem to back this. The Guardian calculated, based on figures from the Bookseller, that 629 of the 1,000 bestselling fiction titles from 2020 were written by women, with 341 authored by men (27 were co-authored by men and women, and three were by non-binary writers). Of course, many still read the historical literary canon, which is overwhelmingly male. Cook seems to argue that men are now less interested in literary fiction because there are fewer contemporary male authors, and they attract less commentary and acclaim. But it is just as likely that female authors have become more prominent because women are consistently more engaged with literary fiction – and the publishing market is simply adapting to cater to its principal audience. Can we bring back male readers? So will publishing and promoting more men bring back male readers? Or does this just amount to a demand that the overwhelmingly female audience for literary fiction should pay more attention to male authors? As literary critic Thomas-Corr notes, regardless of authorship, a lot of men couldn't give a toss about fiction, especially literary fiction. They have video games, YouTube, nonfiction, podcasts, magazines, Netflix. Male writers are still well represented in these media, so perhaps it may be as or more important to devote serious attention to their narratives and storytelling practices. Novels aren't, after all, the only engines for emotional intelligence or empathy. Cook's initiative will at the very least create more discussion around the growing absence of male authors and readers in literary spaces, and will probably ensure the first few titles published by Conduit Press will be received with interest. But given contemporary reading demographics, it seems reasonable to expect male authors will occupy an increasingly niche space in literary publishing.
Telegraph
01-05-2025
- General
- Telegraph
If we don't read to boys, no wonder men don't love books
A new independent publisher is to champion books written by men, and I have nothing snarky to say about that. It is undeniably true that literary fiction is now dominated by women, both on the bookshelves and behind the scenes (78 per cent of editorial roles in publishing are held by women). Jude Cook, the writer and critic who is launching Conduit Books, says he wants to give a platform to 'overlooked narratives' by and about men. Amid all the talk of toxic masculinity, he points out, 'the subject of what young men read has become critically important'. That does assume, of course, that young men read at all. Which they won't, if nobody teaches them. A new survey of childhood reading habits has found that Gen Z parents (aged 28 or younger) can't be bothered to read to their sons. Only 29 per cent of boys aged two or under get a daily bedtime story, compared with 44 per cent of girls. Either way, the figures are dismal – but the boys! Those poor little future men, barely old enough to hold a spoon and already judged inferior to their sisters. In a near-perfect inversion of the old chauvinism, it is now boys who are presumed – even by their own parents – to be too empty-headed to be interested in books. We surely don't need to rehearse here all the reasons why reading is good for young minds: the intellectual exercise, the exposure to new cultures and viewpoints, the practise of empathy. Boys, who now underperform all the way from primary school to the workplace, need more of all that. But depriving them of bedtime stories isn't just bad for their brains. Even worse, I fear, will be the effect on their hearts. The bedtime story is a deliberate, routine, slightly tiresome act of parental love. It is the moment when, at the end of another interminable and probably quite fractious day, you choose to stay with your child a little longer. Just the two of you, squashed up, with no distractions except whichever book they insist on hearing for the thirty thousandth time. Children feel that extra dollop of love keenly: often, it becomes their defining memory of early childhood. I think my first conscious memory of laughter comes from learning to read with my father, who substituted his own favourite words for the innocent ducks and apples in my alphabet book. 'B is for Bottyhole; C is for Coronary'. Although a soft-hearted man, he was something of a despot when it came to books. Winnie the Pooh was dismissed as 'absolute drivel', and instead he insisted on reading me those 19th century cautionary verses in which nightmarish punishments rain down upon children who slam doors or refuse to eat soup. At the hands of Hilaire Belloc and Heinrich Hoffmann (the German moralist who wrote Struwwelpeter) young miscreants were variously burned alive, eaten by lions, starved to death or, for the crime of thumb-sucking, parted forever from their offending digits. 'The door flew open, in he ran, the great, long, red-legged scissorman,' Dad would declaim, as I, tucked safely into his armpit, shuddered with delicious dread. Those bedtime stories started me off on a lifetime of reading. But they also taught me deeper lessons, about who I was in my father's eyes. Not 'just a girl', but someone whose intelligence he had faith in, and whose company was worthwhile. Exactly the sort of lessons our boys need now.
The Guardian
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
New independent press to focus on male writers
A writer and critic has launched a new independent press that will focus on publishing books by male writers. Conduit Books, founded by Jude Cook, will publish literary fiction and memoir, 'focusing initially on male authors'. Cook said the publishing landscape has changed 'dramatically' over the past 15 years as a reaction to the 'prevailing toxic male-dominated literary scene of the 80s, 90s and noughties'. Now, 'excitement and energy around new and adventurous fiction is around female authors – and this is only right as a timely corrective'. 'This new breed of young female authors, spearheaded by Sally Rooney et al, ushered in a renaissance for literary fiction by women, giving rise to a situation where stories by new male authors are often overlooked, with a perception that the male voice is problematic,' he said. These 'overlooked narratives' might address fatherhood, masculinity, working class male experiences, sex, relationships, and 'negotiating the 21st century as a man' – 'precisely the narratives' that Conduit hopes to publish. Cook said conversations about toxic masculinity after the second election of Donald Trump and the popular Netflix series Adolescence means that the 'subject of what young men read has become critically important'. Scott Preston, whose book The Borrowed Hills was shortlisted for this year's Sunday Times young writers' award, said 'the question of why boys don't read, and then become men who don't read, is a big topic right now, what with the next generation of them simmering with rage online, but it's a question I've been hearing for a long time. 'The topics and themes that appeal to men, particularly working-class men, can sometimes be dismissed as unserious or unevolved. A book press willing to tackle that is a good start but the hard part will be cobbling together an audience out of readers who have become neglected.' The press is actively looking for a book to launch with, 'preferably a debut novel by a male UK novelist under 35', with submissions open throughout the month of May. It will aim to publish three novels, short story collections or memoirs a year beginning in spring 2026. It 'can't be over-stressed' that Conduit Books 'doesn't seek an adversarial stance', Cook said. 'Nor is the press looking to exclude writers of colour, or queer, non-binary and neurodivergent authors.' Men have not suddenly stopped reading and writing literary fiction, said Cook – rather, they are simply 'not being commissioned'. He pointed to 2020 data suggesting that 78% of those in editorial roles in the publishing industry are women. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion 'Whenever I send out a novel to editors, the list [of names] is nearly all female,' a male agent told Johanna Thomas-Corr for an Observer piece in 2021. 'But it's not the gender makeup that bothers him, he insists, it's the prevailing groupthink – the lack of interest in male novelists and the widespread idea that the male voice is problematic,' wrote Thomas-Corr. The declining prominence of young male writers has been a topic of debate in the publishing industry for several years, in part sparked online by a Times piece by James Marriott titled 'Booker prize 2020 longlist: where are the new male hotshot novelists?' There has 'never been an independent publisher that champions literary fiction by men,' said Cook. 'Which is not to say we won't publish fiction by women in the future – but the emphasis at first will be on male authors. We believe there is ambitious, funny, political and cerebral fiction by men that is being passed by.' Cook is the author of the books Byron Easy and Jacob's Advice. He regularly reviews books for outlets including the Guardian and TLS, and teaches creative writing at Westminster University. He said that since announcing the new press, the response 'has been overwhelmingly positive, especially from female authors and women who work in publishing'.
