The ‘self-cancellation’ trend taking over the literary world

The phenomenon that has blighted the live literature world over the last ten years could be classed as a ‘stooshie’, or ‘a big commotion’, in Scots. Indeed it feels rare for any books-based event or literary festival not to provoke one these days. The last decade has seen a huge increase in fractious warring in the world of books, driven in no small part by the use and abuse of the powers of social media by certain activist-writers.

In my experience as a writer and former events organiser of two decades in Scotland, there has been a rising intolerance amongst a significant minority of often mid-career or even debut authors who, while not household names, are nevertheless powerful activists. They rail against the very idea of the platforming of reasonable discussions about contentious political or cultural issues. These are activist-writers extremely concerned with ‘association’ and ‘community’, thinking of themselves less as the solitary writers of old, than as ‘workers’ within a sector they feel they can make demands of, given it is ‘their’ workplace.