bookconservator asked: I posted a link on facebook to that article about not reading white cis male authors for a year. Immediately a family friend (white male) responded with: "'I thought: What if I only read stories by a certain type of author?' Well that just sounds prejudice." What is your best response to people who claim that such articles are exclusive and harmful?

The best thing that ever happened to me as a writer (and as a reader) was becoming a book reviewer, and having a monthly book column of books of all kinds, because it forced me to read out of my comfort zone. I knew all about SF and fantasy, and precious little about anything else. Suddenly I was reading everything: translated novels by Nobel Prize Winners, and gay porn, feminist novels and thick thrillers, shopping-and-fucking bestsellers and obscure literary curiosae, essays and classics and everything that publishers published. My horizons broadened, and what I wrote improved.

I’d suggest that the idea of not reading books by (whitecismaleauthors) for a year isn’t exclusive. It’s not saying boycott books by people like me, or never read us again. It’s saying, take a year out of your life and go and read books by people you’ve not encountered before.

I’d cheerfully take it further: read other genres, too, on your year away. Go and poke around in the areas of bookshops you don’t normally visit. Invest it in opening your head and letting new things and people in.

That’s not about exclusivity or prejudice or hate. It’s suggesting that you read new authors, visit new shelves and make new friends.