http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/trade-shows-events/article/67908-red-hen-press-kate-gale-apologizes-for-commentary-awp-defends-her.html
This is a long post because I’m trying to give a timeline of
events in a situation that bodes ill for #diverselit writers and some background for my
readers who are not familiar with the situation or even with the organization
and players. This series of events begins with the announcement of panel
acceptances for The Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), the nation’s
largest national organization for writers and academic programs that teach
writing. There is always fierce competition for representation on such panels—by
individuals because travel funding from their institution to even attend AWP
(which is an expensive, huge conference) often depends on them being named to a
panel and by AWP’s various communities because, as with so many large national
organizations, the default tends to white male. This last, I want to point out
is something that AWP has been working on in recent years. They still have a
long way to go, but they have made real progress from the early days when AWP was
primarily white and male. The panel representation has diversified remarkably
from those days, although it is still problematic, and the establishment of
caucuses for marginalized communities within AWP has been a major step forward.
After a disastrous earlier mix-up which inadvertently made
some unofficial decisions public and caused dissatisfied speculation and murmurings
even before the official list came out, the list of official panel acceptances
was announced on Twitter. An AWP member named Laura Mullen tweeted in reply
(from her personal account), asking if they would furnish demographics on the
panel selections. AWP director David Fenza then sent her an email chiding her
for “casting aspersions” on AWP and copied both her department chair and
associate chair. For someone on tenure
track or non-tenured or adjunct, as many AWP members in the marginalized
communities are, this would have been an effective silencing tactic,
threatening their employment. In Mullen’s case, she is an endowed professor and
tenured, as well as director of LSU’s writing program, so she was not silenced.
She wrote about it on her blog and posted Fenza’s letter, and the whole
situation blew up on social media.
Soon, a petition was posted at Change.org, focused on the
lack of disability panels and asking for increased transparency and for Fenza
to apologize to Mullen and for the AWP Board to officially underscore that intimidation
tactics by Board or staff of AWP against members would not be tolerated.
At that time, AWP should have risen to the occasion. Fenza
should have publicly apologized. The Board should have issued a statement disavowing
such intimidation tactics and stating they would not be tolerated. AWP should
have agreed to more transparency and entered discussions as to how this could
be accomplished. If this had happened, AWP would have been seen as a responsive
and responsible organization. But, of course, it didn’t. The Board members are
located all over the U.S., the leader of the staff was the person (Fenza) with
the most to lose, and institutions in general move slowly in making decisions
and dealing with crises. But finally AWP began to release some stats on panel
selection and talk about the possibility of more transparency in the future—without,
unfortunately, addressing the issues raised around disability or Fenza’s
letter.
Next in this unfortunate sequence of events, we come to founder
and CEO of Red Hen Press, member of the AWP 2016 conference committee, juror
for panel selection for AWP 2016, Kate Gale, and her Huffington Post piece, “AWP
Is Us.” (She has been scrubbing all evidence of this from the internet, so I have included screenshots of her actual original
article as graphics on this post.) Also, here’s a link to a PDF of the original
article.
There is so much wrong with this article that it’s hard to
know where to start, the offensive, insulting stereotypes of so many groups—could
she have packed more stereotypes into one short piece?—the chiding tone, the “you
people” right up front in her first paragraph. I’m going to focus on the second
and third paragraphs for purely personal reasons—because she used those
paragraphs to insult and offend me and mine and because I believe she used me
and mine as a stalking horse since she didn’t have the nerve to write a piece
ridiculing and insulting people with disabilities (who were the originators of
the petition). A lot of folks are fine with ignoring people with disabilities and
treating them as invisible, but then worry about being seen as cruel if they
publicly make fun of people with wheelchairs, canes, braces, and walkers. (I
say this with more than a hint of personal bitterness, since I’m one of those
people on canes.)
But Indians, hey, everyone makes fun of Indians. It’s a
national pastime. In Washington, D.C., people make themselves up as caricatures
of Indians to go to ballgames in big groups and ridicule us. At music
festivals, hip young things don our sacred regalia or perversions of it to
dance around half-naked. America’s been
insulting us and underestimating us for centuries.
“One of the complaints lobbed at AWP is for not enough
inclusion of different groups, another is for more transparency. This summer I
was at a dinner and someone leaned across to me and confided, ‘AWP hates Native
Americans.’
‘Really now?’ I said, ‘I'm going to be in Washington this
summer and I'd love to discuss this with them.’ I took out a pen and paper. ‘Who
hates Indians at the office there? Is it Fenza?’ I pictured David Fenza
saddling up a horse, Stetson in place, going out to shoot Indians. It was an
unlikely image. The woman began fumbling around; she couldn't tell me who the
Indian hater was.”
Yes, let’s look at that image of David Fenza shooting
Indians. How nineteenth century for such a twenty-first century woman? Perhaps
she doesn’t know any of us survived the Removals and Indian Wars? No, that can’t
be. She has prominent Native writers on her board and has published Native
writers (none of whom I will name here because I know they must be cringing
over this debacle already). So, it’s not ignorance. It must be a deliberate
attempt to bring in a reminder of the genocidal Indian Wars, a reminder to us
that we should be careful and not challenge powerful white people. I don’t
think David Fenza hates Indians, but her own words make me think Kate Gale
does.
I don’t believe for a second that this conversation took
place, or if it did, it was not in those words. I know a large number of the
Native writers who attend AWP, and I know of not one who would say, “AWP hates
Native Americans.” Frankly, I know a hell of a lot of writers from many
marginalized communities at AWP, some of whom have been quite angry with AWP
for a while, but no one I know would say the organization hates Latinos/African
Americans/LGTBQ people/whatever. I suspect this is more what a privileged white
person thinks a person from a marginalized community would say. It’s basically
Tea Party rhetoric in an environment where that kind of discourse is the last
thing I would expect.
Indigenous writers at AWP have been working with the Board
and the staff to increase Indigenous representation and participation, and
while AWP is slow in implementing desired changes (as one learns to expect from
big organizations), the staff and Board have been basically supportive. We keep
pushing, and they slowly respond with greater representation and participation.
We wish they were faster to change, and they wish we would stop asking for
more, but our conversations and relationship have never been marked with
hostility on either side. As I said earlier, I suspect Gale didn’t want to say
something as openly and pointedly ridiculing and offensive about people with
disabilities, so she chose our community as a safe and acceptable stalking
horse. This was a mistake, of course, but then the whole piece was a massive
mistake, insulting people of color, LGBTQ folks—and people
with disabilities were not fooled, anyway.
Immediately, the comments section at Huffington Post began
accreting negative comments, some of it quite thoughtful and excellent feedback
for Gale if she bothered to read it. A stream of even more hostile comments began on
Twitter. Facebook, especially in groups dedicated to traditionally marginalized
writers, developed long, multi-faceted conversations around “AWP Is Us.” Thoughtful
blog posts sprang up, and Higher
Education Inside and Publishers Weekly
published articles about it.
With all the negative feedback swarming around, AWP finally
made a limited comment. In a tweet from the official AWP Twitter feed, they
said: “AWP board and staff were unaware of Kate Gale’s Huffington Post article
until it was posted. AWP did not and does not endorse the article.” Many people
felt this was too little, too late, especially as the chair of the AWP 2016
conference committee, a Board member, initially “LIKED” this article when first
posted, only to remove that later when all the negative publicity arose.
Then Gale took down her article on Huffington Post and
posted the following non-apology.
Other than the first sentence—“I apologize for this post and
the hurt it caused.”—the rest of the post is basically the Red Hen Press
mission statement and an ad for the press. Apparently, she had become aware of
the way her article was adversely affecting Red Hen Press. There had been
suggestions that it be boycotted. Along with others, I cautioned that such a
boycott would harm the writers of RHP, who were probably in pain already from
the piece their publisher had posted in such a huge public forum. I do have great sympathy for RHP’s authors and
its board members, who were almost certainly not consulted before this blog was
posted and who must have felt it as a great betrayal from someone whom they
trusted.
As this post is going up, the most recent media coverage is
an article in the Los Angeles Times, which also criticizes her portrayal of Los Angeles as not welcoming
to literary culture.
Gale is reaping the whirlwind that she sowed, and my final
word on her aspect of this huge fiasco is a suggestion that people look up her
resume. She is woven through the warp and weft of national literary culture,
sitting on the boards or in leadership positions of many of our largest and most
influential organizations that give awards and grants and publication. Ask
yourself how little confidence writers of color, writers with disabilities, LGBTQ
writers, and other marginalized communities can have that their work or the
work of the best people in their communities will have a real chance at any of
these awards, grants, panels, or other opportunities when someone who thinks
this way is in power. Ask yourself how this is fair or just.
To me, however, the most important part of this disaster is
the organization, AWP. This organization is a vital one for writers, academic
programs, and literary culture in this country. It has made some real progress,
after initially being dragged with a little screaming into the diversity of the
twenty-first century. I hate to see its forward momentum blocked. I think
establishment folks don’t actually realize that many writers in marginalized
communities, who are fighting for every tiny scrap of representation in the
larger community they can get, fear that those people in charge of all these
large organizations feel the way Gale writes about their communities. I think
it’s a subtler thing than that, a more institutional and unconscious bias in
favor of the familiar, but those in leadership positions at AWP need to
understand that many will read Gale’s piece and say, “Wow! What I was always
afraid of is true!” It is imperative that AWP make absolutely clear, not just
that they disavow any hint of approval for this piece, but that they will take
concrete steps immediately to move toward greater transparency and make a
strong formal statement that tactics of intimidation by AWP Board or staff toward
members are unacceptable and will face serious consequences. And I think AWP
must ask itself honestly whether it can continue to enjoy any confidence from
its membership if David Fenza remains as its leader without formal reprimand to
Fenza or apology to Mullen.
I have been so pleased to see the transformation over the
years of AWP into a much more diverse organization and conference. I have so
enjoyed seeing my fellow writers from marginalized communities begin to show up
in greater and greater numbers every year. I would hate to see a reversal of
all the very real good work that hard-working people on that board and on that
staff have put in through the years to make this happen. I hope AWP will meet
the challenge it is currently facing and, for once, do the right thing fully when
it needs to be done and not much, much too little too late.
