As we’ve reported in the past, BookCon experienced controversy the last few weeks due to its lack of diversity in its guest list, as well as with a kids lit panel that featured an all white male line up. Well, we have good news: BookCon has finally diversified! It only took a lot of angry tweets, a hashtag (#WeNeedDiverseBooks) that’s still going strong and BookRiot stating that they will not cover/support the event to finally FINALLY have a list that looks like it represented humans on planet earth. Here are the new additions:
Alaya Dawn Johnson
Celeste Ng
Danielle Paige
Marie Lu
Rachel Renee Russell
You can check out the full list here. It’s sad that it’s taken people outside the event and weeks of online criticism to get BookCon to act. Diversity is something that needs to be done actively until it becomes second nature and it should be on our minds whether it’s writing a character or putting together a panel. Hopefully, this gives other book events a wake up call and maybe even the book industry at the overall lack of diversity within books and those who write them so that readers can feel like they’re being represented.
See also the hashtag #DiversityIsNot for PoC and GBLTQ perspectives on how to represent without it being merely a token effort.