What about working class writers?

  Listing to this powerful documentary on working-class creatives and publishing...

Where Are All the Working Class Writers?

Link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09fzmjt

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"The more we reinforce the stereotypes of who writes and who reads, the more the notion of exclusivity is reinforced. It takes balls to gatecrash a party."

Kit de Waal, published her first novel, My Name is Leon, in 2016 at the age of 55. She has already put her money where her mouth is - using part of the advance she received from Penguin to set up a creative writing scholarship in an attempt to improve working class representation in the arts.

Kit knows that - as a writer from a working class background - the success of her debut novel is a rare occurrence. Born to a Caribbean bus driver father and an Irish mother (a cleaner, foster carer and auxiliary nurse), Kit grew up in Birmingham and left school at 15 with no qualifications. She became a secretary with the Crown Prosecution Service and went on to have a career in social services and criminal law. 

In this feature she explores an issue that is deeply personal to her. She looks back at her own life and trajectory, and takes the listener on a journey around the country to find out what the barriers really are to working class representation in British literature today.

"There is a difference between working class stories and working class writers. Real equality is when working class writers can write about anything they like - an alien invasion, a nineteenth century courtesan, a medieval war. All we need is the space, the time to do it - oh yes, and some way to pay the bills!"

Kit talks to a range of writers, agents and publishers about what the barriers are for writers from working class backgrounds, including Tim Lott, Andrew McMillan, Gena-mour Barrett, CEO of Penguin Random House UK Tom Weldon, Julia Bell, Julia Kingsford, Ben Gwalchmai, Nathan Connolly and Stephen Morrison-Burke (Birmingham poet laureate and the first recipient of the Kit de Waal scholarship).

Produced by Mair Bosworth.

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Kit de Waal is the author of My name Is Leon, published in 2016:

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And listening to this documentary got me to put down some thoughts I daily live with...

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 England has been so defining in the shaping of my writing. France gave me a brilliant education, especially for the daughter of working-class parents, but it is also ruled by nepotism...

Also publishers, for years, have been telling me what I should write and how I should write.
As I'm sure they do to every young write!! But is this their role?

Luckily I wrote a book on a famous and talented band so that saved me from the lack of interest and despise...

And I am among the lucky ones, very lucky ones!

I've been able to study in the best university, got my degrees with high results, and most of all, I got the chance to work with amazingly talented people, very early on, who really helped me gaining confidence. Of course here I have to mention the brilliant journalist Bertrand Dicale and the unique and wondrous film director Raoul Peck.

But yet, despite my glorious degrees, all the people I know who studied with me at Sciences Po AND had a wealthy, known and publicly-acclaimed father got offered jobs and opportunities that I can only dream of. This is Paris' first rule.

My goal now is not to claim for more that I have. I have fought to do what I love and I always managed to do so. I never regretted leaving a job where I was not considered for my real value, because it always allowed me to mo towards a more exciting experience.

My goal is to help other working class kids to get access to education and / or knowledge and to get to choose their own life. And it isn't an easy task.

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A simple piece of advice to start with: just do what you love... 

More soon.