Los Angeles, CA - Last week, the white supremacist Milo Yiannopolous, notorious for his misogynistic, transphobic, homophobic, and racist rants, announced he had signed a $250,000 book deal with the Simon and Schuster imprint Threshold Editions.
While publishers undeniably have the right to acquire and profit from any book they wish, they also bear an essential responsibility to promote civil discourse and reject hate speech that is often a precursor to violence. Even as publishers tout the diversity of voices they publish, they should not enable the work of a writer whose diatribes bludgeon women, transgender people, queer people, people of color, or anyone else.
We at Lambda Literary stand with the diverse writers and readers who believe that for a publisher to give this writer money and a megaphone is an affront to the values we all share. Furthermore, if Yiannopolous's forthcoming book, Dangerous, contains the same hateful rhetoric that got him banned from Twitter and earned him widespread censure—-including from the LGBTQ community he claims to be part of—
then Lambda Literary will have to condemn the work as hostile to our mission of advocacy for LGBTQ literature and affirmation of LGBTQ lives.
Lambda Literary calls on readers and reviewers to ignore his book. Instead we encourage everyone to read these recently released and forthcoming books that illuminate the LGBTQ experience with intelligence and compassion:
The Angel of History by Rabih Alameddine ( Atlantic Monthly Press, October 2016 )
Anybody by Ari Banias ( Norton, September 2016 )
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen ( BOA Editions Ltd, April 2017 )
Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn ( Liveright, July 2016 )
Abandon Me by Melissa Febos ( Bloomsbury, February 2017 )
Difficult Women by Roxane Gay ( Grove Press, January 2017 )
Guapa by Saleem Haddad ( Other Press, March 2016 )
Reacquainted with Life by Kokumo ( Topside Press, September 2016 )
Since I Laid My Burden Down by Brontez Purnell ( Feminist Press, June 2017 )
America by Gabby Rivera ( writer ) and Joe Quinones ( illustrator ) ( Marvel Comics, March 2017 )
Constellarium by Jordan Rice ( Orison Books, April 2016 )
The Inexplicable Logic of My Life by Benjamin Alire Saenz ( Clarion Books, March 2017 )
You're The Most Beautiful Thing That Happened by Arisa White ( Augury Books, October 2016 )
Small Beauty by jia qing wilson-yang ( Metonymy Press, May 2016 )
