Pan Macmillan has taken the unprecedented step of apologising to its former author Kate Clanchy four years after it parted company with the writer. Clanchy left her publisher Picador in January 2022 after her book, Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, was accused of perpetuating racial stereotyping, an accusation she denies.
The statement put out by Joanna Prior, CEO, Pan Macmillan – who took on the role in 2022, a year after the controversy flared – read: “This was clearly a regrettable series of events in Pan Macmillan’s past. I’m sorry for the hurt that was caused to Kate Clanchy and many others.”
A six-part BBC podcast on the events that took place in 2021 – Shadow World: Anatomy of a Cancellation – is to be aired from 12th November, and features interviews with many caught up in the episode, including authors Philip Pullman and Monisha Rajesh. In a preview of the series now on the BBC, Clanchy says she was “scapegoated”, while one unidentified voice calls what happened to her as a witch hunt. Others, though, saw it as a reckoning at a time when publishers were still responding to the killing of the US Black man George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement.
The apology was sent to the Times, which has run a lengthy interview with Clanchy, and also to the BBC. Macmillan refused to be drawn on what prompted the apology, and Clanchy said she was surprised by it.
According to the newspaper, the programme will be informed by a series of email trails disclosed last year to Clanchy, under legislation guaranteeing a citizen’s right to make “subject access requests” to organisations with which they have dealt.
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