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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Jude Cook; Anne Enright; Nikesh Shukla; Leo Robson; Sarah Moss

‘Men need liberation too’: do we need more male novelists?

illustration of men climbing a mountain of books
Illustration: Pete Reynolds/The Guardian

Jude Cook, author and publisher of Conduit Books
In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, the languid Lord Henry announces: “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

I’m not so sure. During the days after the announcement of my new small press, Conduit Books, the conversation about the balance and representation of women and men in publishing roared back into life. The reason was that, initially at least, Conduit Books will publish literary fiction and memoir by male authors; a modest attempt to address the relatively recent scarcity of young or new male writers in the small world of UK fiction.

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