August 19, 2020
We, the undersigned, members in good standing of the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC), stand in firm solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. We are committed to dismantling anti-Black, patriarchal power structures, unlearning white supremacy, and celebrating diverse traditions within both literature and criticism. We are determined to make the NBCC an organization to which we are proud to belong.
In order to do this work, we must acknowledge the reality of racism and structural inequality in the United States. All powerful American institutions are informed by, and victims of, white supremacy, even when materially benefiting from its structures. This includes the publishing industry.
We believe that in order to be responsible critics, we must embrace the vast plurality of literary voices and traditions represented in literature. We must also acknowledge our own biases, understand the world in which literature is written, and recognize the systems that shape human experience.
We take heed during this moment of national reckoning with the legacy of slavery. We reaffirm our commitment to creating a space where all voices are vital to our institution. We own our piece in upholding, participating in, and benefiting from an extant system of oppression, and we invite the board and all the membership to do the same. We cannot be excused from the work of examining the system itself, our complicity in it, or the labor required to tear it down.
We are grateful for, and indebted to, the anti-racist work of Black Artists for Freedom, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the Ruth Lilly Fellows of the Poetry Foundation, as well as collective, worker-led movements like People of Color in Publishing, #PublishingPaidMe, #PubWorkers4Justice, and We Need Diverse Books, for educating us and giving us new ways to think about the violence and harm faced by Black and historically marginalized writers when white writers and editors fail to address racist behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs. We are grateful to these writers, thinkers, artists, and organizers for organizing at the expense of their time, well-being, and professional security and for providing us a strong foundation upon which we can build a more inclusive organization.
We also wish to acknowledge and thank all the individuals who worked on this statement, including those who have chosen not to sign or continue to work within the NBCC’s framework due to safety concerns. We stand in solidarity with their continued intellectual and emotional labor as critics and hope to materially support their work in the better future we are striving for together.
In this light, we actively take up the mantle of the organization's Anti-Racism Pledge and hope to further strengthen its goals, strategies, and measures for success. As our organization seeks to address the harm caused by our country's legacy of anti-Blackness and white supremacy, we encourage the board to prioritize anti-racist labor, institutional accountability, and organizational restructuring immediately. In order to facilitate this work, we urge the cancelation of the 2020 NBCC awards and ceremony.
We have submitted the most pressing recommendations below.
We call for more representation of Black and historically marginalized voices on the board, as well as a greater commitment to centering and recruiting Black and historically marginalized critics. Historically, the composition of the board has not reflected the diversity of the membership or the literary community at large, nor has it demonstrated a collective commitment to anti-racism.
Further, we call for the immediate creation and enforcement of maximum term limits for board members. We believe that capping board service and eliminating consecutive terms will encourage a wider pool of people to apply, including those who are working full-time, working multiple jobs, parenting, caregiving, in school, looking for work, or otherwise taking care of responsibilities that would prevent them from volunteering for long-term service. We also believe that placing limits on the maximum number of terms a person can serve will encourage more diversity and dynamism on the board and in the organization.
In order to ease the burden of labor taken on by elected board members, we suggest hiring a nonprofit consultant to recommend best steps for restructuring the board to ensure a more equitable division of labor. The current structure, in which elected board members both read for yearly prizes and conduct the day-to-day business of the organization, makes it difficult to grow and sustain the NBCC in a meaningful way. Restructuring the board also provides elected officers more opportunities to consider how each of their roles intersect with the work of anti-racism, equity, and accessibility within the organization as a whole.
Finally, until we receive firm recommendations about the best organizational structure for the NBCC, we would like to empower current officers to appoint membership subcommittees to support the labor of stewardship. These subcommittees will have the added benefit of training members in the work of elected office and fostering a new, more diverse generation of potential directors and organizational leaders.
Our short-term recommendations for the NBCC are as follows:
1. Establish a Nonprofit Advisory Board: This appointed board will be made up of former board members and leaders in the literary community to ensure institutional memory, help with fundraising, and provide guidance for elected board members in the area of nonprofit best practices, stewardship, and organizational sustainability. We believe it is possible to appoint a nonprofit advisory board within one year.
2. Survey the NBCC Membership: We suggest that the NBCC send a survey to the membership to get a clear view of its demographics for the purpose of determining where to focus the NBCC's future recruitment, professional development, and mentorship efforts. Specifically, the NBCC should survey members about race, gender, sexuality, ability, education, work, wage, and location. All disclosures should be fully voluntary. The survey should also ask what the membership wants from the organization, what its needs are, and how the NBCC can be more responsive to the immediate needs of critics.
3. Diversify Membership & Conduct Outreach: To increase institutional interest, foster new membership, and build community, we suggest the NBCC ease membership requirements and implement an income-based, sliding scale for membership dues. This will decrease financial barriers to access, while encouraging members who can afford to do so to pay more.
The NBCC membership includes many valuable perspectives, yet has few opportunities to share them in order to shape the organization. We recommend immediately holding at least 50% of membership meetings online via Zoom or another platform, at an hour when members can attend. In order to make membership meetings fully accessible to the membership community, we suggest including an ASL interpreter or using live-captioning.
The NBCC can also do more to help its members navigate the world of publishing and the lack of diversity within it by organizing lecture series and workshops, which, depending on the format, should also include ASL interpretation or captioning. Additional resources will make the organization more accessible and useful to members, especially Black and historically marginalized critics with fewer industry connections. Possible programming includes workshops on the fundamentals of criticism, local or virtual meetups, critique groups, book clubs, literary events, and a digital forum like Study Hall, where members can share work and information about pitching, editor contact info, opportunities, and general advice.
We also recommend holding workshops led by Black critics, regardless of their affiliation with the NBCC, and establishing partnerships with writers' workshops and educational institutions that are invested in anti-racist work. These partnerships and educational opportunities will ensure that members’ approaches to criticism are holistic and inclusive.
4. Revise the NBCC's Voting System & Board Election Process: The current voting structure for board elections privileges more experienced members and well-known names. While we value the vast array of experience and institutional knowledge, knowledge is not static but dynamic, and we cannot support the advancement of a rhetoric or a system that privileges and centers whiteness while marginalizing others.
In addition to diversifying the membership and centering Black and historically marginalized voices on the board, we recommend restructuring future board elections to make them more equitable. Future elections might include a virtual town hall, with ASL interpretation or live captioning, wherein candidates introduce themselves, summarize their goals, and discuss how they might contribute to the NBCC’s mission. This process will allow for more voices from the membership to be heard and will hopefully foster a more inclusive, representative board. In the future, we wish for the board to include both experienced critics as well as emerging voices, which are crucial to the success of any vibrant literary organization.
Please find our medium- and long-term recommendations below.
Medium-term recommendations:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14F48a5LVyNkY3mc_zt5VSHbT0qupxjM832uQc3yKhMoLong-term recommendations:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1loEoPkBcXcnZGWRma6ufwWD_b1VEcwr-y66lATwMDP8We request a public response from the NBCC Board within one month of this letter.
Signed,
Kamil Ahsan
Jewell Anderson
Bradley Babendir
Fran Bigman
Nicholas Cannariato
Tobias Carroll
Monica E. Carter
Ryan Chapman
Miranda Cooper
Kristen Evans
Anita Felicelli
Michele Filgate
Holly Genovese
Matthew Jakubowski
Maris Kreizman
Chelsea Leu
Ilana Masad
Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers
Claire Mullen
Sarah Neilson
Rachael L. Nevins
Heather Scott Partington
Bethanne Patrick
Dean Rader
J. Howard Rosier
Joanna Scutts
Jenny Shank
Lizzie Skurnick
Rochelle Spencer
Sebastian Stockman
Shoba Viswanathan
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We, the undersigned, stand in solidarity with the critics and NBCC members listed above:
Nancy Babendir, supporter
Lily Meyer, NBCC Member
Joel Pinckney, supporter
Taylor Moore, supporter
Jenny Bhatt, NBCC Member
Conor Gearin, supporter
John Domini, NBCC Member
Connor Goodwin, supporter
Claire Fallon, NBCC Member
Mark Sarvas, NBCC Member
Trey Strecker, NBCC Member
Stephen Scott Whitaker, NBCC Member
Avi Steinberg, Author
Diego Báez, NBCC Member
Frank Housh, NBCC Member
S. Kirk Walsh, NBCC Member
Alexis Burling, NBCC Member
Natalie Bakopoulos, NBCC Member
Priscilla Gilman, NBCC Member
Asa Drake, NBCC Member
Thomas Hayden, NBCC Member
Susan Henderson, NBCC Member
Barbara Hendra, NBCC Member
Jeremy Lybarger, NBCC Member
Ron Slate, NBCC Member
Joe Milazzo, NBCC Member
Sarah Haas, NBCC Member
Melissa Holbrook Pierson, NBCC Member
Jim Schley, NBCC Member
Bean Gilsdorf, NBCC Member
Laura Villareal, NBCC Member
Pius Murray, NBCC Member
Benjamin Woodard, NBCC Member
Laura Wetherington, NBCC Member
Parul Kapur Hinzen, NBCC Member
Katharine Coldiron, NBCC Member
Adam Dalva, NBCC Member
Mark Athitakis, NBCC Member
Ellen Duffer, NBCC Member
Katharine Weber, NBCC Member
Olga Zilberbourg, NBCC Member
Rien Fertel, NBCC Member
Meg Waite Clayton, NBCC Member
Denise Low, NBCC Member
Maria Helena Barrera-Agarwal, NBCC Member
Amira Henderson, supporter
Yashwina Canter, supporter
Leland Cheuk, NBCC Member
Emma Smith-Stevens, author and critic
Megan Marz, NBCC Member
Rachel Molland, publicist and supporter
Spencer Ruchti, supporter
Kai Maristed, NBCC Member
Deb Olin Unferth, NBCC Member
Gregg Barrios, NBCC Member
Carolyn Kellogg, NBCC Member
Garry Howze, NBCC Member
Audra Wolfe, NBCC Member
Whitney Rosier, Supporter
Nay Saysourinho, NBCC Member
Julie Bennett-Lefkow, NBCC Member
Lanie Tankard, NBCC Member
Shani Raine Gilchrist, NBCC Member
Hope Wabuke, critic
Tara Cheesman, NBCC Member
Julayne Lee, NBCC Member
Anna Furman, NBCC Member
