Change Starts Now (And It Has, aka The Final Letter) #metoo #ustoo

Hi there, everybody! What I feared would be largely unnoticed effort to apply direct pressure to festivals and conferences and publishers to stop harassment in response to Anne Ursu’s survey has now grown — in less than two weeks — to include more than 1400 people in the children’s and YA community, including authors, educators, librarians, representatives of organizations and events, readers, and other publishing industry professionals. I thank each of you for signing on and being part of this conversation and beyond. I believe we’re already seeing things change and that’s going to continue. We still have plenty of work to do, but I truly believe we’ve made a good start. I’m so heartened by the number of conferences, festivals, and organizations that have already put new policies in place or committed to doing so. I’m also heartened that we’ve seen agents and publishers begin to take action when the details of unacceptable behavior emerge.

If you’d like to see an online version of the list of signees, you can do so here — and a huge shoutout to Jeremiah Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios, who helped me out on extracting the signatures so I didn’t have to conscript Christopher into helping me enter the names by hand (Jeremy also built this website — I highly recommend working with Clockpunk!).

The final harassment letter is attached as a PDF and will begin going out tomorrow; please feel free to download and send it to anyone you work with as well or crib from it or anything I’ve posted here on the topic as need be. I tried to correct capitalization where it was wonky in the Official Version, and you should be included unless you only left a first name. The only alteration to the letter text I made was to clarify that a comprehensive harassment policy is broader than just sexual harassment and that’s what we want.

Here of a couple of other links that may be of interest — and if anyone knows something I left off here that I told you I intended to put on, please let me know and I’ll add it. It’s been a chaotic couple of weeks and I’m on deadline (two to be exact).

• Some authors and other interested parties have started a spreadsheet with links to harassment policies and resources here.
• An HR expert willing to look over policies and consult left her contact info here.

Thanks again! Let’s go out there and make our community the best, most welcoming place (for everyone except harassers) that it can be.