A question of balance – my commitment to give minority authors visibility

When I’m not reviewing crime and thrillers here, I’m reviewing horror and science fiction over on scifiandscary.com. The team there have been talking a lot recently about the importance of giving visibility to works from minority groups. Or to put it really simply, anyone who isn’t a straight, white dude. On SF&S, I’ve made a commitment to publish two reviews a month by minority authors. If I hate the book, it’ll get a bad review, but at least it (and the author) will be getting visibility.

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Which brings us to CriminOlly. I’ve been neglecting this blog lately (sorry), but I’m back in the game now and have just written six reviews which are scheduled over the next couple of months. Guess what, though? They’re all by straight, white dudes.

Looking back over what I’ve reviewed to date I’ve actually not done too badly. Of the 35 reviews I’ve published here, 17 are for books by authors who are women, LGBT+, or people of colour. So, despite the coming glut of straight white dudes, I’ve actually struck a reasonable balance. This is partly due to the fact that in 2018, when I started CriminOlly, I was only reading books by women. In other words, I gave myself a head start, but I need to make sure I consider balance going forward.

My commitment for CriminOlly, then, is that for every review I publish for a book by a straight, white dude, I’ll publish one for an author who isn’t all those things. The crime genre has great representation from female authors, so it shouldn’t be hard, but I’m keen to make sure other groups get a look in too, so if you have any recommendations please add them in the comments.