thebookseller.com, December 2016
Virago has signed 18-year-old activist and writer June Eric-Udorie, one of the BBC 100 Women for 2016, to edit an anthology that will focus on intersectional feminism, identity and beliefs.
Ailah Ahmed, commissioning editor, and Sarah Savitt, deputy publisher, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Julia Kardon at Mary Evans Inc.
Eric-Udorie is a writer, feminist campaigner and an editorial trainee at Penguin Random House UK. Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, the New Statesman, the Telegraph, and ESPN, among others, and last year she secured 50,000 signatures to a petition to overturn a government decision to remove feminism from the A-level Politics syllabus. She has worked with children’s charity Plan UK, the Department of International Development, the Southbank’s Women of the World Festival and the UN. Eric-Udorie said the anthology was born out of the renewed appetite for "nuanced" conversations about feminism and aims to provide a platform for women "who continue to be marginalised within the feminist movement".
"Over the last few years, my feminist politics has developed and changed hugely, and for that I have to credit women of colour online, especially Black women, for their scholarship. I think it’s time we move away from a predominantly white, middle class, able-bodied feminist discourse, and I hope this anthology will give a platform to women who continue to be marginalised within the feminist movement. I want to ask: who feels apart of the movement and who feels left out? Why do some women feel that they cannot identify as feminists? What do we want to see changed? This anthology was conceived to address the appetite I have seen for conversations about feminism that are complicated and nuanced. There are so many different types of feminism(s) and I hope this anthology will explore some of them. I truly think it could be revolutionary," said Eric-Udorie.
Ahmed and Savitt said: "We are very proud to be working with June Eric-Udorie, who has a wonderful curiosity and intelligence and will find the most interesting and original writers to include in this anthology. We believe Virago should always be at the cutting-edge of discussions about gender and identity, and we hope this anthology will start many conversations. Her book will also build on the success we’ve had with two other feminist anthologies we’ve published recently, Fifty Shades of Feminism and I Call Myself a Feminist."