It was to be published in March
via Twitter
Last December, Simon & Schuster announced it had given gave Breitbart News writer Milo Yiannopoulos a $250,000 book deal. The openly-gay champion of the alt-right has unapologetically attacked Muslims, refers to Donald Trump as “daddy,” and was banned from Twitter after unleashing a horde of racist trolls to harass Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones. Simon & Schuster’s decision caused the Chicago Review of Books to refuse to review any of its 2017 releases, and now a prominent author has left the publisher.
Feminist author Roxane Gay, (Bad Feminist, Hunger) has decided to pull her upcoming book, How to be Heard, from Simon & Schuster’s imprint TED Books. It was scheduled for a March 2018 release. “I can’t in good conscience let them publish it while they also publish Milo. So I told my agent over the weekend to pull the project,” she told Buzzfeed. “I was supposed to turn the book in this month and I kept thinking about how egregious it is to give someone like Milo a platform for his blunt, inelegant hate and provocation. I just couldn’t bring myself to turn the book in.”
Although Gay’s views are vehemently at odds with Yiannopoulos’, she believes he has the right to say them, but refuses to do business with a publisher that would promote his views. “To be clear, this isn’t about censorship,” she told Buzzfeed, “Milo has every right to say what he wants to say, however distasteful I and many others find it to be.” Yiannopoulos’ book, Dangerous, is scheduled for publication on March 14.
Check out Gay’s Ted Talk “Confessions of a Bad Feminist.”
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