This is a temporary summary of the data I have collected regarding the McIlvanney Prize longlists. I am hoping to create a dedicated website for this ongoing work.
The McIlvanney Prize is run by Bloody Scotland. It was founded in 2012 under the name The Deanston Book Prize, and was called the Bloody Scotland Crime Book of the Year in 2015 before being named the McIlvanney Prize in 2016.
On 8th June 2022, I tweeted about the lack of diversity on the recently announced McIlvanney Prize 2022 longlist. I have collected all my tweets here. Over time, I plan to put all those tweets and a full discussion on this webpage, or ideally on a purpose built webpage that will present all my work so far and act as a hub for an ongoing project that will be broader in scope and sustainable.
At the time of my first tweets, I promised to gather more thorough data. I’ve now done that, and as a starting point I am making that data public.
I will start with my disclaimer: I am working alone and unpaid. I’m not part of any group or institution and I have no agenda other than sharing this information. All this data is in the public domain on the Bloody Scotland website – all I have done is crunch the numbers and present it as (hopefully) easy to understand percentages. Any mistakes are mine and are unintentional. I have only done this analysis for the McIlvanney Prize because I have limited time and am working unpaid, and because that longlist began this conversation.
However, there is extensive and exceptional research being done in the broader area of diversity in the sector by others including Christina Neuwirth and Stevie Marsden. Their data is not yet in the public domain, but I believe it will be thorough, broad in scope, industry-wide, and rigorous. Their existing initial findings are published on the ROAR website, which are fascinating, so I would urge you all to read them. If/when their full data is available, I look forward to reading and sharing it – and probably analysing it at length, because I think it will be fascinating. For now, I will show you what I have. I collected it all myself and it is my choice alone to share it here.
First of all, I looked at the entire lifetime of the prize through all three iterations: the McIlvanney Prize (2016-2022), the Bloody Scotland Crime Book of the Year (2015), and the Deanston Book Prize (2012-2014). My findings are:
Total number of longlisted titles = 106
When the award changed name and became the McIlvanney Prize, the longlisting process changed – and what began as an initial list of six books was expand to a longlist of 10-13 book (varying numbers by year). So I looked at the data from the McIlvanney only, to see if the larger longlist had changed the picture. During the seven-year history of the McIlvanney prize:
I’m going to say that again because I think it is extraordinary.
Over the total 7 years of the McIlvanney Prize, a quarter (25%) of all books longlisted were written by the same 4 people.
Of that four, one has been longlisted every single year.
Another one is a founder of Bloody Scotland and a board member.
So, increasing the length of the longlist has not increased diversity. I personally would suggest that some other changes are therefore needed.
You can read my tweets about this data on Twitter here.
Analysing data by demographic is complex because it is not always clear how people identify. I have done what I can through publicly available information – apologies again for any mistakes. I am not going to present a full breakdown of the numbers by demographic because I would not feel right or confident in doing so.
All the names of all longlists are available on the Bloody Scotland website and here come the links:
https://bloodyscotland.com/announcements/mcilvanney-prize-2016-longlist-announced/
https://bloodyscotland.com/announcements/mcilvanney-prize-2017-longlist-announced/
https://bloodyscotland.com/announcements/2018-mcilvanney-prize-longlist-revealed/
https://bloodyscotland.com/2019-mcilvanney-prize-longlist/
https://bloodyscotland.com/prizes/mcilvanney-prize-longlist-2020/
https://bloodyscotland.com/announcements/mcilvanney-longlist-2021/
https://bloodyscotland.com/announcements/mcilvanney-prize-2022-longlist-announced/
There are obviously numerous issues here that are feeding into the creation of a very closed community. The same names should not be repeated on a literary prize longlist to this extent. Nor should the same names be appearing on a book festival programme year after year. These issues are clearly related – but it is a lot of work to do this kind of analysis for ten years of an entire book festival. I am working on it.
I would like to highlight a few other thoughts of my own:
This is not just about one thing or one demographic; it is certainly not just about gender or ethnicity. It is about a tendency to always platform and reward the same people / the same stories / the same kind of writing / the names or styles we recognise / the people we are friends with.
So, what is happening at the McIlvanney Prize to create such a closed and repetitive longlist? Why is there so little diversity?
To start with, the eligibility criteria for the prize are unusually narrow and will inevitably exclude the work of first generation immigrants and migrants from the prize. In my opinion, this is a contributing factor to the lack of diversity. I tweeted about this and you can read my tweets here and here. You can read the eligibility criteria themselves on the Bloody Scotland website.
Next, the books that are considered eligible, are then considered for the longlist by a pool of volunteer “readers”. It is the marks of the readers that are used to determine the longlist, though the details of that process remain opaque. As far as I am aware, to the best of my current knowledge and in my opinion, the readers are unpaid, given minimal guidance, offered no training about judging or unconscious bias, are lacking in diversity, and are given no process by which to declare conflict of interest of any kind.
Because crime fiction tends to be written in series, any reading process cannot really be anonymous because readers will recognise the characters. When a writer is repeatedly platformed, their books will automatically be recognised and presumed (by inexperienced or untrained readers) to be the best. Furthermore it is, at present, unclear whether any attempt is being made to anonymise the titles when they are sent to the readers.
Series are designed to hook readers in – it is why they sell so well. So it is understandable that subsequent books in a series are being longlisted year after year. Understandable, but I would suggest problematic, because it has nothing to do with originality or diversity and everything to do with familiarity. There is no limit to the number of times books in the same series or previously longlisted authors are allowed to be submitted to the prize.
Regarding the repeated longlisting of the same small group of people, I would say that this kind of clique is often seen in literary circles. In my experience, it is particularly extreme in crime fiction, but it is everywhere else too. It is about who gets platformed, which dictates whose names are known. It is about the Bloody Scotland Book Festival as well as the McIlvanney Prize, and more generally it is about book festival culture and prize culture throughout the sector.
But there are ways to open this up. There are ways to increase diversity. There are ways to reconceive of what a literary prize is for and how it can operate. This is part of a much larger conversation that I hope will be ongoing and beneficial for everyone.
In terms of this part of that longer conversation, I am hoping for:
1) An overhaul of the McIlvanney Prize eligibility criteria.
2) An overhaul of the readers pool and longlisting process at the McIlvanney Prize.
3 ) An overhaul of the internal process at both the Bloody Scotland Book Festival and the McIlvanney Prize, and of the board of Bloody Scotland who manage and oversee the prize, with a view to establishing:
a) Best practice throughout the Bloody Scotland Book Festival and the McIlvanney Prize.
b) A comprehensive and transparent commitment to EDI.
c) Accessibility throughout the Bloody Scotland Book Festival and the McIlvanney Prize.
d) An acknowledgement of the conflicts of interest that can take place and the establishment of a process to declare and remove them from both the Bloody Scotland Book Festival and the McIlvanney Prize.
I welcome all analysis and am happy to engage with everyone!
Thanks for reading.