Swift Press to publish Clanchy after Pan Mac departure

Swift Press will publish Kate Clanchy’s Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, along with her prose backlist, after Pan Macmillan parted company with the author.

The independent publisher approached the author direct, after she and Picador cut ties “by mutual consent”, with Pan Macmillan reverting the rights and ceasing distribution of all her work.

Clanchy’s Orwell Prize-winning title was widely criticised last summer for its portrayal of young people, including accusations of racial stereotyping and problematic descriptions of other children, including those with autism. Three of Clanchy’s critics faced racial abuse online, prompting an open letter in their support, eventually signed by more than 1,000 people.

Swift has already made the e-book of Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me available, with minor revisions and a new afterword, and will publish a physical edition "as soon as possible". It will be followed by the rest of her prose backlist. 

Another independent publisher has approached Clanchy to publisher her poetry, The Bookseller understands.

In a statement, Swift Press said: "Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me is, among other things, an exploration of difference in a multicultural society, and the larger forces at work on the life-chances of different kinds of pupils, told through the lens of one teacher with a lifetime of experience. Kate Clanchy writes about her students with deep affection, and it is clear that she wants them to do as well as they possibly can.

"And that’s to leave aside the multiple testimonies from her pupils about the extraordinary difference she has made to their lives. Partly because she writes with an often self-lacerating honesty, and in a way that explicitly shows her moving from positions of ignorance – or even prejudice – to ones of understanding, reasonable people have disagreed as to whether she was able successfully to capture the potential tensions between difference and sameness without exacerbating them. But it is our fundamental view as a publisher that readers should be able to make up their own minds."

Clanchy said: "I was pleased to have been approached by Swift Press, and that they will allow my work to remain available to readers, who will be able to judge it for themselves."

Swift Press was launched in the summer of 2020 by former John Murray publisher Mark Richards and Diana Broccardo, ex-commercial director of Profile Books.

It published Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland, which sold 20,000 copies ahead of the film adaptation picking up three Oscars. It also published Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, which was the subject of controversy in the US last year when the American Booksellers Association sent it out in a promotional box.