You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Hachette Children’s Group signs Bissett’s book on gender-based harassment and female safety
Hachette Children’s Group has signed award-winning novelist, playwright and performer Alan Bissett’s Lads: A Guide to Respect and Consent.
World rights to the book were acquired by Laura Horsley, editorial director at Hachette Children’s Group, in a deal struck with Victoria Hobbs at AM Heath. Lads: A Guide to Respect and Consent will be published on the Wren & Rook imprint in paperback, e-book and audio on 3rd August 2023.
The publisher describes Lads as “a timely addition to the much-needed conversation happening around gender-based harassment and female safety.”
Its synopsis goes on: “For too long, the conversation has focused on advice to women and girls about what not to do. Lads invites boys to join the conversations by stepping up, speaking out and creating positive change.
“Teenage boys are at an age where they find themselves subject to pressure to impress ‘the lads’. This book will aim to guide them through this territory. Covering everything from flirting with disaster and not being afraid of the friend zone, to porn, locker-room talk, consent and calling out inappropriate behaviour. Lads: A Guide to Respect and Consent will give boys helpful advice on how to be the guy that makes girls feel safe, heard and respected.”
In October 2021, Alan Bissett was one of the writers who worked on a short video produced for Police Scotland, called “Don’t Be That Guy”, which spread quickly across the globe and has racked up more than half a million views online.
Bissett’s work has dealt extensively with issues of masculinity and gender. His début novel, Boyracers (Polygon), was a coming-of-age story about teenage boys, their friendship and male peer pressure.
Its sequel Pack Men examined what happens to men in large (specifically football-related) crowds. His third novel, Death of a Ladies’ Man (Hachette Scotland) concerned itself with a form of toxic masculinity related to sex and promiscuity. The latter two books were both shortlisted for Scottish Arts Council Fiction of the Year prize. In 2013, his play about the anti-pornography campaigner Andrea Dworkin “Ban This” was shortlisted for an Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award.
He said: "When I was teenager, there was no guidebook about how to navigate interacting with girls, whether that was friendships or relationships, and I cringe when I look back on some of my behaviour and attitudes towards women. While, thankfully, the conversation around these issues has changed greatly, young men are still often unsure of what’s acceptable and what isn’t. Rather than leaving them to fall prey to the hateful voices on the internet that depict women as the enemy and men as ‘naturally’ dominant, we have created a guidebook to help them navigate this kind of territory, one that encourages them to be allies to women as they grow up.
“This isn’t a finger-wagging, ‘all men are bad’ approach but we have to start having honest conversations with young men so they can learn from past mistakes (theirs and mine!), get comfortable calling out bad behaviour, and recognise how not to be that guy.”
Horsley said: “This is a book I have wanted to publish for a long time. And depressingly, as we see violence against women and girls in the news daily, it seems more crucial than ever.
“This is therefore an important publication that we hope will help teenage boys explore and understand big topics like consent, respect and gender equality. What I love most about Alan’s approach is that it isn’t accusatory or preachy: the intention is to empower boys to navigate their teenage years into adulthood fully informed. It invites boys to the conversation, inspiring them to identify and call out bad behaviour by being an ally and by making girls feel safe and respected.”
