What should we do, publicly and privately, with meaningful YA works when their authors behave unacceptably?

Ask Alice is an online column written by our former Secretary, Dr Alice Boer-Endacott, who has published several young adult fantasy novels and a non-fiction mini, under ‘A B Endacott’.

Note: This article contains explicit references to authors whose alleged behaviour or expressed views are deeply harmful to others. Please read with caution and care. If you or someone you know has been exposed to domestic, family and sexual violence, you can visit 1800RESPECT. If the material in this column distresses you, please contact Beyond Blue. 

For some time, I’ve been wondering how I might (and indeed, if I even can) engage with texts that have been deeply meaningful to me when they’ve been authored by someone to turns out to be odious in either their conduct or views (or both). 

With each author who topples, so grows the list of books at which I longingly gaze but struggle to know how to approach, either privately or publicly. The issue seems so thorny, so complex, that I haven’t been able to arrive at a clear answer. 

However, two recent things have prompted me to at least try and work to an answer: 

First, the recent arrest of Australian Author Craig Silvey, author of Jasper Jones, Runt, and Honeybee, on charges of producing, distributing, and possessing child exploitation material. 

Second, an excellent article written by my one of my amazing PhD supervisors, Dr Julian Novitz, on this subject. 

So with these elements urging me on, this month I’m trying to answer: What should we do, publicly and privately, with meaningful YA works when their authors behave unacceptably?

To answer this, I spoke with Julian further about his article and embarked upon some extra research. I focused my discussion on three authors in particular: J K Rowling, Neil Gaiman*, and Silvey (although this issue ranges far beyond just them). These are relatively recent scandals, and the works of these authors are frequently nominated as important or meaningful to readers, especially during their adolescence. 

Julian’s article specifically speaks to ‘performative’ reading: reading not just for personal gratification but as an act which signals something to others we would like them to understand about ourselves. This extends beyond explicitly discussing or sharing a social media post about a book to having a book displayed on shelves, even in one’s own home, in public view. Julian provides the excellent example of sliding “over to a host’s bookshelves at a party and attempted to discern something about their personality and interests from the titles” (yes, I do this all the time). As such, he focuses on the idea that when it emerges an author might have conducted themselves in a morally unacceptable way – be that through holding certain views, or through harmful action – a common response is public condemnation and rejection the work, culminating in an absence of discussion about the author, or their work, in public forums, be that social media, the classroom, or in more general forms of literary discourse. As an example, across my doctoral research, I observed when bookstagrammers did occasionally reference such authors, they would often put asterisks in their name (eg “G*iman), quite literally censoring their name.

One way this public rejection – and erasure – manifests, which Julian brings up, and which I observed in my own research, is a ‘corner of shame,’ a bookshelf out of sight from visitors and – importantly – never featured in any social media post. 

However, I don’t think we can entirely relegate these books to the ‘shelf of shame’ in public discourse. There are two reasons for this. One is because these texts were meaningful for a reason – because they resonated with people. To essentially never speak of them again is to ignore some of the valuable lessons we might have learned from them personally and as a society. 

However, a second reason the grim fact that this is a thread, if pulled, will leave us with a very narrow set of texts to read, and this locks us out from discussions that advance our collective understanding of complexity. Let’s start with that second reason.

A commentator Julian cites, also notes that with respect to ‘Classic’ literature, “we already know pretty much everything we’ll ever know about the authors […] All their scandals are either public knowledge, or died with them.” Let’s unpack that. 

With respect to known scandals, consider George Orwell: In a rather horrible irony, despite depicting the grim consequences of a surveillance state, George Orwell himself “handed over to the British authorities the names of 38 public figures whom he thought should be treated with suspicion as secret communists or ‘fellow travellers’ who sympathised with the aims of Stalin’s Russia.” Moreover, Orwell’s treatment of his wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, was nothing short of abhorrent. 1984 is on the syllabus of a subject I teach called The Power of Ideas: 10 Great Books. With each year I’ve taught the subject, 1984 feels increasingly relevant. Yet part of our examination of the text explores these issues. For one, we examine Orwell’s depiction of Julia (for both good and bad). Moreover, we discuss whether there is some human impulse to ‘tattle’ – an impulse that Orwell himself couldn’t overcome but which he is able to recognise we need to try and curtail (or at least build a society whose structures are not strengthened by such ‘tattling’). 

With respect to scandals about which we don’t know, many of the authors of works on the literary canon might have been terrible people, but we have no way to know what they did. As a result, those works stay. Yet with the requirement for contemporary authors to have an online presence and persona as part of their author ‘brand,’ the likelihood of any author running afoul of some scandal increases in terms of revealing a particular political belief, or in terms of behaviour that, if not illegal, is certainly immoral and often facilitated by the position of celebrity. Obviously, some transgressions are far worse than others. Illegal conduct cannot be condoned. Abusive behaviour, even if it falls within the bounds of legality, should be rejected. But summary rejection of an author’s work in the form of refusing to discuss it at all is worth pausing to consider, especially given it risks ossifying the literary cannon as it currently stands – who can compete with the unknown sins of authors long-dead? 

Julian said something beautiful in our discussion that resonates with me as both an author and reader: “I usually feel that good authors express or arrive at better versions of themselves through their texts, sometimes entirely in spite of themselves.” See Orwell’s behaviour to illustrate this point. Moreover, the discussion that arises from acknowledging and navigating the complexity of reading a meaningful work and reconciling it with the behaviour of the author can itself have value. 

Given the above, does that mean I think books my problematic authors should stay on syllabi in the interests of fostering good discussion? Do I Jasper Jones should stay on school curriculums, for instance? Honestly, I’m not sure. The nature of the accusations against Silvey, and the fact that the people studying the book are generally children gives rise to a moral ick I can’t articulate well, but which leads me to say ‘no.’ But I also would argue the classroom is the best place to mediate that discomfort if we feel there’s still value in the work on its own merits – in the same way that I’ve spoken about the value of exploring texts which depict sex in classroom. 

Julian said to me, “there was a pretty good line on X after the Neil Gaiman scandal broke, where someone appealed for people to remember the rich empathy that he is capable of in his work and then judge him even more harshly for it, because he knew how to be decent person.” 

Gaiman’s nuanced depiction of trans woman Wanna Manning in A Dream of You is worth highlighting as an example of this empathy. Although some have subsequently critiqued the storyline as being a classic ‘kill your gays’ trope, bearing in mind that this was published in 1993, the representation was, for its time, extremely progressive and important to many LGBTQIA+ readers. Equally, What you need to be warm is a beautiful and empathetic work, written as part of Gaiman’s role as UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador to highlight the plight of refugees, with all author proceeds going back to support the UNHCR’s work. Can we erase discussion of these works, or is too difficult to reconcile these works against the behaviour towards women of which Gaiman was accused? 

Similarly, J K Rowling, before entering her villain era wherein she directs funds to anti-trans causes – including establishing The J K Rowling Womens Fund (ick), has poured money into various charities. This includes Lumos, which works with governments in countries from Moldova to Kenya to reform their education and child protection systems. Even after she really doubled down on her anti-trans rhetoric, when Covid hit in 2020, she donated money to groups which support homeless people and victims of domestic abuse. The Harry Potter series champions choice as the key difference in determining how one’s life unfolds. Can we reasonably appreciate that message on its own merits, or is it impossible to absorb knowing where Rowling’s own choices have led her in 2026? 

Julian’s article sums it up well: “Authors are often as complex, human and multifaceted as their characters. It is reasonable to at least try to separate their fiction from the aspects of their personal lives and beliefs we may find unpalatable. But we may, individually, find lines we cannot cross, fictional worlds that we can never visit or return to.” 

When I spoke with him, Julian emphasised, “I don’t think there’s anything we “should” necessarily do as a reader in these cases. If you enjoy a work by a particular author and find that they have done or said something you consider to problematic, then how you respond is really up to you.”  

In her doctoral thesis, Lili Wilkinson (yes that Lili Wilkinson!) quotes Scott Westerfeld stating that his readers are themselves already politically engaged. Westerfeld goes on to say the sheer act of having a preferred author or preferred type of book is itself a political act. This comment is important because it points to the fact we often erase the intelligence and intellectual agency of readers – especially younger readers. 

This aligns with Julian’s comment to me: “I think it is just as fair to determine that your initial reading of the text has a value and validity that is independent of your knowledge of the author, as it is to decide to either critically re-examine or renounce their work in the light of this knowledge. We make our own choices as readers and audiences and we can’t be expected to all make the same choices.”

That the brings us back to the fact that the works produced by these people have importance to readers, independent of the reader’s knowledge of the author. That same commentator Julian cites acknowledges the nostalgic dilemma, too “controversies or not, they hold memories from my teenage years, and contain stories that comforted me when I needed it.” We can’t completely dismiss this. Julian notes in his article, “the cultural artefacts [these authors] created still have value, and may have meaning and resonance for new audiences who discover them.”

At the end of this, then, I land on the answer that there is no specific or didactic answer. It depends on the author, on the book, on their actions, and on your own morality and approach to literature. Julian advances this question: “We may reasonably decline to support them financially through book sales, or enhance their visibility by discussing or promoting their work […] But what about public or private reading and enjoyment?” Regardless of how magnificent the work is, if the author’s behaviour is sufficiently abhorrent, many of us might feel they simply can’t endorse the author by engaging with their work in any way shape or form – or there can be no enjoyment gleaned from reading the work knowing what the author might have done or said. Equally, we may find significant enrichment from engaging with the arising complexity.

But we are missing one extra thing to consider: What’s in the books? 

Do the books contain material which reflects, or even endorses, the problematic worldviews and actions of the authors? If they do, should we never read them again? Equally, if they don’t, what should we as readers do? 

Well, unfortunately I’ve run out of words. So you’ll have to read the answer to that in next month’s column (sorry!)

*Although the charges against Gaiman have been dropped, what has seemingly emerged about his sexual preferences and broader behaviour toward women, means his name, and his writing, has been tarnished.