Writer and editor Hal Niedzviecki has resigned as editor of Write, the Writers’ Union of Canada magazine, after outrage sparked by an opinion piece titled “Winning the Appropriation Prize” he wrote in an issue devoted to Indigenous writing.
In it, he states that “I don’t believe in cultural appropriation. In my opinion, anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities.”
He notes that most Canadian literature is written by people who are “white and middle-class” and exhorts them to look outside of their own community and write about “what you don’t know” in an effort to “explore the lives of people who aren’t like you.”
“Set your sights on the big goal: Win the Appropriation Prize,” he notes in the piece which appears under the label “Writer’s Prompt.”
Niedzviecki, who is also the founder and editor of Broken Pencil magazine, went on to reference the Indigenous writers whose work fills this issue of the magazine: “Indigenous writers, buffeted by history and circumstance, so often must write from what they don’t know … They are on the vanguard, taking risks, bravely forging ahead into the unknown.”
As writers began receiving the issue on Tuesday, outrage on social media was fast and furious.
“I am seriously disgusted that someone would use the Indigenous issue of Write as a jump point for a case for cultural appropriation on the backs, words, and reputations of the Indigenous writers featured in it. It’s not enough that we are finding our voices, reclaiming our ability to tell stories, and having to heal to tell these stories. But people want to tell them for us,” Helen Knott, a contributor to the issue, wrote on Facebook.
Board member Nikki Reimer posted on Twitter a link to a statement in which she resigns from the board of the Writers’ Union. She calls the column “clueless and thoughtless” and saying it “marks Write magazine as a space that is not safe for indigenous and racialized writers.”
She goes on to say that, “Canada is ‘exhaustingly white and middle class’ not because white writers are afraid to write stories they don’t ‘know,’ but because white writers don’t get out of the way and make space for the multitude of stories to be told by those who aren’t white and middle class.”
Writer Jennifer Love Grove pointed out on Facebook what she saw as the inherent contradiction in Niedzviecki’s statement piece. “Hal N. writes in Write magazine that canlit is too white and middle-class, and the solution is that white, middle class writers should appropriate marginalized cultures more?”
Poet and editor Stuart Ross posted on Facebook an email he sent to the Writers’ Union which contains nods to recent controversies over voice appropriation and efforts to create a publishing and media environment that better reflect the cultural makeup of our society. “At this moment in the cultural, social, artistic and political evolution of Canada, and the first, reluctant opening up of spaces for voices previously oppressed or silenced, Hal is doing the writers of Canada a great disservice,” he wrote.
The Writers’ Union quickly stepped in, apologizing “unequivocally” and noting Wednesday that “the editor of Write magazine has resigned from his position.”
The statement added that the Writers’ Union was contacting each of the contributors to that issue of the magazine individually and promised to “offer the magazine itself as a space to examine the pain this article has caused, and to take this conversation forward with honesty and respect.”
Niedzviecki did not immediately return requests for comment.
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