Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Supporting Cast | 2020 | Kit de Waal | Buy |
Supporting Cast came out of Kit de Waal’s long-standing concern about who gets to be a writer. British literary culture, she has argued, tends to draw its authors from a relatively narrow class background, and the anthology was her attempt to do something practical about that. She commissioned writers with working-class backgrounds to contribute short pieces, covering fiction and memoir, and edited the results into a collection published in 2020.
The book received considerable attention partly for the argument it was making and partly for the quality of the writing inside it. De Waal’s editorial approach is evident in the range of voices and subjects included, from industrial northern England to urban Birmingham and beyond.
Readers interested in de Waal’s wider influence on British literary culture will find Supporting Cast as useful as her fiction. It shows her working as a champion of other writers rather than just as an author herself.