Elizabeth Day, Afua Hirsch and Mick Herron are among those named as Royal Society of Literature (RSL) fellows for 2024.
The new cohort of 29 writers, announced at a ceremony held at the Garden Museum, London, also includes Jacqueline Crooks, Guy Gunaratne and Victoria Hislop.
The new fellows signed their name in the RSL roll book using the pens of historically prominent writers including Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Andrea Levy and Jean Rhys.
The society’s president, Bernardine Evaristo, used her address to talk about the importance of reading. “This year I’m inspired to talk about readers for whom most authors, one assumes, are writing – and the importance of nurturing and engaging with them in the literature ecosystem,” she said. “Without readers, writing would be an unpaid hobby. They are our supporters, interpreters, the customers without whom there would, in fact, be no publishing industry.”
Thirteen new honorary fellows – individuals who have made a significant contribution to the advancement of literature in the UK, or who have “rendered special service” to the RSL – were also announced. These include Sarah Ardizzone, a translator; Sanchita Basu De Sarkar, owner of the Children’s Bookshop in Muswell Hill; and SuAndi, a writer, poet and freelance cultural director of National Black Arts Alliance. SuAndi also won the Benson medal, which recognises services to literature across a whole career.
The announcement of the new cohort comes months after the RSL referred itself to the Charity Commission after facing allegations of censorship, as well as criticism over changes to the way fellows are elected and its response to the stabbing of Salman Rushdie in 2022. On Wednesday, the Times reported that more than 20 fellows planned to boycott this year’s ceremony.
In February, Maggie Fergusson, the former editor of the RSL’s annual magazine, Review, told the Times that publication was postponed over an article that was critical of Israel. The RSL said that it published the Review “in full” in late March.
The RSL was also criticised for its response to Rushdie’s stabbing. Novelist Ian McEwan told the Guardian: “The failure of the RSL leadership to give unequivocal support to Salman Rushdie following the brutal attempt on his life was to inhabit a remote moral universe that most of us do not share.” In February, the charity tweeted: “The RSL supports you @SalmanRushdie following the horrific attack on your life in 2022 – you had our support then as you do now.”
The society has also been criticised for expanding its fellowship too quickly. In 2018, the RSL appointed 40 new fellows under the age of 40, and in 2022 and 2023, it elected 60 fellows through RSL Open, an initative aimed at recognising writers from backgrounds underrepresented in UK literary culture. This year, it plans to launch a new election process, which will allow members of the public to recommend writers for fellowship. Recommendations will be whittled down by election panels and voted on by the panel, the council, the vice-presidents, the president and the presidents emeriti.
