TAKING A STAND

Roxane Gay Pulls Her Book to Protest Milo Yiannopoulos

Refuses to release book on same publisher as alt-right troll.

Feminist author Roxane Gay has chosen to pull her upcoming book from Simon & Schuster’s publishing roster because of its decision to also publish a book by alt-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos. Gay said “I just couldn’t bring myself” to turn in the book, called How to Be Heard, to S&S imprint TED Books, in response to the hatemonger author’s upcoming release of Dangerous. Upon first news that Yiannopoulos received a $250,000 book deal, Simon & Schuster faced a strong wave of backlash focusing on the Breitbart writer’s long history of sexist and racist comments—at one point openly mocking and harassing a transgender college student during one of his campus speeches. “[T]o be clear, this isn’t about censorship,” Gay said in a statement. “Milo has every right to say what he wants to say, however distasteful I and many others find it to be. He doesn’t have a right to have a book published by a major publisher but he has, in some bizarre twist of fate, been afforded that privilege. So be it. I’m not interested in doing business with a publisher willing to grant him that privilege.”