Tilly's Army - of literary nobodies

Supporters of the ex-Waterstones bookseller include "a genderfluid transvestite goblin", retired librarian and 98 bloggers

This week The Guardian broke the news that over “500 authors and book industry professionals have signed an open letter calling on Waterstones to reverse a decision to dismiss” Tilly Fitzgerald, a bookseller.

In case you missed the preceding events, the paper explains: “Fitzgerald was sacked after responding to a post on X by author Christina Dalcher, which appeared to endorse a publishing network for those ‘concerned about the impact of gender ideology’ on the sector. Fitzgerald wrote: ‘Ooh, I’ll enjoy tearing up your books and popping them in the bin today. Thanks for the heads up.’”

Soon after being fired, Fitzgerald took to social media to do what grown adults do: film themselves crying and then put it on media. In a lot of words she told the world “IT’S NOT FAIR!”

The Wokies were moved by Tilly’s tears, and formed something of an army to protect her.

Leading the charge was author and comedy writer Sara Gibbs (who didn’t have much of a sense of humour about my calling her campaign “Authors for Fascism”).

She rallied “authors and book industry workers”, getting them to sign an open letter in support of Tilly. Seeing this, and The Guardian’s write up - which mentioned that “500 authors and book industry professionals” were signatories - you’d get the impression of a serious commotion in the literary world. You might imagine that everyone from Jilly Cooper to Ian McEwan to Richard Osman was furious about Waterstones’ decision.

However, I soon discovered that these “500” literary insiders are mostly nobodies, people who enjoy reading and those with skin in the game - including a “genderfluid transvestite goblin”. Successful authors - such as Joanne Harris of Chocolat fame - are the exception rather than rule.

Had the political Right made equivalent claims to The Guardian’s piece, make no mistake: Her Royal Truthness, Marianna Spring, would be investigating them for “disinformation”.

As a measure of the low calibre the open letter is, it includes “98 “bloggers”, some of whom I couldn’t even find online - or had difficulty identifying from the measly online results.

I searched for “A Hunt, Blogger”, for instance, the first name on the open letter, and found two possibilities: the author of Tales of Me & The Husband:

or Andy Hunt of Toolshed Technologies:

Then I searched for another blogger on the list called Aine O'Connell. I could only find a woman whose Twitter profile says she’s “Proud to milk cows”

and this person:

I accept that some of my suggestions above could be wrong - so I apologise in advance to any innocent bloggers - but I had to demonstrate the gap between “500 authors and book industry professionals” and reality.

Other signatories - remember, these people have been put into the same category as (love or hate her) Joanne Harris in terms of literary merit and success - include retired librarians, readers, book lovers, multiple bookstagrammers, “IT Support at large publisher”, a “Book Blogger and Human Being”, as well as former Waterstones staff.

Additional signatories (which have been separated from the elite list of librarians and human beings) include:

• Jessica Thomson, Best friend of a trans girl

• John Parkinson, Just an enjoyer of books

• L Jackson, Waterstones customer

• Linda Fathi, person who buys books

• Lucinda Parfett, Unemployed

• Suzanne Rust, Bookworm

• Violet G., Concerned member of the public

• Zoe Rider, Avid reader

You can’t exactly imagine Waterstones’ press team saying to each other “Well, if Linda Fathi - ‘a person who buys books’ - thinks Tilly should be reinstated!”

However, the more sinister truth is they may see The Guardian headline, sh*t themselves and overreact (into rehiring Tilly), all because they have been tricked into thinking literary giants are raging across Blighty.

I searched for more names on the list - fairly randomly, as there were 500 to get through - and it got EVEN worse.

Here’s a small selection, so you can sense the calibre of these “book industry” insiders:

Bitter Karella, author and “genderfluid transvestite goblin”

Julie Gourinchas - Karella (above)’s agent - a “she/they” who is:

“keenly interested in hearing from authors traditionally underrepresented in the industry, including but not restricted to writers of colour; queer, trans, and nonbinary writers; working class writers; disabled writers; etc.”

Jenet Le Lacheur, Author (whose talents extend to acting. Le Lacheur recently rewrote and starred in Yerma, “transposed into the queer kink scene of modern Britain” in an “urgent adaptation” with an “all trans cast”):

Jeanna Louise Skinner, Author of Plus-Size Fantasy Romance

For some reason I am blocked by this person.

Billie Lauren Hindle, Script Editor, who last week tweeted:

“Did you know I identified as nonbinary from 2020-2023? It ended up not being the right road for me in the end but that doesn’t mean it isn’t for others!”

Kip Alizadeh, illustrator of this heartwarming children’s story:

Caitlin Francis, Content writer - who seems to have bigger fish to fry

Kizzia Mildmay, Blogger

Another literary giant who blocked me before I knew they existed.

Larissa Caroline Nikolaus, Hobbyauthor

Wednesday Holmes, Artist & Author - and “non binary queer artist”

Wednesday has apparently been commissioned by BBC Bitesize; another rabbit hole, ey.

James Felton, Author and Great British Bellend

Lindsay Moakes, Author

Adam Schembri, author

Writing this, I discovered I’ve muted him, but I can’t remember why. My mute threshold is quite high, so he must be particularly awful.

Case in point: he recently mourned the end of Queer History MA at Goldsmiths with a retweet:

Cailean Steed, Author and they/themer

Professor Sally Hines, Author and the recipient of almost £700,000 in taxpayer cash to study pregnant men (her other terrible studies have had large funding amounts too).

Owen J Hurcum, Author and taxpayer-funded PhD Researcher in Transgender Archeology.

Also a professional irritant on social media (taxpayers’ time, Owen!):

talking of professional irritants…

Equality Amplified, Editor/Blogger 

Equality Amplified is a company that’s basically been set up to sound as it’s important (“we spoke to Equality Amplified for this news piece”).

But up until recently it’s only had two members, one of which is a whiny man who sits on X getting annoyed at JK Rowling and fighting for children to have puberty blockers:

Willett is a Doctoral Researcher in Creative Writing at Brunel University, where he “explores spaces of queer transformation, both corporal and incorporeal, and how we can disrupt the binary nature of gender, sex and power.”

Sounds great.

And why not round off with these household names…

Laura Steel-Marshall, Author

Mirrigold:

So you can see, in short, that Tilly in no way deserves to be rehabilitated; certainly not when Gibbs may as well have asked a neighbour, or someone good at the local pub quiz, to sign her “open letter”.

Frankly, it deserves to be torn up and popped in the bin. Which I’m sure no signatory will mind me saying.