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I’ve gone from children’s author to truck driver — all because I stood up for J. K. Rowling

A powerful account of what it feels like to be cancelled — and lose your livelihood — just for being true to your beliefs

By Helen Carroll

HAVING manoeuvred her 32-tonne lorry into a lay-by and joined her fellow HGV drivers for a bacon roll in the nearby greasy spoon, Gillian Philip couldn’t help smiling at the stark contrast with her previous career.

As a successful children’s author, the last work lunch she had enjoyed had been in a swanky London restaurant. That was another life entirely — one in which Gillian wore stilettos rather than steel-capped boots. But, two years ago, she had been unceremoniously dumped by both her literary agent and the company that had commissioned her to write books for more than a decade.

Her crime? Certainly not lack of talent or diligence — her books sold well. Yet that counted for nothing when she fell foul of the Twitter mob for expressing support online for fellow author J. K. Rowling.

Gillian, 58, couldn’t have foreseen that, within a month of publicly backing the Harry Potter writer’s criticism of a proposed change in law — one which would allow transgender people to selfidentify as male or female — her literary career would be over.

‘I know it’s a controversial subject that evokes a lot of strong emotion, but in my worst nightmares I couldn’t have predicted the devastating fall-out from adding the hashtag #IStandWithJKRowling to my Twitter bio,’ she tells me.

‘It started with online messages

threatening to kill and rape me, moved on to emails being sent to my publishers demanding my sacking and ended, a day later, with me losing my livelihood.

‘It was such a scary time. I was worried about mine and my children’s safety.’

Unsurprisingly, the story attracted much media interest.

But what Gillian didn’t reveal at the time was that this all happened just six weeks after her husband, Ian, died.

Bosses at the publishing firm were aware of her family’s tragedy and the fact it had left

her as sole supporter, both emo-tionally and financially, of her teenage twin son and daughter.

Opening up for the first time, Gillian says: ‘I didn’t feel strong enough to talk about

my husband’s death at the time — I’d have become very emotional — and also I didn’t

want people thinking I was playing the sympathy card because I’d been widowed.

‘This was a bad thing to happen to me even if I hadn’t just lost my husband.

‘With the perspective of distance, however, I’m horrified that they could have dropped me at that point. At the time, I couldn’t see things clearly.’

Gillian’s comments come in a week when the publishing

industry is embroiled in another clash over free speech. Writer Kate Clanchy, who was last year accused of racism in her award-winning memoir, has said she’s become a scapegoat for the entire publishing industry. In a letter to members of the Society

of Authors, Clanchy accused Chocolat author Joanne Harris, the society’s chair, of calling her ‘ignorant, cruel and patronising’. She has also hired private

investigators to look into the social media activity of Harris and several others.

In a statement made to those in receipt of the letter, the Society said the document ‘made serious allegations

about the chair which should be fully investigated’, adding:

‘Joanne Harris strongly denies these allegations.’

Reflecting on this latest spat, Gillian says: ‘When authors can’t even rely on their own “trade union” to defend them, it’s no wonder free creative expression is in danger of becoming a historical relic — and in the industry that should champion it most.

‘I’m sometimes asked if I miss publishing. I do miss writing, and meeting readers, and of course I miss my pay, but

it’s a relief to be outside the industry. From my new vantage point, it’s even easier to recognise

the genuinely nasty atmosphere that prevails — especially in children’s publishing.

‘Writers are cowed by the vindictive rhetoric of small but over-powerful cliques; few dare to speak their minds, and even fewer dare to write them.’

Gillian is a strong, resourceful woman, but in the days immedi-ately after her own ordeal, she couldn’t drag herself out of bed. During one low point, her teenage son had to hold her up when her legs gave way.

She had been employed by Working Partners as an author on a freelance basis for more than a decade. The company produces series of books for children and young adults — among them Beast Quest

and Rainbow Magic — and the books Gillian wrote, under the collective pseudonym Erin Hunter, with her real name credited inside, were published by HarperCollins.

Not only did she pen seven books in the series Survivors, which is about dogs, and seven in the Bravelands series, about African wildlife,

with a contract to write two more (now cancelled), she also regularly toured the U.S. and Europe, addressing audiences of young readers as the face of Erin Hunter.

So great was Gillian’s loyalty to the company that even when her husband had a mini stroke in 2018, and her mother became very unwell with Alzheimer’s in February 2020, she finished the U.S. tours — organising care for her loved ones — so as not to leave her employers, and young readers, in the lurch.

She had been married to Ian, who was 26 years her senior, for 30 years when he died in May 2020, after a series of mini strokes which led to vascular dementia.

Working Partners sent her a beautiful bouquet, with a

message of condolence and a note telling her to take the time she needed to grieve.

This meant a lot. In the early months of the pandemic, it was

difficult for family and friends to rally round, and Gillian and her twins, who were then aged 19 and home from university, were each other’s only solace.

‘Any compas-sion intended had clearly evap-orated six weeks later when, on June 26, the firm took away my livelihood,’ says Gillian. ‘My agent broke the news that Working Partners had ended my contract, under instruction from HarperCollins.’

At the time, the publisher stated: ‘HarperCollins UK does not have a contract with this author, we have no direct relationship with her and we have not sacked her.’

Meanwhile, Working Partners has said that the decision not to continue working with Gillian was ‘not in direct response to the nature of [her] personally expressed views’, but rather because she had ‘associated the Erin Hunter pen-name with her personal views on Twitter’.

A couple of weeks after her contract was ended, Gillian was

dropped by her literary agency and ‘all mention of me removed from their website, effectively ending my writing career’.

‘I felt betrayed. And even though I knew the people sending messages were trolls, having so

much hatred and venom — and those awful threats — levelled at you takes a serious toll.

‘I deactivated Twitter, but still the death and rape threats came, via my website. These attacks were much harder to bear because my employers, who I’d thought were my friends, weren’t defending me.

‘The publishing industry should be about freedom of expression and diversity of opinion, but it has caved in to this toxic community, which wants to control how people think.

‘I know of authors who have had books pulped and contracts cancelled because publishers are terrified of a backlash.’

Anyone who has stuck their head above the parapet to voice reservations about the possible implications for women of a

change in law relating to trans rights will be familiar with this; the haste with which others

‘Few writers dare speak their minds’

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