
It may seem like the diversity conversation has been a backdrop of the literary world forever, but it’s really a relatively young one. The VIDA count, which measures gender disparity in publishing, didn’t begin until 2009. In 2014, it began measuring ethnic disparity. And it wasn’t until 2014 that #WeNeedDiverseBooks started trending on Twitter, giving rise to the movement that has been changing children’s literature.
And yet it’s always been at the forefront for some people. One of those groups is literary magazine editors who are diverse themselves. (I myself, a first-generation immigrant, edit fiction at Tahoma Literary Review.)