Mishal Husain: If an agent submits a manuscript by a gay transgender Caribbean who dropped out of school at 7 and powers around town on a mobility scooter, it will be published, whether or not it is incoherent, tedious, meandering and insensible: the view of the writer Lionel Shriver. And after she expressed that – it was in reference to the Publisher Penguin Random House’s new diversity policy – she was dropped as the judge of a literary competition run by the magazine Mslexia. Lionel Shriver and the magazine’s editor Debbie Taylor are both on the line. Good morning.
Lionel Shriver: Good morning.
Debbie Taylor: Hi there.
MH: Lionel Shriver, first of all, do you stand by what you said there?
LS: Of course, though I should clarify that if you read that line in context, it is clearly making fun of the box ticking exercise of meeting all these criteria for diversity goals.
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