Over the last few months, I have seen too many stories and “dramas” regarding white women targeting women of colour to better the reception of their books or race-bait as a person of colour to “better their chances” of getting picked up for a publishing deal. Drama like this isn’t exclusive to white women, as there are other current concerns within the book community in regards to censoring books during book award nominations/voting that didn’t favour the CCP’s ideologies, men preying on women as part of their book promotions for their recent releases, and the most recent incident I’ve seen where a white man donned blackface to write a book about the experiences of black people in America. Yeah, it’s a messed up situation.

In this post, I will be talking about three separate instances where a white woman has done something despicable to further her writing career, often to the harm of others, particularly people of colour. These women are Cait Corrain, Fedyis Moon, and “Kim Chi” – yes, a woman called herself Kim Chi to race-bait as an Asian woman. I learnt of these situations from multiple sources but I will link the videos to withcindy’s commentary of each situation at the end of the post. I think her narration of events is not only entertaining, but she highlights the issues at hand with precision. I won’t be covering the entire series of events with each person, instead, I will be highlighting the most offending, damaging behaviour to talk about further later on.

Disclaimer: I won’t be mentioning any of the titles involved, whether they were the works of these authors or the works of authors who were targeted. For the sake of keeping the focus on the issues at hand, I have decided to omit those pieces of information. The videos by withcindy linked below share that information, so if you’d like to support the authors who were targeted I encourage you to do so. I also want to state that I am coming from a place of criticism for these women because I find the actions they made deplorable. I am a white woman and I am a white woman who is trying to get her work picked up for publishing. Any supposed “restriction” these women claim they suffer from in the fight to get published is tiny compared to the struggles women of colour face, both to get published and in their daily lives.

Cait Corrain

We’ll start with Cait, as her situation came to light in 2023. Cait Corrian had a publishing deal for her YA Fantasy book and was set to get published around the same time as many other YA Fantasy authors. She got the publishing contract through her own skill and work, so there wasn’t anything nefarious that happened to get her to where she was in her career. The issue lies with what she did to the other authors she would be getting published with. Cait created over a dozen fake accounts on Goodreads to give her upcoming book 5 stars, while also rating other upcoming YA Fantasy books 1 star. This is review bombing, and for those unfamiliar with what this does, review bombing is an internet phenomenon which targets an individual or group of people, in this case, to negatively review a work to diminish its popularity and sales. Paired with the 5-star rating of her book, this would skyrocket the supposed popularity of her unreleased book and hide the other titles, or at least significantly impact their outreach. It is important to note that many of the authors she targeted were authors of colour, as she brings up in a bizarre messaging thread with one of these fake accounts as a way to make it seem like she wasn’t behind it (yes, a grown woman faked a conversation with herself to try and escape suspicion). Not only did she target women of colour, but when it came time for her to finally apologise (and what a poor apology is was), she blamed her actions on her declining mental health and the switches made to her medication. I’m sure I don’t need to explain why blaming racist actions on one’s mental health or medication is as ridiculous as it is offensive.

Freydis Moon

Freydis Moon is one of the many aliases associated with this author, and their real name is unclear. What is clear is that they are an author who was previously traditionally published, but through circumstances surrounding previous aliases, may have been blacklisted from traditional publishing and is now an indie author. Freydis Moon’s earlier aliases were called out for bullying accusations related to race or gender identity, and other aliases identified as Latinx, as well as someone who is queer and trans. Now, let me pause here and inform you of how writing pitches on social media happen, specifically on Twitter or X. Using hashtags and codes to identify your work, you can participate in pitch events that get your book ideas out there to publishers and agents interested in taking you on. One such alias, Jupiter Wyse, participated in a pitch event for Latinx authors (I am aware that Latinx isn’t the correct term, I am using it as this is specifically what the pitch event and hashtags included in their wording). These labels – specifically the POC label (person of colour) – were not what they were using with their earlier aliases. In short, this author posed as a person of colour to benefit from an anonymous pitch event at least once. They have also bullied those within the book community based on their race and/or their gender identity.

Kim Crisci

Kim Chi is the alias of Kim Crisci, a white woman who race-baited as an Asian woman to score a publishing deal. Thankfully, no publishing deals were ever given to her. This largely occurred over Twitter/X, making the ploy carry on for longer than it otherwise could’ve in person. Other ways in which she identified as a POC are through the use of specific hashtags during pitching events. The use of #OWN, for example, means it is an “own voices” story, and when your book is about a POC couple, it implies that you are a POC.

Now why do I bring this up? Why mention these women and their actions? Well, let’s start by stating some easy-to-understand facts. A white person catfishing as a person of colour for any reason, let alone any benefit, is a horrible thing to do. Attempting to take opportunities from people of colour to further your career is a horrible thing to do. Putting people of colour down to boost your work is a horrible thing to do. Blaming your racist actions on mental health or medication changes is a horrible thing to do. Bullying people of colour, queer people, transgender people, and people whose gender identity isn’t as they were born, is a horrible thing to do. All of the above actions are not only incredibly wrong, but they damage communities that are already facing a lot of scrutiny and hate purely because they are minorities or they are “different”. For this to be happening in the publishing sphere where stories should be getting equal light and appreciation and promotion is beyond foul.

Books are meant to serve as vessels for differing perspectives so that they can bring their stories to the rest of the world. Books are meant to entertain, to inform, to celebrate and bring awareness to aspects of our life. They are meant to be ways in which we can learn about other people, other cultures, other experiences, and empathise with them. Books are one of the ways we should be able to give everyone a fair and equal chance to share and discuss. I know things are never equal when it comes to publishing, for there are many factors to the industry that limit the true equality of voices and what is deemed to be worth publishing. What we shouldn’t be doing is taking opportunities away from others. What we shouldn’t be doing is thinking that someone else’s perceived ease of accessibility to or “over abundance” of these opportunities is undeserved.

There is a disconcerting number of white people, both inside and outside of the publishing industry, who think that people who identify within a minority are receiving more than their share of publishing contracts and book deals. Some white people will brazenly complain about it on social media. They call it out as tokenism, that these publishing companies need to fill a quota that isn’t even wanted. It’s disgusting the things they say to give reason as to why they didn’t get a book deal. I call it entitlement and the effects of finding out that you can’t write as well as you thought you could.

As a proud New Zealander, I can’t imagine what the world would be like if we still restricted who could publish books based on their race and gender. New Zealand is a multicultural society with so many voices and perspectives, and such stories are imperative to understanding where everyone is coming from. Without diversity in our literature, we stand to learn nothing. We need diversity and the fair representation of all peoples and communities. We can’t just ignore these people when they act this way because ignoring it doesn’t address the underlying issues. We need to bring awareness to the harm these people have on our communities and the future of publishing. I don’t want to live in a world where the only perspectives I read are similar to my own.

withcindy’s videos:

Cait Corrain – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY4vgK9B8sk

Freydis Moon – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PnXKQt-pBY&t=2469s

Kim Crisci – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3T9wBc1lYc&t=72s