Reproduced below is my statement submitted as a candidate for election to the Society of Authors’ Management Committee in 2025.
The significant challenges posed by AI and egregious copyright infringements perpetuated by tax-dodging tech giants make our SoA more important than ever. These core member issues should drive the Management Committee and SoA decision-making processes.
I will keep you at the centre of the conversation and work to ensure that we all are respected, protected and paid for the work only we can do.
An SoA survey this year revealed a stark reality: 72% of respondents believe generative AI has negatively impacted opportunities for work, while 57% consider their career unsustainable. My income, like many others’, has taken an AI-driven hit. In conversation with translators, I hear with dismay and alarm about publishers’ attempts to replace them with AI and their plans to exit the profession.
The urgency cannot be overstated. If we don’t confront these challenges head-on, we risk long-term damage to our profession. What we do is skilled work for which we should be paid, and which deserves the protections afforded by copyright. We must not be treated as an afterthought by publishers, Big Tech, or the law. We need to raise awareness that while books continue to be read by humans, human creativity should make them too.
Whether you’re a writer navigating shrinking advances, an illustrator facing rights grabs, or a translator being squeezed to the margins, we are all freelancers. We often negotiate contracts alone, manage unpredictable workloads, and shoulder the risks of our creative businesses ourselves.
But that doesn’t mean we have to act alone. The SoA is our union. For unagented creatives especially, services like contract vetting, rights advice and support in payment disputes are essential, not optional extras. These aren’t just helpful; they’re vital to keeping creative professionals in the industry.
We need to look forward. Writers are expected to platformbuild, illustrators to self-market, translators to multi-task across roles, often without formal training or institutional support. We need the SoA to invest in practical, accessible skills development that reflects how authorship actually works. That includes workshops on rights, pricing, negotiation, income diversification and working responsibly with tech. It’s about building resilience, not just reacting to crises.
I believe it is imperative that we ensure the SoA is the best union possible, so that it can work to protect our professional interests and allow us to focus on what we do best: our jobs. This requires the Management Committee to remain focused on the SoA’s long-held objective of supporting its members in the business of authorship. With your support, I will be your voice and vote in your union’s decision-making processes.
I am a translator of the Scandinavian languages into English with over 35 published books across a range of genres, giving me strong personal experience of how our industry is changing. As Chair of the Translators Association (since 2023), I’ve championed translators individually and collectively in the face of these same challenges. I bring extensive experience from multiple, small membership organisations and will ensure that all SoA members are well represented.