The Guardian Coincidence
Filed under General • 07-06-2010 •
Please allow me to clear up a misunderstanding.
A couple of weeks ago, a letter appeared in The Guardian accusing their reviewer Eric Brown of bias, for reviewing too many books from genre publisher Solaris. The letter was signed by “Gareth Powell, Bristol”.
As several people in the SF field have already assumed that I wrote this letter, I’d like to make it clear that I did not. I have no beef with either Eric, who gave my own novel a decent enough review in April, or Solaris, who recently published the Shine anthology, which featured one of my stories.
I’ve already contacted both Eric and Solaris to set the record straight, and they have both been most understanding. I have also spoken to the Letters Editor at The Guardian. As the letter was signed “Gareth Powell”, without use of the middle initial, it seems unlikely it was a deliberate attempt to impersonate me, and so I’ll have to write it off as an unfortunate coincidence, and be grateful that it didn’t lead to greater misunderstandings.
Tags: Solaris Books • The Guardian
My name is also Gareth Powell. And I am an author of non-fiction books and a publisher. I believe the L in Gareth L. Powell was added to try to stop confusion. But Gareth Powell is now a very common name. How can you differentiate them. Putting on your email address invites a flood of spam. I think this is a problem we are just going to have to live with. I see no easy solution.
Hi Gareth. Yes, I use the middle L in my name to differentiate me from the other Gareth Powells out there – especially the Gareth Powell who writes travel books (is that you?), with whom Amazon are forever confusing me.