Having been passed under the harrow for publishing a major collection of interviews with horror writers that failed to include any women, British Fantasy Society chair Guy Adams has posted an apology:

When James [Cooper] brought the manuscript to me with a view to our publishing it I know he intended no sexism in his selection of the authors but I feel deeply sorry that I didn’t flag the omission at the time.

It is disgustingly simple for a man not to notice these things, a blindness to the importance of correct gender representation that I feel embarrassed to have fallen into.

The next two volumes in the series are considerably more balanced in their table of contents but that doesn’t change the fact that I dropped the ball on this initial volume.

Adams has also told Alison Flood of the UK Guardian that he’d like to do a second collection to balance the score:  

Speaking this morning from Spain, Adams said he would ideally like to publish – “by way of apology” – a book of interviews with female horror authors. “It seems the only viable alternative but the difficulty is that I don’t know if we can afford to,” he said. “I do feel embarrassed and I’m happy to stick my hand up – I took my eye off the ball.”

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the link.]