Writing recently in Compact, Jacob Savage noted the phenomenon of “the vanishing male white writer.” Savage traced the decline of “young white men in American letters” by looking at the New York Times’s “Notable Fiction” list. In 2012, the New York Times included seven white American men under the age of 43. In 2013, there were six, and in 2014, there were six. “And then the doors shut.”
By 2021, Savage observes, “there was not one white male millennial on the ‘Notable Fiction’ list. There were none again in 2022, and just one apiece in 2023 and 2024 (since 2021, just 2 of 72 millennials featured were white American men).” There were also “no white male millennials featured in Vulture’s 2024 year-end fiction list, none in Vanity Fair’s, none in The Atlantic’s.” Esquire “has featured 53 millennial fiction writers on its year-end book lists since 2020. Only one was a white American man.”
An article well worth your time.