Drizzle is a site dedicated to the celebration of diverse literary culture — we publish short and long form book reviews, interviews, and essays that promote the work of marginalized authors from across the globe.

Drizzle began its life in Olympia, WA as the solo project of editor-in-chief Rebecca Valley, but has since developed into a blossoming community of contributing editors, reviewers, readers, and friends. Our new home base is in northern Vermont, but our editors and contributors live around the country (and the world!).

Despite the slow moves toward inclusivity we’ve seen in the last few decades, the literary world simply does not prioritize marginalized voices — and most publishing houses are still run predominantly by white, cis, men. In response to a lack of diversity (and the pigeon-holing of marginalized voices into limited, often stereotypical narratives) we’ve focused exclusively on under-represented voices in literature since our founding in 2016.

Here are some statistics that demonstrate the many ways contemporary American publishing fails to include marginalized voices:

• Only 3% of books published each year in the U.S. are translations (compare this to countries like Italy, where that number is 50% or higher). We can thank independent and non-profit publishers for that – they publish 86% of translated books in America on average each year.
• The publishing industry is predominantly white, straight, and able-bodied. In 2019, the industry was 76% white, 81% straight, and 89% able-bodied/non-disabled.
• Only 1% of the industry identifies as non-binary, and an even smaller percentage identify as trans.
• Less than 1% of the publishing industry is Native American or Alaskan Native
• In children’s literature, Black, Latinx, and Native American authors wrote only 7% of published books, and only 13% of children’s books in the last 24 years contain multi-cultural content.
• In 2018, only 10% of children’s books featured black characters. Compare this to the 27% featuring protagonists who are animals.

There’s still so much work to be done, which is why it’s our mission to advocate for work by authors who are: Black, Indigenous, people of color, LGBTQIA+, women, disabled, chronically ill, rural and economically disenfranchised. We champion work that deserves a wider audience, and we hope to continue building a community of authors, readers and reviewers to help us achieve that goal.