We’ve received a number of emails in the last few months asking if a particular piece is “multicultural enough” for our imprint. While we can understand writers wondering if we’re the right place to send their work, we can’t respond and comment on every single inquiry. Instead, we hope that this post will help writers to decide for themselves whether or not their book fits with Tu Publishing’s mission.

When an imprint is launched, it is vitally important that the launch titles strongly reflect the kinds of books that the imprint will publish. As we’ve said from the beginning, we’re dedicated to publishing fantasy and science fiction for children and young adults that features main characters of color and/or are inspired by/set in cultures that we don’t see very often—non-Western cultures, particularly. Submissions that work for us could be as varied as a historical fantasy set in ancient China, such as Cindy Pon’s Silver Phoenix, or a contemporary fantasy featuring a mixed-race character set in modern-day London, such as Sarwat Chadda’s Devil’s Kiss. Both books feature something we’re looking for, yet they’re as different as night and day—one might even say “diverse.” A story that is right for us might be set in a world completely unrelated to the real world, or in the far future, or it might be something that, with just a few tweaks to reality, might happen in our own world. There’s such a wide variety of possibilities that we’d hate to pin ourselves down, except to emphasize—again—that we want those stories to be diverse.

What we’re really looking for: great stories, of course! We want to publish exciting, adventurous books that children of all backgrounds will be able to either see themselves in or find a window to another world—or both, because what fantasy book isn’t a window to another world?

Cultures in particular that I (Stacy Whitman, editorial director) am interested in seeing: I don’t see much fantasy featuring Latinos, whether USian or Central or South American. For that matter, there isn’t much fantasy/SF for kids featuring African Americans, or Brazilians (half of Brazil’s population, I recently read, is some mix of black, Hispanic, and native Brazilian), or Asians (again, whether USian or in another country). If the story is set in a fantasy world unrelated to our own world, of course, they wouldn’t necessarily be designated “African American”—there are no “Asians” in Middle Earth, for example, because there is no Asia, right? But as we mentioned previously, characters and settings might be Japanese, Jamaican, or Inuit, Zimbabwean or Nigerian, Australian Aborigine or Ainu—there’s such a wide range of cultures and people who we don’t see often in fantasy, folklore whose depths haven’t been explored.

People have also asked about whether, because they never mention the race of their main character, their book would work for what we are looking for, and for that let us point you to Bookavore’s post about how, when only the races of the characters of color are mentioned, “white” becomes the default. White authors, especially, need to be aware of that kind of white privilege and hopefully mitigate for it, though it is a trope that many people use. I say this as a white woman who is still learning, myself—but it is something we all need to be aware of, especially because readers generally notice it, whether consciously or unconsciously, and it is our mission to ensure that all readers feel welcome reading the books we publish.

(We’ve mentioned before that we’re also interested in historical fiction and mystery that might be more realistic than speculative. These genres are welcome for submissions, but please note that our first two launch titles will be speculative in nature.)

We’re interested in hearing from authors who have never been published and authors who have been previously published. If you have an agent, great, but we don’t require agented submissions at this time. And we’d like to particularly encourage writers of color to submit, though that’s certainly not a requirement. As we mentioned in our submission guidelines, if your story is set in a culture not your own, all we ask is that you treat the characters and culture with respect. Nisi Shawl’s article on Transracial Writing for the Sincere is a great primer on writing from an ethnic background not your own—a great primer if you’re writing fantasy, period, because what is worldbuilding if not writing from the perspective of a culture that’s different from your own, even if tweaked just a little bit?

But when we say that the launch titles will reflect our mission strongly, we mean it. We’re looking for books that meet that mission, and if you think yours does, great! If your story, no matter how well-written and interesting, is about a white boy in modern-day America, even if he has a black friend, it’s probably not going to meet our mission strongly enough. But that’s something you need to decide for yourself, after looking at the books we’ve recommended and the interviews we’ve posted with bloggers like Susan from Color Online and authors like Cynthia Leitich Smith and Cindy Pon. After browsing our site and absorbing this information—and hopefully reading the books that we’ve recommended, not just because they show what we’re looking for but because they’re good books!—we hope that writers will have a better understanding of what we mean by “multicultural,” loaded as that term might be with historical baggage.

And of course, if you submit your book and it isn’t right for us, we’ll let you know. But there are a number of reasons a book might not be right for us, and whether a book is multicultural enough or not is only one piece of a larger puzzle. We hope that by giving you as much information as possible on this subject, it might be of use, but the main thing we want to emphasize, again, is write a good story.

Good luck with your writing! We look forward to reading your submissions.