Dive Brief:
- University of Toronto English instructor David Gilmour landed in hot water after joking to online magazine Hazlitt that he only teaches books by "serious heterosexual guys."
- The award-winning author insists that he isn't sexist, racist or homophobic despite criticism that the reading list for his third-year "Love, Sex and Death in Modern Short Fiction" predominantly contains the works of middle-aged men.
- In his defense, Gilmour points out that he teaches the works of Virginia Woolf and Truman Capote, but that he sticks primarily to material by authors he can best relate to and understand.
Dive Insight:
Gilmour has also since apologized to the University of Toronto and its liberal arts school, Victoria College, for the bad press that followed his Hazlitt comments. Hazlitt Editor-in-Chief Christopher Frey says he read the comment as "a bit of a quip." A full transcript of the 25-minute interview is available online for anyone who wants to see the remark in context, but if the comments truly were meant as a joke, should anyone be this surprised that a writer said something sarcastically?