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heterogenity
That's "heterogeneity", which comes from the Greek "heteros" (other) and "genos" (race, stock, kin).
Annnnnyway, back to Rowling. I can see why one might get upset about this on behalf of one's own favourite writers - in terms of quality of writing, it is indeed hard to construct a compelling argument for Rowling as the best living British writer. On the other hand, she is by some distance the most successful living writer in Britain. This success is understandable in some ways and utterly baffling in others, but the sheer volume of books sold a) must count as some sort of _technical_ qualification and b) is likely to signify a large number of readers and thus a proportionately larger number of fans. Inevitably, in a poll, you're going to get _fans_ voting - realistically, what sort of a loon phones a poll to nominate their favourite author?
Pretty much by definition, any such poll boils down to "who is your favourite writer" (or possibly, "which writer do you think you ought to vote for", if you're feeling a bit more self-conscious), and as such the poll will be skewed towards popular, recent, well-publicised writing. Looking at the list, it is, as Matt observed, people who are still writing, largely, with an emphasis on people who released one or more books in the last few years. It's a pretty understandable middlebrow list from a new magazine looking to drum up some publicity, presumably - a fair few children's writers, a number of genre writers, towards the end a number of people who presumably polled very few votes, lots of white authors... pretty much what you'd expect, although I'd be interested to see the actual voting numbers.
In case anyone's interested, some of the people who voted for Rowling give reasons here. Accessibility seems to be a big one, and also that she encourages people to keep reading - as a sort of picturesque practice slope, perhaps. |
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