If you thank someone by name in the acknowledgments section of your book, you don’t need permission because it’s probably a positive or neutral mention. If you want to talk about how your stepdad ruined your life, you’ll need permission because that’s negative. Seems pretty easy, but when in doubt, always ask permission. I’ll mostly be talking about negative mentions in this blog post.

It’s very rare that someone intentionally goes out to exclude someone through their writing, and most people don’t mean to throw in sexist stereotypes when they’re writing a book. And yet it happens every day. . . . Why is this? And more importantly, what can we do about it?