Hazel-May McCall—Richard Wagner

Hazel-May McCall and Richard Wagner’s relationship is a professional alliance linking Hazel’s work with YBL to Wagner Books’ public commitments on diversity. Hazel creates access between the two organizations; Richard responds with money and promises of institutional review. Their partnership matters both for the resources it brings to Hazel’s work and for the larger question it raises: whether a public pledge from a powerful publisher can change the practices that made such a pledge necessary.

Access and Professional Contact

Hazel’s connection with Richard develops through deliberate contact rather than through the ordinary new-hire welcome ritual at Wagner Books. She tells colleagues that she invited him to a YBL donor event to see whether he might contribute. He accepted that invitation, and Hazel says he will also attend her event that evening. Her account presents her as the person who initiates the relationship and brings the publisher into the organization’s work.

The distinction is visible inside Wagner Books. Hazel explains that Richard had told her exceptions were sometimes made to the usual wait for advancement, a detail that surprises Nella Rogers and Sophie. The exchange suggests that Hazel has had access to information about how careers might progress at the company, although it does not establish that Richard promised her a promotion or that any exception was made for her. At the meeting, Richard sits at the head of the table while Hazel shares what he has told her, placing their professional connection within the company’s existing hierarchy.

YBL Support and Public Recognition

At the YBL event, Hazel makes Richard’s involvement part of her public account of the organization’s support. She invokes Wagner’s books and authors, including Diana Gordon’s Burning Heart, as works the audience may know, then describes that novel as a significant point of light in a publishing landscape marked by whiteness. She connects the book’s importance to the earlier careers of Gordon and her editor, Kendra Rae Phillips, both of whom discovered their passion for writing as teenagers.

Hazel then announces that Richard donated ten thousand dollars to support the girls. She also says that he will match every dollar raised that night through hair-product sales. The two forms of support give the partnership a concrete and public dimension: a fixed donation and a matching commitment tied to the event’s proceeds. The audience responds with cheers, and Hazel presents the backing as a meaningful contribution to YBL’s work.

Promised Changes at Wagner Books

Hazel describes Richard’s support as extending beyond fundraising. She announces that he has pledged to rethink how Wagner Books editors hire candidates, using new criteria and a more holistic approach. She also says the company will analyze every book it has acquired over the previous ten years and compare the acquisitions with the demographics of the country.

In Hazel’s presentation, these commitments address two connected institutional questions: who is hired to shape the list, and which books the company has chosen to publish. She frames the proposed review as especially consequential because Wagner Books has been predominantly white and, in her account, the publishing industry has struggled with its diversity problem. Her prediction that Wagner’s example could influence other publishing houses raises the stakes beyond the pair’s immediate professional relationship. The claim is Hazel’s public framing of the pledge, however; the evidence establishes that Richard made the commitments, not that the hiring changes or retrospective analysis were completed.

Power, Representation, and Unresolved Stakes

The alliance takes shape against a workplace where inclusion is not a neutral subject. Before joining Wagner Books, Nella worried that a Manhattan publishing office might be rigid and homogeneous, and she considered how her identity and appearance would be read in an interview. Later, she recalls hearing a Wagner employee speak indignantly about the possibility of being forced to hire nonwhite people, imagining that such hires would be unqualified. Nella feels that colleagues often treat her as an exception whose qualifications set her apart from her Black identity, a position that can spare her certain requests while also making her feel erased.

That context gives Richard’s announced hiring review more weight than a general statement of goodwill: the commitment addresses a workplace in which assumptions about qualification and race are already present. Yet the scenes maintain a distinction between sponsorship and structural change. Richard provides substantial financial support and publicly pledges institutional review; Hazel makes those actions visible and connects them to YBL’s mission. The account does not show whether Wagner Books fulfills the pledges, so the relationship remains both a working alliance and a promise whose practical consequences are still open.