The publishing industry continues to maintain separate categories for literary fiction and genre work (crime, romance, science fiction, fantasy), despite the fact that this distinction no longer describes how most interesting contemporary fiction actually works.

Walk into any bookshop and you’ll find books shelved as “literary fiction” that are clearly crime novels or speculative fiction in everything but marketing. Meanwhile, genre sections contain writing as stylistically accomplished and thematically complex as anything labeled literary. The categories persist for commercial and institutional reasons, not because they describe meaningful aesthetic or formal differences.

Historical context matters here. The literary/genre split emerged in the mid-twentieth century as mass-market paperback publishing created clear commercial categories. Hardcover literary fiction for educated readers, paperback genre fiction for mass consumption. This made sense when there were meaningful production and distribution differences between categories.

That infrastructure has collapsed. Everything’s available in multiple formats. Online retail makes discovery less dependent on physical shelf placement. The material basis for the distinction no longer exists, but the cultural hierarchy persists.

Awards and prize culture reinforce the divide despite claiming to transcend it. The Miles Franklin Award occasionally recognizes speculative or crime fiction, but overwhelmingly goes to realist literary fiction. Genre awards exist separately, which implicitly suggests genre work can’t compete at the highest literary level.

This creates perverse incentives. Publishers market identical books differently depending on whether they’re aiming for literary prizes or commercial genre success. The same novel can be positioned as literary fiction or crime depending on strategic calculations about awards eligibility and review coverage.

The “literary thriller” designation is a perfect example of category confusion. This label emerges when publishers want crime fiction’s commercial appeal combined with literary fiction’s prestige. But what makes a thriller “literary” versus just a thriller? Better prose? Psychological depth? Ambiguous endings? These qualities exist throughout crime fiction; they’re not exclusive to literarily-aspirational examples.

Similarly, “speculative literary fiction” has become shorthand for science fiction written by authors without genre backgrounds or marketed to readers who don’t want to admit they’re reading SF. Margaret Atwood’s resistance to the science fiction label for The Handmaid’s Tale is the classic example—it’s obviously science fiction by any meaningful definition, but calling it literary fiction grants cultural legitimacy.

Genre fiction’s increasing formal sophistication makes the distinction harder to maintain. Contemporary science fiction writers like Ted Chiang or N.K. Jemisin work at levels of prose craft and thematic complexity that match any literary fiction. Crime writers like Tana French or Megan Abbott are as interested in character psychology and social observation as plot mechanics.

The best genre writing has always been sophisticated, but it’s become harder for literary culture to ignore this while maintaining the pretense that genre is inherently less serious than literary fiction.

The reverse is also true: plenty of literary fiction uses genre structures and conventions. Kazuo Ishiguro writes science fiction (Never Let Me Go), mystery (The Buried Giant), and detective fiction (When We Were Orphans) while maintaining literary fiction status because of his reputation and prose style.

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is post-apocalyptic science fiction. But it’s shelved as literary fiction and wins literary prizes because McCarthy’s literary credentials exempt him from genre categorization. The genre/literary distinction often comes down to the author’s background and publisher rather than the actual work.

Prose style is the last refuge of literary fiction’s claim to distinction. The argument goes that literary fiction prioritizes language and form while genre fiction prioritizes plot and readability. This is both partially true and wildly overstated.

Plenty of literary fiction is badly written or stylistically conservative. Plenty of genre fiction displays remarkable formal innovation and linguistic inventiveness. The correlation between category and prose quality is weak at best.

Moreover, the assumption that complex prose = literary value is itself questionable. Clear, efficient prose can be as artistically accomplished as baroque complexity. Raymond Carver and Elmore Leonard wrote with precision and economy that rivals any literary stylist. Calling their work “genre” or “minimalist” rather than “literary” reflects cultural prejudice, not aesthetic judgment.

The commercial realities are complicated. Genre designation helps readers find books they’ll enjoy. Romance readers want romance conventions; mystery readers want mysteries. These categories serve useful commercial functions even if they don’t describe meaningful literary distinctions.

The problem is when commercial categories are treated as aesthetic hierarchies. There’s nothing inherently superior about literary realism compared to fantasy or crime fiction. They’re different approaches to storytelling with different conventions and pleasures.

Publishers game the system constantly. Books get submitted to literary prizes under their hardcover literary fiction editions while simultaneously marketed as genre paperbacks. Cover design signals whether a book is literary (minimalist, tasteful) or genre (illustrated, bold fonts). The same book with different covers can succeed in different markets.

This isn’t criticism of publishers—they’re responding rationally to market structures and cultural hierarchies. But it reveals how arbitrary the categories are when the same book can be successfully positioned in multiple ways depending on packaging and marketing.

For readers, the collapse of genres should be liberating. Stop worrying about whether something counts as literary fiction or genre. Read what engages you. The best contemporary fiction often works precisely because it refuses easy categorization.

Some of my favorite recent novels: The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin (fantasy/literary fiction), The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson (science fiction/political fiction), My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite (crime/comedy/literary fiction). None fit cleanly into single categories, and that’s a strength.

Literary culture needs to catch up to publishing reality. Critics and academics still treat genre fiction as separate and lesser, despite increasingly strained attempts to exempt particular genre writers as “transcending” their categories. This is patronizing and intellectually dishonest.

Either acknowledge that genre/literary is a marketing distinction without aesthetic meaning, or articulate what specific formal or thematic qualities distinguish them. The current situation—maintaining hierarchies while pretending they don’t exist—satisfies no one.

Awards should either fully embrace genre diversity or stop pretending to. The Miles Franklin Award could genuinely become open to all forms of Australian fiction regardless of genre, or it could explicitly commit to realist literary fiction. The current ambiguity creates false hopes and enables gatekeeping.

For emerging writers, the genre/literary divide creates anxiety about positioning and career paths. Write what you want to write, find the right publisher and editor, and let marketing handle categorization. The audience for good fiction crosses categorical boundaries more freely than publishing structures suggest.

The future probably involves continued genre hybridity and category collapse, with marketing categories persisting for commercial convenience while becoming less meaningful for critical evaluation. This is probably fine. Categories are tools, not essences.

Read widely across supposed categories. Some of the best literary fiction is happening in genre spaces. Some of the worst writing gets published under literary fiction because conventional respectability substitutes for actual quality.

The distinction served useful purposes historically. It no longer does. Time to move on.