In June 2018, she criticised an effort by the publisher Penguin Random House to diversify the authors that it published and better represent the population, saying that it prioritised diversity over quality and that a manuscript "written by a gay transgender Caribbean who dropped out of school at seven" would be published "whether or not said manuscript is an incoherent, tedious, meandering and insensible pile of mixed-paper recycling". Penguin Random House marketer and author Candice Carty-Williams criticised the statements. As a result of her comments Shriver was dropped from judging a competition for the magazine "Mslexia".