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The UK's Youngest & First Black Woman Publisher: Margaret Busby
Margaret Busby OBE (also titled Nana Akua Ackon) is a Ghanaian-born publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster based in the UK. She was Britain’s youngest and first black woman book publisher when in the 1960s she co-founded with Clive Allison (1944–2011) the London-based publishing house Allison and Busby (A & B).
Contents
- The UKs Youngest First Black Woman Publisher Margaret Busby
- Education and early years
- Publishing
- Writing editing and broadcasting
- Literary activism
- Awards
- References
Education and early years
Margaret Busby was born in Accra, Gold Coast (present-day Ghana), to Dr George Busby and Mrs Sarah Busby (née Christian), who both had family links to the Caribbean, particularly to Trinidad, Barbados and Dominica. Dr Busby was a lifelong friend of Kwame Nkrumah's mentor George Padmore and attended school with C. L. R. James. Through her maternal line, she is a cousin of newscaster Moira Stuart, and her grandfather was George James Christian, a delegate at the First Pan-African Conference that was held in London in 1900.
After leaving school at 15, Margaret Busby read English at Bedford College, London University, where she became editor of her college literary magazine as well as publishing her own poetry. She was married to British jazz musician and educator Lionel Grigson (1942–1994).
Publishing
While still at university she met her future business partner Clive Allison at a party, and they decided to start a publishing company. After graduating, Busby briefly worked at the Cresset Press while setting up Allison and Busby (A & B), whose first books were published in 1967. She was A & B's Editorial Director for the next 20 years, publishing many significant authors including Sam Greenlee (author of The Spook Who Sat by the Door, the first novel published by A & B), C. L. R. James, Buchi Emecheta, Chester Himes, George Lamming, Roy Heath, Ishmael Reed, John Edgar Wideman, Nuruddin Farah, Rosa Guy, Val Wilmer, Colin MacInnes, H. Rap Brown, Julius Lester, Geoffrey Grigson, Adrian Mitchell, Jill Murphy, Miyamoto Musashi, Christine Qunta, Michael Horovitz, Carlos Moore, Michèle Roberts, Molefe Pheto, Arthur Maimane, Hunter S. Thompson, Alexis Lykiard, Jack Trevor Story, Michael Moorcock, Ralph de Boissière, and Andrew Salkey.
Busby was subsequently Editorial Director of Earthscan (publishing titles by Han Suyin, Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, René Dumont, Carolina Maria de Jesus and others), before pursuing a freelance career as an editor, writer, and critic.
Writing, editing and broadcasting
As a journalist, she has written for The Guardian (mainly book reviews and obituaries of artists and activists including Jessica Huntley, Buzz Johnson, Jayne Cortez, Jan Carew, Rosa Guy, Gwendolyn Brooks, June Jordan, Florynce Kennedy, Barry Reckord, Frank Crichlow, Connie Mark, Glenn Thompson, August Wilson, Pearl Connor-Mogotsi and Geraldine Connor), The Observer, The Independent, The Sunday Times, the New Statesman, and elsewhere.
She compiled Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent (1992), and has contributed to other books (including Colours of a New Day: Writing for South Africa in 1990, Mothers: Reflections by Daughters in 1995, IC3: The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain (2000), 99 words in 2011, and in 2014 Carnival: A Photographic and Testimonial History of the Notting Hill Carnival, co-authored with Ishmahil Blagrove), specialist journals and the general press.
She has regularly worked for radio and television since the late 1960s, when she presented the magazine programme London Line for the Central Office of Information, as well as Break For Women on the BBC African Service, and later Talking Africa on Spectrum Radio, in addition to appearing on a range of programmes including Kaleidoscope, Front Row, Open Book, Woman's Hour, and Democracy Now! (USA).
Her abridgements and dramatizations for BBC Radio include works by C. L. R. James, Jean Rhys, Wole Soyinka, Timothy Mo, Sam Selvon, Walter Mosley, Henry Louis Gates, Lawrence Scott and Simi Bedford. Her play based on C. L. R. James's novel Minty Alley was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1998, winning a Commission for Racial Equality "Race in the Media Award" (RIMA) in 1999.
Her writing for the stage includes Sankofa (1999), Yaa Asantewaa – Warrior Queen (UK/Ghana, 2001–02), directed by Geraldine Connor, and An African Cargo (Greenwich Theatre, 2007) directed by Felix Cross. She has also been a song lyricist.
Literary activism
She has worked continuously for diversity within the publishing industry and in the 1980s was a founding member of the organization Greater Access to Publishing (GAP), which engaged in campaigns for increased Black representation in British publishing. She is the patron of Independent Black Publishers (IBP).
She has been a participant in various literary festivals and conferences internationally, and has interviewed and been "in conversation" with such writers as Toni Morrison, Wole Soyinka. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Nawal El Saadawi.
She has been a judge for many literary competitions, among them the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Orange Prize, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Commonwealth Book Prize (for which she was chair of the judges in 2012). and Africa39. She has served on the boards or in advisory positions for other cultural organisations, including the Drum Arts Centre, The Africa Centre, London, English PEN, the Royal Literary Fund, the African & Caribbean Music Circuit, the Hackney Empire theatre, the Organization of Women Writers of Africa, and Wasafiri magazine. She is currently a trustee of Tomorrow's Warriors, Prize Ambassador of the SI Leeds Literary Prize and a patron of the Etisalat Prize for Literature.