Margaret Busby


Margaret Yvonne Busby OBE, Hon. FRSL is a Ghanaian-born publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster, resident in the UK. She was Britain's youngest and first black female book publisher when in the 1960s she co-founded with Clive Allison the London-based publishing house Allison and Busby. She edited the anthology Daughters of Africa, and its 2019 follow-up New Daughters of Africa. She is a recipient of the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature.

Education and early years

Margaret Yvonne Busby was born in 1944, in Accra, Gold Coast, to Dr George Busby and Mrs Sarah Busby, 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 at Queen's Royal College, winning the Island Scholarship, which enabled him to travel to Britain in 1919 to study medicine. After initial studies at Edinburgh University, he transferred to University College, Dublin, to complete his medical qualifications, after which he practised as a doctor in Walthamstow, east London, before relocating to settle in the Gold Coast in 1929. Through her maternal line, she is a cousin of BBC newscaster Moira Stuart, and her grandfather was George James Christian, a delegate at the First Pan-African Conference in London in 1900, who migrated to the Gold Coast in 1902.
Leaving school in Sussex when she was 15, Busby went on to study English at Bedford College, London University, where she edited her college literary magazine as well as publishing her own poetry, and graduated with a BA Honours degree at the age of 20. She was married to British jazz musician and educator Lionel Grigson.

Publishing

While still at university she met her future business partner Clive Allison at a party in Bayswater Road, and they decided to start a publishing company. After graduating, Busby briefly worked at the Cresset Press – part of the Barrie Group – while setting up Allison and Busby, whose first books were published in 1967, making her the then youngest publisher as well as the first African woman book publisher in the UK – an achievement she has assessed by saying: "t is easy enough to be the first, we can each try something and be the first woman or the first African woman to do X, Y or Z. But, if it's something worthwhile you don't want to be the only....I hope that I can, in any way, inspire someone to do what I have done but learn from my mistakes and do better than I have done."
She was Allison & Busby's Editorial Director for 20 years, publishing many notable authors including Sam Greenlee, 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, Dermot Healy, Adrian Mitchell, Jill Murphy, Christine Qunta, Michael Horovitz, Carlos Moore, Michèle Roberts, Molefe Pheto, Arthur Maimane, Giles Gordon, Clive Sinclair, Chris Searle, Richard Stark, James Ellroy, Hunter S. Thompson, B. Traven, Alexis Lykiard, Jack Trevor Story, Michael Moorcock, John Clute, Julian Savarin, Ralph de Boissière, Andrew Salkey, Harriet E. Wilson, and Miyamoto Musashi.
Busby was subsequently Editorial Director of Earthscan, before pursuing a freelance career as an editor, writer, and critic.

Writing, editing and broadcasting

As a journalist, she has written for The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent, The Sunday Times, the New Statesman, and elsewhere, for both the general press and specialist journals.

''Daughters of Africa'' (1992) and ''New Daughters of Africa'' (2019)

Busby compiled Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present, described by Black Enterprise as "a landmark", which includes contributions in a range of genres by more than 200 women. Widely reviewed on publication, it is now chacterised as containing work by "the matriarchs of African literature. They pioneered 'African' writing, in which they were not simply writing stories about their families, communities and countries, but they were also writing themselves into the African literary history and African historiography. They claimed space for women storytellers in the written form, and in some sense reclaimed the woman's role as the creator and carrier of many African societies' narratives, considering that the traditional storytelling session was a women's domain."
Busby edited a 2019 follow-up volume entitled New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent, featuring another 200-plus writers from across the African diaspora. A reviewer in The Irish Times commented: "Sometimes you need an anthology to remind you of the variety, strength and nuance of writing among a certain region or group of people. New Daughters of Africa is indispensable because African voices have been silenced or diminished throughout history, and women’s voices even more so."
Connected with the 2019 anthology, the "Margaret Busby New Daughters of Africa Award" was announced by the publisher, in partnership with SOAS, University of London, that will benefit an African woman student.

Other book work

Busby has contributed to books including , Mothers: Reflections by Daughters, IC3: The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain, Why 2K? Anthology for a New Era, The Legacy of Efua Sutherland, Essays in Honour of Ama Ata Aidoo at 70, 99 words, If I Could Tell You Just One Thing...: Encounters with Remarkable People and Their Most Valuable Advice, and Slay in Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible.
In 2014, she co-authored with Ishmahil Blagrove Carnival: A Photographic and Testimonial History of the Notting Hill Carnival. Among other books for which she has written introductions or forewords are the Penguin Modern Classics edition of A Question of Power by Bessie Head, Emerging Perspectives on Buchi Emecheta, and Beyond Words: South African Poetics. With Darcus Howe, Busby co-edited C.L.R. James's 80th Birthday Lectures, and she is co-editor with Beverley Mason FRSA of No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960–1990, a 2018 publication arising out of the 2015–16 exhibition No Colour Bar held at the Guildhall Art Gallery.

Broadcasting and dramatizations

Busby 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!.
Her abridgements and dramatizations for BBC Radio include books by C. L. R. James, Jean Rhys, Wole Soyinka, Timothy Mo, Sam Selvon, Walter Mosley, Henry Louis Gates, Lawrence Scott and Simi Bedford. Busby's 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" in 1999. She was also involved with Penumbra Productions, an independent production company, with members including Horace Ové, H. O. Nazareth, Farrukh Dhondy, Mustapha Matura, Michael Abbensetts and Lindsay Barrett, among whose projects was a series of films based on lectures by C. L. R. James in the 1980s.
Her writing for the stage includes Sankofa, Yaa Asantewaa – Warrior Queen, directed by Geraldine Connor, and An African Cargo directed by Felix Cross. She has also been a song lyricist.
In 2014, following the death of Maya Angelou, Busby scripted a major tribute entitled Maya Angelou: A Celebration, which took place on 5 October at the Royal Festival Hall during the Southbank Centre's London Literature Festival; directed by Paulette Randall, and chaired by Jon Snow and Moira Stuart, the celebration featured contributions from artists including Adjoa Andoh, Angel Coulby, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nicola Hughes, Ella Odedina, NITROvox, Roderick Williams and Ayanna Witter-Johnson.

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, which engaged in campaigns for increased Black representation in British publishing. Other members of this multi-racial group, which held a conference in 1987 particularly to highlight publishing as an option for Black women, included Lennie Goodings, Maggie Scott, Ros de Lanerolle, Yvonne Collymore, Paula Kahn, Toks Williams, Kothai Christie, and Jacqui Roach.
Busby was the patron of Independent Black Publishers, a trade association chaired by Verna Wilkins. The aim of IBP, as Busby was quoted as saying, was to "provide a forum for progressive black publishers to share initiatives, maximise mutual strengths and identify common difficulties, with a view to having a more effective impact on the book trade and the wider publishing industry", and in 2007 at the London Book Fair a joint IBP stand showcased the books of Bogle-L'Ouverture Press, Tamarind Books, the X Press, Ayebia Clarke Publishing, Joan Anim-Addo's Mango Press, and other ventures.
A participant in numerous literary festivals and conferences internationally, Busby has interviewed and been "in conversation" with such writers as Toni Morrison, Wole Soyinka, Nawal El Saadawi, and Ngugi wa Thiong’o.
Busby was appointed chair of the 2020 Booker Prize judges, other members of the panel including Lee Child, Sameer Rahim, Lemn Sissay, and Emily Wilson. Busby has previously judged several other literary competitions, among them the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Orange Prize, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Wasafiri New Writing Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Commonwealth Book Prize, Africa39, and the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. 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, the Etisalat Prize for Literature, and Wasafiri magazine. She is currently a trustee of jazz education organization Tomorrow's Warriors, and of Nubian Jak Community Trust, and Prize Ambassador of the SI Leeds Literary Prize.

Influence

In 2018, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of women's right to vote, The Voice newspaper listed Margaret Busby – alongside Kathleen Wrasama, Olive Morris, Connie Mark, Fanny Eaton, Diane Abbott, Lilian Bader, and Mary Seacole – among eight Black women who have contributed to the development of Britain. She was also named by the Evening Standard on a list of 14 "Inspirational black British women throughout history".
Also in 2018, she was among 150 "Leading Women" celebrated by the University of London to mark the 150 years since women gained access to higher education in the UK in 1868, and featured in the exhibition Rights for Women: London's Pioneers in their Own Words staged at Senate House Library from 16 July to 15 December 2018.
In July 2019, she was awarded the inaugural Africa Writes Lifetime Achievement Award, presented to her at the British Library during the Royal African Society's annual literary weekend by Ade Solanke and Diane Abbott as part of the festival headline event celebrating Busby's anthology New Daughters of Africa.
Busby is frequently cited as a pioneer in the history of Black publishers in the UK, and is acknowledged as a "pathfinder" by those who followed in her footsteps working towards making the books industry and its output more diverse, among them Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, Valerie Brandes of Jacaranda Books, Sharmaine Lovegrove of Dialogue Books, and Aki Schilz of The Literary Consultancy.
In UK Black History Month 2019, Zadie Smith said that Busby "has been a cheerleader, instigator, organiser, defender and celebrator of black arts for the past 50 years, shouting about us from the rooftops, even back when few people cared to listen. 'We can because she did' is a cliché but in Margaret's case it is both true and no exaggeration. She helped change the landscape of both UK publishing and arts coverage and so many Black British artists owe her a debt. I know I do." Afua Hirsch described Busby's impact on her career by saying that "as a black woman trying to find my own voice, has been endlessly interested, supportive and enthusiastic about helping a generation like me find our place and our ability to make change through writing."

Awards and recognition