The UK's youngest and first Black female publisher, Margaret Busby, CBE, Hon. FRSL, also known as Nana Akua Ackon, is probably best known for being the co-founder of her own publishing company, 'Allison & Busby', with Clive Allinson, at the age of 23, before becoming chair of judges for the Booker Prize in 2020.
A long-time campaigner for diversity in publishing, she is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and recipient of several honorary doctorates and awards, including the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award, the Royal Society of Literature’s Benson Medal, and the Royal African Society’s inaugural Africa Writes Lifetime Achievement Award. Said to have helped to change the landscape of UK publishing and arts coverage, many Black British artists have been said to owe her a debt for their respective success.
Publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster, she was Britain's youngest and first Black female book publisher when she co-founded the London-based ‘Allison and Busby’ in the 1960s. “I think it is important that you get different people choosing the stories because you get different people consuming the stories as well,” she said.
She went on to say: “It is not that I only read books by Black women. I read books by all sorts of people.
“I think you have to look at it in terms of, ‘Why would you only eat spinach if you can also eat chocolate?’” Margaret also edited the anthology ‘Daughters of Africa’, and its follow-up ‘New Daughters of Africa’ and was recently a recipient of the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature, before, in 2020, being voted one of the ‘100 Great Black Britons’ and, in 2021, being honoured with the London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award.
As the honours continue to roll in, and she continues to make incredible history – in and out of the publishing world - this year, Ms. Busby was also named as president of one of the world's oldest human rights organisations English PEN – and there’s much more history to be made by her.
