Margaret Busby OBE, Hon. FRSL (Nana Akua Ackon) is a major cultural figure in Britain and around the world.
She was born in Ghana and educated in the UK, graduating from London University. She became Britain’s youngest and first black woman publisher when she co-founded Allison & Busby in the late 1960s and published notable authors including Buchi Emecheta, Nuruddin Farah, Rosa Guy, C. L. R. James, Michael Moorcock and Jill Murphy. An editor, broadcaster, and literary critic, she has also written drama for BBC radio and the stage. Her radio abridgements and dramatizations encompass work by Henry Louis Gates, Timothy Mo, Walter Mosley, Jean Rhys, Sam Selvon and Wole Soyinka, among others. She has judged numerous national and international literary competitions, and served on the boards of such organizations as the Royal Literary Fund, Wasafiri magazine and the Africa Centre.
A long-time campaigner for diversity in publishing, she is the recipient of many awards, including the Henry Swanzy Award in 2015 and the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature in 2017. She lives in London.
Interviews and Features
The Margaret Busby New Daughters of Africa Award
The Bookseller ran a feature celebrating the new £20,000 Margaret Busby New Daughters of Africa Award, created by Myriad Editions and SOAS, which will be offered to a female, black student who is ordinarily resident in Africa. The bursary will pay for the recipient’s tuition fees and accommodation costs for a SOAS Masters in African Studies, Comparative Literature or Translation in African Languages.
50 books to keep you reading all year long—The Irish Times
New Daughters of Africa featured in The Irish Times article, 50 books to keep you reading all year long.
2019 in Books: What You’ll Be Reading This Year by The Guardian
New Daughters of Africa featured as one of the books you must read in 2019. If that isn’t praise enough, we don’t know what is! Read the full line up here.
Margaret Busby featured in The Guardian
“It used to be just a few writers published mostly as part of an educational series,” explains Margaret. “Now they are in the mainstream. I think publishers can see the success they can have with someone like Chimamanda and of course they want that success too.” But it’s still not as easy as it might be. “Until you can no longer count the number of African women writers who have broken through then we’ve still got work to do.” Read the full article by Gary Younge here.