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Writers who have participated in initiatives for BAME authors, such as Megaphone and WriteNow, which help authors find their feet in publishing, are starting to get book deals and have praised the value of the schemes. However, the writers say more needs to be done to make sure people of colour are truly represented in the writing community.
Megaphone was set up by author and teacher Leila Rasheed, who over the course of a year worked with five authors—Danielle Jawando, Tina Freeth, Nafisa Muhtadi, Avantika Taneja and Joyce Efia Harmer—to help them develop their work and introduce them to the publishing industry. Of the five, four are now agented and one (Jawando) has a two-book deal with Simon & Schuster.
Megaphone helped the writers develop their novels to a publishable standard and boost their knowledge of how publishing works, and the mix of mentoring sessions and masterclasses—with authors such as Candy Gourlay—was "completely invaluable", according to Jawando, whose novel And the Stars Were Burning Brightly will be published in 2020. She said: "Megaphone was the perfect mix of learning about the craft when writing for this readership, gaining industry insight and actually going away to write. Things like getting an agent and writing a synopsis were demystified, which was a big help."
She also gained a support network. "I met one of my closest friends through the scheme. I was introduced to wonderful authors, who have since kept in contact and offered advice and help, and I was introduced to important networks in my own city [Manchester], such as [writing development agency] Cultureword."
Emma Smith-Barton took part in Penguin Random House’s WriteNow scheme, and signed with agent Jo Unwin six months in. Her YA novel The Million Pieces of Neena Gill is about a British-Pakistani girl struggling with her identity and mental health after her brother goes missing, and it will be released by Penguin Random House in July 2019.
Like Jawando, Smith-Barton said the network and access to agents and publishers that came from WriteNow was invaluable, and believes "wholeheartedly" that these initiatives are necessary to break down the barriers that exist in publishing. "The very fact the initiative even exists is giving BAME writers the message that publishers want diverse voices, and that’s encouraging in itself. When a publisher says, ‘We want to hear your voice, your story’, it gives you the message you might be able to belong."
Yasmin Rahman penned a story for 2017 Stripes-published anthology A Change is Gonna Come, which collected stories by BAME writers, and now has a book deal with Hot Key Books. One of the most important things she gained from taking part was confidence. "I’ve always been scared of writing stories featuring Muslim characters, or about Muslim issues, because I assumed no one wanted to read them. I’d grown up seeing white as the default, thinking of it as the only option. So to have such a positive reaction to my story and my writing was so nice. It encouraged me to continue writing the stories I thought were important."
For Aisha Bushby (pictured right), the process of her writing being published in A Change is Gonna Come was like "attending a writer boot-camp". She sat on panels at literary events, ran a workshop, was interviewed on the radio and received a bad review. She even scrapped the novel she was working on and started on another. Bushby then signed with an agent (Claire Wilson at RCW) and secured a contract with Egmont—so in less than a year she had gone from submitting a short story to having a two-book deal.
Bushby was also highly commended by the FAB Prize—an award for unsigned BAME writers and illustrators run by Faber and the Andlyn Literary Agency—and a high number of other creatives who submitted to the prize have since signed with agents or publishers. Hannah Lee’s picture book My Hair will be published by Faber, and Rohan Agalawatta, who won in 2017, signed with agent Ben Illis at BIA. Highly commended author Kereen Getten is represented by Alice Sutherland-Hawes at Madeleine Milburn Literary, TV & Film Agency, while commended author Yvonne Battle-Felton signed with Elise Dillsworth’s eponymous agency and inked a deal with Dialogue Books. Battle-Felton also won New Writing North’s Northern Writers Award for Fiction in 2017.
All the writers and organisers who spoke to The Bookseller said longer-term strategies need to be implemented to ensure authors of colour are better represented. Rasheed, who founded Megaphone, is looking for funding to run the scheme again—Usborne has agreed to fund the fees for two writers—and said the long-term goal is sustainability. "The exclusion of writers and readers of colour is an established, systematic problem and needs long-term, strategic action to fix it," she said. "In the end, the result will be a better landscape for readers and writers, and more opportunities for publishers."
Smith-Barton said: "Changing the industry long-term has to be the goal. I really hope these initiatives will make a difference. They are a good start but there is still, of course, a lot of work to be done."