Feature Ethnic diversit


recruitment office in west London, where the adviser recommended I put my theat- rical skills to use... in sales. So I went from stage-managing “Arsenic and Old Lace” at universit, to interviewing for entry-level sales jobs, and I quickly realised that routine, nine-to-five roles weren’t for me. Eventually I interviewed for a role with Macmillan in its special sales department. I was offered the job, and haven’t looked back since. Although I loved books, until then I hadn’t known what a career in publishing involved. And it was in this industry that I could see a future for myself. It was creative, and it excited me. In the early years I was conscious I was in a minorit—I could count on one hand the number of BAME staffers I knew—but I can honestly say I never felt that I encountered obstacles because I was from a BAME background. My personal experience has been wholly positive, and I have always been rewarded on results. Today I’m c.e.o. of Kings Road Publish- ing, part of Bonnier Publishing, which has five c.e.o.s, two of whom are women from BAME backgrounds. I believe it’s crucial for BAME staff coming into our business to see that there are no obstacles between them and the top: all you need to thrive is to be entrepreneurial, to think differently and to work hard. But the truth is we’re faced with a staggering shortage of BAME candidates. At Bonnier Publishing, we’re proud to be a dominant force in mass-market publishing and in the trade. Our mantra is “publishing for everyone”, so we are eager for our busi- ness to become more representative of the diverse audiences we’re selling to.


Secondly, we need to look outside of the publishing world and actively reach out to BAME communities. Our major challenge at Bonnier Publishing is atracting applications from BAME candidates in the first place, so our aim is to create awareness of publish- ing in these communities—and we believe this should begin at primary school. I’ve had the privilege of working with passionate and talented people throughout my publishing career, and by sharing my story with these communities, I’m hoping I can persuade more talented people of colour to come and join us. ×


Candice Carty-Williams Vintage Senior marketing executive


I


I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I believe there are two key areas we should be working on, as an industry, to promote ethnic diversit. Firstly, what we publish has to be brought up to date. We must atract more authors and illustrators from BAME back- grounds so that stories are told from first- hand experience. BAME communities have evolved over the past few years and many of the stereotpes held no longer exist. These changes need to be shared through stories, as through books we inform societ, and the more informed we are, the more empathetic we become. There are some authentic voices, but there simply aren’t enough of them, espe- cially in genre fiction. Ayisha Malik’s Sofia Khan is Not Obliged (twent7), a novel about the weird and wonderful world of Muslim dating, is a great recent example, as is A A Dhand’s Street of Darkness (Bantam Press), following Sikh investigator Harry Virdee.


12


T’S BEEN SAID a million times before, I know, but “for as long as I can


remember”, I’ve loved books. And it’s true. I am from a single-parent family. My mum has dyslexia and dyspraxia and learning difficulties, so she read what she could to me until I took over and started reading


to her when I was about three. From then on, I read voraciously. There wasn’t a thing that I didn’t read. I was like a black Matilda... with- out the telekinetic abilities.


The thing that struck me, though—and still strikes me—is that there were very rarely any characters like me in the books I was reading. Yes, I read Malorie Blackman books over and over again—the announce- ment that Noughts and Crosses would be made into a TV series made the 14-year-old me (and 27-year-old me) para- lytic with joy—and I sought out the Drummond Hill


Crew series by Yinka Adebayo, which I had to Google to check that I hadn’t made up—and then immediately remembered when seeing how aggressively 1990s the covers were. I had to read these writers for some form of black British representation in literature. In my tiny, naïve child’s mind, I assumed that even though there was minimal repre- sentation in these books, everyone would still know about black people in literature, and their stories. On World Book Day in 2002, I dressed up as Temi from Drummond Hill Crew: The Glamma Kids. I was asked repeatedly: “Who are you


meant to be?” “I’m Temi? I’m Temi from The Glamma


Kids, you know?” I replied... a lot. And nobody knew.


By lunchtime, I started telling people that I had forgoten that it was World Book Day and that I was just in my own clothes. It was at that point that I realised that BAME people need to work harder than anyone else to be seen, to be known, to have a presence that is even mildly recognised. And, like when I was younger, we’re still hiding ourselves, we’re having to integrate and adhere to the existing tropes of publishing to fit in, and to not offend. Because you don’t want to draw atention to yourself, you don’t want to be seen as loud, and as a black woman, you’ll have spent your entire life shying away from any confrontation, diluting your opinion and having to concede in many a discus- sion: in essence, trying not to be received as an Angry Black Woman, because being an Angry Black Woman is the literal worst.


Last year, having worked at 4th Estate and William Collins for 18 months, I created and launched the 4th Estate and Guard- ian BAME Short Story Prize. I had huge support from my team (4th Estate PR director Michelle Kane put her life and soul into securing the Guardian as a media partner), from the wider company, from the executive board and from the industry. This showed me, beyond any doubt, that there is support when it comes to BAME repre- sentation, that there are good inten- tions, and that there is space for it. But what we need more of is awareness. We need editors to look further than what agents bring to them, or to solely seek out what they know and like,


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