children living in a tower block on an adventure. In my experience, there can be a stigma associated with living in public housing like tower blocks. How did this story come about? It was a desire to connect with the magic I was able to find on my estate growing up. I grew up in Roehampton in London. I really disliked waking up in the morning and seeing the sun reflecting on concrete. Then as I got older, I found lots of [leafy] areas around my estate—it was a very green area. There was one tree that bordered the row coming up to my block. It had a face in the crown. I liked to pretend that if I could find it, I could enter this magical world. The book grew from that memory and wanting to give the kids the opportunit to find the tree and a way into this magical land.
I found this idea that you could disappear into a magical world totally enchanting... I wanted to put it in the context of the places I grew up
Joseph Coelho
The children in your stories appear courageous and curious. Do you see yourself in your characters? Yeah. I want to be as courageous as them. I’m not sure if, when I was a kid, I would have followed a deep, dark hole in the centre of a tree trunk. So I think I also write what I aspire to be.
When did you first understand yourself as a poet?
A massive breakthrough moment was when the wonderful poet Jean “Binta” Breeze visited my school [Breeze died in August 2021 in Jamaica]. I think it was seeing a poet in action and realising that this was something I could do.
Writing brings a lot of things to the surface that need to be processed. I think it can be very therapeutic. Things that I wished had gone differently. Or I wish I had the resources [I needed] at the time. I can give those resources to my characters.
Joseph Coelho’s début poetry collection, Werewolf Club Rules, won the CLPE CLiPPA Poetry Award. For more than 16 years he has run creative literacy sessions in schools, inspiring young people through stories and characters they can recognise. The author’s
Our Tower (9780711268821, £12.99) will be issued by Frances Lincoln Children’s Books in August.
TheBookseller.com
Comment
Progression in progress: how to capitalise on the diversity gains of recent years
Nels Abbey Co-founder, Black Writers’ Guild L
et’s play a game. You win a point for each one you can list: off the top of your head (and in under a minute), name five Black
men with editorial or commissioning power in British publishing; then name five books by Black authors you saw on the shelves of your local supermarket recently (not including a former US President or First Lady). Odds are two years ago you would have
scored one, possibly no more than two out of 10. Today, if you are well-informed, well-connected, highly active on LinkedIn (a polite euphemism for stalkerish) or live in a super-diverse area, the odds are that you have managed to score at least three points. In the wild event that you have scored four or more, congratulations: you probably live in Croydon. As facetious and anecdotal as it may seem,
the indicators permeating from the outcome of the “game” above are not far from a surgically accurate depiction of the progress that has been made in recent years. Two years ago you could walk into a supermarket in the most diverse areas of London and have no idea that Black writers existed. At the last visit to my local Sainsbury’s, I saw the excellent Yinka Where is Your Huzband? by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn prominently displayed at eye-level. And I can name two Black men, a chronically underrepresented group, in editorial roles. The Black Writers’ Guild (BWG) was estab-
lished June 2020 with the broad objectives of holding the industry to account in order to improve Britain’s literary culture. Specifically, it was established to help tackle the industry’s systemic inequalities and the chronic under- representation of Black authors, commission- ers and senior decision-makers. The industry’s response to the creation of
BWG has been refreshingly positive. Penguin Random House, Hachette, Bloomsbury, HarperCollins, Faber and Simon & Schuster warmly welcomed BWG as a critical partner, acknowledged the issues we presented, and we continue to work together to address these issues for the betterment of British publishing and our national literary culture. In the two years since the murder of George
Floyd and the creation of BWG, there have been improvements in publishing. In fact, there has been success—especially in the area of acquisitions. Even after the racial reckoning of May 2020, which led to a surge of acquisitions, the underrepresentation of Black writers has quite clearly eased. It is indeed a truly radical
change from a few years ago that Black writers now stand comfortable chances of getting book deals. As a result, on any given Thursday, readers are offered multiple new options of inspiring, immersive and, indeed, some sub-par books by Black writers. That feat was entirely unimaginable as recently as 2016. If we allow progress to breed complacency,
today’s enhancements risk becoming tomor- row’s “remember when?”. And, in the immortal words of one of the loveliest white men to ever walk the earth, Anthony John Soprano (popu- larly known as Tony Soprano): “Remember when… is the lowest form of conversation.” It is also a sad measure of progression.
The road to travel The game at the start of this piece alludes to persistent issues in recruitment and the promotion of diverse books. Innovation and a lack of retail support remain key areas where there is still a huge amount of work to do. There remain very few Black people at
all levels of the editorial side of publishing– especially at the most senior levels. Books by Black authors often disappear without trace. Retail, especially supermarkets—key areas of discovery of books—remain a ghost town for most Black authors. Innovation is a critical area of concern. The
output of Black writers in Britain is still very curtailed. It remains prohibitively hard to get something truly different and new off the ground. In too many situations Black authors are expected to be the Black version of a white pop-culture phenomenon. As a result, the often commercially dominant spectrum of innovation we see from Black creatives in other areas of the arts is yet to be unleashed on publishing. It’s not for lack of trying. This is fuelled by a persistent lack of end-to-end diversity, and encourages writers to curb their creativity and imagination to viably get on. In these areas and more, the Black Writers’ Guild will continue to work with the industry to make and maintain radical improvements. Strides have indeed been made—and we
celebrate them—but it remains a long walk to true equality and diversity.
This article is adapted from a longer keynote speech Nels Abbey will give to the Black Writers’ Guild’s Inaugural Annual Black Writers’ Convention on Saturday (21st May). Abbey is a British-Nigerian writer, media executive and satirist; his writing has been published in major newspapers and magazines. Abbey is also a co-founder of the Black Writers’ Guild.
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