Ghanaian-British Margaret Busby is a living legend. She became the first black female publisher in the UK when she and Clive Allison founded the publishing house Allison & Busby in the 1960s, and soon became part of Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou’s circle. She was later the editor of the two iconic anthologies Daughters of Africa (1992) and New Daughters of Africa (2019), which collect texts by women of African descent written over several centuries. Busby has been invaluable in publishing and elevating black, and particularly female, voices in a British and wider European public for many decades.
In this spring's book Part of the Story: Writings from Half a Century (2026), Busby shows how she has worked continuously throughout her life for freedom of expression and to highlight Afro-diasporic voices and stories, while not glossing over the obstacles she has encountered as a pioneer over the years.
Busby has also been a long-time writer for The Guardian. She was a familiar voice on BBC African Service, and she has adapted a number of literary dramatizations for radio, by, among others, Wole Soyinka and Jean Rhys. Since 2023, she has been the head of English PEN.
Brazilian Deise Faria Nunes is a performance artist, dramaturge and researcher living in Norway. She is included in Busby's anthology New Daughters of Africa. Now, Busby and Nunes meet for a conversation about Busby's contribution to British and wider European cultural and literary life.
The conversation will be in English.
The event is a collaboration between the House of Literature and Black History Month Norway. Read more about them here.
The event is supported by NORAD.
