Margaret Busby

Margaret Yvonne Busby was born in 1944, in Accra, Gold Coast (present-day Ghana). Her parents were Dr George Busby and Mrs Sarah Busby (née Christian), who both had family links to the Caribbean, particularly to Trinidad, Barbados and Dominica. Her Barbados-born father, Dr Busby (1899–1980) was a lifelong friend of Kwame Nkrumah's mentor George Padmore and attended school in Trinidad with C. L. R. James at Queen's Royal College, winning the Island Scholarship. This, in turn, enabled him to travel to Britain to study medicine, in 1919. After initial studies at Edinburgh University, George Busby transferred to University College, Dublin, to complete his medical qualifications, and then practised as a doctor in Walthamstow, London (where there is a blue plaque in his honour), before relocating to settle in the Gold Coast in 1929. Through her maternal line, she is a cousin of BBC newscaster Moira Stuart. Her grandfather was Dominica-born George James Christian (1869–1940), a delegate at the First Pan-African Conference, in London, in 1900, who migrated to the Gold Coast in 1902.

Her parents sent their three children to be educated in England, when Busby was five. She and her sister first attended a school in the Lake District, followed by Charters Towers School, an international girls' boarding-school in Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex. After passing her O-levels there, aged 14, Busby left school at 15, went back to Ghana and took her A-levels at 16, then spent a year at a college in Cambridge so as not to begin university too young. From the age of 17, she studied English at Bedford College, London University, where she edited her college literary magazine, as well as publishing her own poetry. She graduated with a BA Honours degree, at the age of 20. She was married to British jazz musician and educator, Lionel Grigson (1942–1994).

While still at university, she met her future business partner, Clive Allison, at a party in Bayswater Road, and they decided to start a publishing company. After graduating, Busby briefly worked at the Cresset Press – part of the Barrie Group – while setting up Allison and Busby (A & B), whose first books were published in 1967, making her the then youngest publisher as well as the first African woman book publisher in the UK – an achievement she has assessed by saying: "[I]t is easy enough to be the first, we can each try something and be the first woman or the first African woman to do X, Y or Z. But, if it's something worthwhile you don't want to be the only....I hope that I can, in any way, inspire someone to do what I have done but learn from my mistakes and do better than I have done."

She was Allison & Busby's Editorial Director for 20 years, publishing many notable authors including Sam Greenlee (author of The Spook Who Sat by the Door, the first novel published by A & B, in 1969), C. L. R. James, Buchi Emecheta, Chester Himes, George Lamming, Roy Heath, Ishmael Reed, John Edgar Wideman, Nuruddin Farah, Rosa Guy, Val Wilmer, Colin MacInnes, H. Rap Brown, Julius Lester, Geoffrey Grigson, Edward Blishen, Dermot Healy, Adrian Mitchell, Matthew Sweeney, Jill Murphy, Christine Qunta, Michael Horovitz, Alexandra Kollontai, Gordon Williams, Alan Burns, Carlos Moore, Michèle Roberts, Molefe Pheto, Arthur Maimane, Maurice Nyagumbo, Giles Gordon, Claire Rayner, Clive Sinclair, Mineke Schipper, Chris Searle, Richard Stark, James Ellroy, Hunter S. Thompson, Margaret Thomson Davis, B. Traven, Alexis Lykiard, Tom Mallin, Jack Trevor Story, Michael Moorcock, Mervyn Peake, John Clute, Julian Savarin, Ralph de Boissière, Andrew Salkey, Harriet E. Wilson, and Miyamoto Musashi.

Busby was subsequently editorial director of Earthscan (publishing titles by Han Suyin, Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, René Dumont, Carolina Maria de Jesus, and others), before pursuing a freelance career as an editor, writer, and critic, from the early 1990s.

She has worked continuously for diversity within the publishing industry, writing in a 1984 article in the New Statesman: "Is it enough to respond to a demand for books reflecting the presence of 'ethnic minorities' while perpetuating a system which does not actively encourage their involvement at all levels? The reality is that the appearance and circulation of books supposedly produced with these communities in mind is usually dependent on what the dominant white (male) community, which controls schools, libraries, bookshops and publishing houses, will permit." In the 1980s, she was a founding member of the organization Greater Access to Publishing (GAP), which engaged in campaigns for increased Black representation in British publishing. Other members of this multi-racial group, which held a conference in November 1987 particularly to highlight publishing as an option for Black women, included Lennie Goodings, Maggie Scott, Ros de Lanerolle, Yvonne Collymore, Paula Kahn, Toks Williams, Kothai Christie, and Jacqui Roach.

Busby was the patron of Independent Black Publishers (IBP), a trade association chaired by Verna Wilkins. The aim of IBP, as Busby was quoted as saying, was to "provide a forum for progressive black publishers to share initiatives, maximise mutual strengths and identify common difficulties, with a view to having a more effective impact on the book trade and the wider publishing industry", and in 2007 at the London Book Fair a joint IBP stand showcased the books of Bogle-L'Ouverture Press, Tamarind Books, the X Press, Ayebia Clarke Publishing, Joan Anim-Addo's Mango Publishing, and other ventures. In a 2012 interview with Tricia Wombell, Busby said: "It is important to document and celebrate the achievements of many of our Black creatives (…) so that they do not get written out of history simply because their importance may not be recognised by the mainstream."

In August 2010, at the University of the Western Cape, she delivered a lecture in memory of assassinated South African political activist Dulcie September (1935–1988).

Busby has been a participant in numerous literary festivals and conferences internationally – in 1993, she gave the opening address at the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books – and has interviewed and been "in conversation" with such noted writers as Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Ama Ata Aidoo, Wole Soyinka, Nawal El Saadawi, Ngugi wa Thiong'o. and Ben Okri.

Busby was appointed chair of the 2020 Booker Prize judges, other members of the panel including Lee Child, Sameer Rahim, Lemn Sissay, and Emily Wilson. Busby has previously judged several other literary competitions, among them the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Orange Prize, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Wasafiri New Writing Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Commonwealth Book Prize (for which she was chair of the judges in 2012, when the winner was Shehan Karunatilaka), the Hay Festival initiative Africa39, and the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa (chair of judges, 2018). In 2021, she served as a judge in the Trade category of the British Book Awards, and in 2022 judged the PEN Pinter Prize alongside Ruth Borthwick and Daniel Hahn.

She has served on the boards or in advisory positions for other cultural organisations, including the Drum Arts Centre (co-founded in 1973 by Cy Grant), The Africa Centre, London, English PEN, the Royal Literary Fund, the African & Caribbean Music Circuit, the Hackney Empire theatre, the Organization of Women Writers of Africa, the Etisalat Prize for Literature (as patron, alongside Ama Ata Aidoo, Dele Olojede, Ellah Allfrey, Kole Omotoso and Zakes Mda), Nubian Jak Community Trust, and Wasafiri magazine. She is Prize Ambassador of the SI Leeds Literary Prize, and an inaugural patron (and former trustee) of jazz education charity Tomorrow's Warriors, founded in 1991. She is also a patron of Friends of the Huntley Archives at London Metropolitan Archives (FHALMA), a charitable foundation building on the archival legacy of Jessica Huntley and Eric Huntley, co-founders of the publishing house Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications.

In August 2022, Busby headlined the Berlin African Book Festival (curated by Lidudumalingani Mqombothi with the theme "Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow"), delivering the keynote address.

In March 2024, she gave the keynote address at opening of the Johannesburg Festival of Women Writers, founded by Barbara Masekela, and hosted by the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Johannesburg, which was on the theme "Mothers and Daughters: An Intergenerational Conversation". In the same month, she also participated in the 27th Time of the Writer Festival in Durban, South Africa.

In July 2025, Busby gave the opening address to launch HOWL, the History of Women’s Liberation website, which aims to collect and publish the memories and stories of feminists involved in the UK Women's Liberation Movement.