IRA MATH­UR

To­day at the Old Fire Sta­tion in Port-of-Spain, Mar­garet Bus­by, the Ghana­ian-born pub­lish­er, ed­i­tor and writer who has been a cen­tral fig­ure in Black British lit­er­ary life for half a cen­tu­ry, ap­pears in con­ver­sa­tion with Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown, founder and pres­i­dent of the Bo­cas Lit Fest, on Bus­by’s new col­lec­tion, Part of the Sto­ry.

The Bo­cas Lit Fest or­gan­i­sa­tion, found­ed in 2010 by Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown, with the first an­nu­al lit­er­ary fes­ti­val held in 2011, has, over the past decade and a half, brought to­geth­er Caribbean and in­ter­na­tion­al writ­ers, lit­er­ary agents and in­tel­lec­tu­als in a sus­tained pro­gramme of read­ings and dis­cus­sions. The fes­ti­val, di­rect­ed by Nicholas Laugh­lin, is the shopfront for the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s year-round de­vel­op­ment work.

Bo­cas, as an or­gan­i­sa­tion, has con­sis­tent­ly sup­port­ed Trinida­di­an and re­gion­al writ­ers through its work­shops, the work of the Bo­cas Lit Fest’s Writ­ers Cen­tre, its part­ner­ship with Pa­per Based Book­shop in Port-of-Spain, and its pub­lish­ing arm, Peekash Press.

The OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture is award­ed an­nu­al­ly by in­de­pen­dent re­gion­al judges, and past win­ners in­clude the late No­bel lau­re­ate Derek Wal­cott and the Trinida­di­an writer Earl Lovelace.

This af­ter­noon, the con­ver­sa­tion be­tween Bus­by and Sa­landy-Brown at the Old Fire Sta­tion (NALIS) is sched­uled as a non­fic­tion event as part of the fes­ti­val pro­gramme.

Mar­garet Yvonne Bus­by was born in 1944 in Ghana (then the Gold Coast) to par­ents with fam­i­ly links to Trinidad, Bar­ba­dos, and Do­mini­ca, and was sent to Eng­land for school­ing at an ear­ly age. Al­so known as Nana Akua Ack­on, Bus­by has writ­ten about the name as part of her Ghana­ian her­itage, re­flect­ing nam­ing tra­di­tions tied to lin­eage and birth.

At the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don, she read Eng­lish, edit­ed her col­lege lit­er­ary mag­a­zine, and pub­lished her own po­et­ry be­fore grad­u­at­ing with a BA Ho­n­ours de­gree. While still a stu­dent, she met Clive Al­li­son, and to­geth­er they found­ed Al­li­son & Bus­by, whose first ti­tles ap­peared in 1967.

Bus­by be­came the youngest pub­lish­er in Britain and the first Black woman pub­lish­er in the Unit­ed King­dom, serv­ing as ed­i­to­r­i­al di­rec­tor for two decades and pub­lish­ing writ­ers whose work cir­cu­lat­ed across the Caribbean, Africa and the wider Black di­as­po­ra. Au­thors on the list in­clud­ed CLR James, George Lam­ming, Buchi Emecheta, Sam Green­lee, Roy Heath and Ish­mael Reed, with ti­tles is­sued from Lon­don in­to in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets, in­clud­ing Sam Green­lee’s The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1969).

Her work in pub­lish­ing con­tin­ued through ed­i­to­r­i­al roles, in­clud­ing at Earth­scan, where she worked on ti­tles by Frantz Fanon and Al­bert Mem­mi, be­fore mov­ing in­to a free­lance ca­reer from the ear­ly 1990s as an ed­i­tor, writer and crit­ic, com­mis­sion­ing and shap­ing texts across fic­tion, mem­oir, po­lit­i­cal writ­ing and lit­er­ary crit­i­cism.

In 1992, Bus­by edit­ed Daugh­ters of Africa: An In­ter­na­tion­al An­thol­o­gy of Words and Writ­ings by Women of African De­scent from the An­cient Egypt­ian to the Present, a vol­ume bring­ing to­geth­er more than 200 con­trib­u­tors across gen­res and his­tor­i­cal pe­ri­ods. A sub­se­quent an­thol­o­gy, New Daugh­ters of Africa, fol­lowed in 2019, again as­sem­bling over 200 writ­ers from across the African di­as­po­ra.

Bus­by’s jour­nal­ism has ap­peared in The Guardian, The Ob­serv­er, The In­de­pen­dent, The Sun­day Times and the New States­man, where she has writ­ten book re­views, es­says and obit­u­ar­ies of writ­ers and cul­tur­al fig­ures. Her broad­cast­ing work has in­clud­ed pre­sent­ing and pro­duc­ing ra­dio pro­grammes and writ­ing adap­ta­tions for BBC Ra­dio, in­clud­ing texts by CLR James, Sam Selvon and Wole Soyin­ka, while her work for the stage in­cludes Sanko­fa (1999), Yaa As­an­te­waa – War­rior Queen (2001–02) and An African Car­go (2007).

Bus­by’s in­sti­tu­tion­al roles have in­clud­ed serv­ing as pres­i­dent of Eng­lish PEN since 2023, and ser­vice on sev­er­al oth­er boards and ad­vi­so­ry bod­ies of or­gan­i­sa­tions such as the Roy­al Lit­er­ary Fund and the Africa Cen­tre in Lon­don, as well as chair­ing the Book­er Prize in 2020 and judg­ing the Caine Prize for African Writ­ing and the Com­mon­wealth Book Prize. Her many ho­n­ours in­clude the Ben­son Medal from the Roy­al So­ci­ety of Lit­er­a­ture, her elec­tion as an Hon­orary Fel­low of the Roy­al So­ci­ety of Lit­er­a­ture, hon­orary doc­tor­ates from in­sti­tu­tions in­clud­ing SOAS and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ex­eter, and her ap­point­ment as Com­man­der of the Or­der of the British Em­pire (CBE) in 2021, fol­lowed by the Lon­don Book Fair Life­time Achieve­ment Award.

Bus­by’s col­lect­ed writ­ings, Part of the Sto­ry: Writ­ings from Half a Cen­tu­ry, pub­lished by Hamish Hamil­ton in March 2026, are the sub­ject of the con­ver­sa­tion be­tween her and Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown.

The force be­hind Bo­cas

Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown was born in Diego Mar­tin, Trinidad, and left at 17 to study in the Unit­ed King­dom. In Lon­don, she worked in pub­lish­ing be­fore em­bark­ing up­on a 20-year ca­reer with the BBC as a prizewin­ning pro­duc­er and lat­er as a se­nior man­ag­er, one of on­ly two ex­ec­u­tives in news and cur­rent af­fairs from an eth­nic mi­nor­i­ty back­ground. Through­out, her fo­cus was on in­creas­ing mi­nor­i­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion in British me­dia.

Sa­landy-Brown re­turned to Trinidad in 2004 and in 2011 found­ed the Bo­cas Lit Fest and the OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture, work­ing with a cross sec­tion of col­lab­o­ra­tors, in­clud­ing Nicholas Laugh­lin, the late Pro­fes­sor Fun­so Aiye­ji­na, Mar­jorie Thor­pe, Ken At­tale, Lu­ci­ta Esau and Je­re­my Tay­lor, to es­tab­lish the fes­ti­val and its as­so­ci­at­ed prize. The fes­ti­val has been held an­nu­al­ly since its found­ing, in­clud­ing sev­er­al vir­tu­al edi­tions dur­ing COVID.

Sa­landy-Brown’s work in T&T has in­clud­ed serv­ing as ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Fes­ti­val and writ­ing a week­ly news­pa­per col­umn un­til 2025. She has re­ceived hon­orary doc­tor­ates from the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­min­ster and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, was elect­ed an Hon­orary Fel­low of the Roy­al So­ci­ety of Lit­er­a­ture in 2020, and was award­ed the Hum­ming­bird Medal (Sil­ver) in 2022.

In 2022, Sa­landy-Brown stepped down as fes­ti­val di­rec­tor, with Nicholas Laugh­lin tak­ing over the role, while she re­mained pres­i­dent of the Bo­cas Lit Fest.

This evening, the fes­ti­val pro­gramme con­tin­ues at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) with the 2026 Na­tion­al Po­et­ry Slam Grand Slam.

The fi­nal­ists rep­re­sent a mix of emerg­ing and es­tab­lished spo­ken-word artists com­pet­ing for the ti­tle.

The Bo­cas Lit Fest, which be­gan on April 30, con­cludes to­day and runs across venues in Port-of-Spain.

Ira Math­ur is a free­lance jour­nal­ist, a Guardian colum­nist, and the win­ner of the 2023 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion.