On Sunday morning, the Barbican\u2019s vast concrete foyer will swap its usual quiet for a buzz of conversation and excitement, and a particular kind of cultural energy: Black British storytelling in all its multiplicity.<\/p>\n
Now in its fifth year, the Black British book festival (BBBF) has become Europe\u2019s largest celebration of Black literature. What began as a small, intimate gathering has grown into a national institution attracting thousands of attendees and some of the biggest names in publishing.<\/p>\n
Founded by Selina Brown in 2021, the festival grew out of the children\u2019s author\u2019s frustration at being told that her book wouldn\u2019t sell because there was a Black girl on the cover. Determined to create a space she couldn\u2019t find elsewhere, Brown launched the inaugural event as a one-day festival. Five years later, it has expanded into a year-round cultural platform, hosting three major festivals across the UK, opening libraries, collaborating with Glastonbury, and launching a children\u2019s book festival headlined by Sir Lenny Henry.<\/p>\n
\u201cBlack British literature has always been rich, but too often it hasn\u2019t been given the platform or investment it deserves,\u201d says Brown. \u201cThe festival exists to change that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lineup for this year\u2019s main event at the Barbican includes Denise Lewis, Marcus Ryder, Jordan Stephens and June Sarpong. The 36-event programme spans everything from political conversations to children\u2019s storytelling, as well as panel discussions with leading Black authors and workshops for aspiring writers. There are talks on Malcolm X, sessions on getting published, and spaces where writers and readers can meet one another.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an absolute celebration of Black thinking,\u201d says Ryder, <\/strong>a charity director and co-founder of the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity, <\/strong>who will be at the festival to discuss his and Henry\u2019s new book about reparations, The Big Payback<\/a>. \u201cWe just don\u2019t celebrate the joy of Black creativity enough.\u201d<\/p>\n Far too often we\u2019re responding to other people\u2019s agendas. At this festival the agenda is set by Black people<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cThe Black British experience is unique in that you\u2019re constantly battling a perceived idea of what Britishness is and how we fit into it,\u201d adds Stephens, best known for being one half of Rizzle Kicks<\/a>, who is also hosting an event at the festival. \u201cSo when you\u2019re around people who have all been in that battle, you\u2019re like, \u2018Oh, this is actually really nice. It\u2019s a vibe.\u2019 It\u2019s like a self-fulfilling prophecy, an odd loop.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Publishing\u2019s financial model does not favour brilliant Black literature\u2019 \u2026 Marcus Ryder, right, with Lenny Henry, his co-author of The Big Payback. Photograph: Ejatu Shaw\/The Guardian<\/p>\n But if the BBBF has flourished, the same can\u2019t necessarily be said of the publishing landscape around it. The post-2020 boom sparked by the Black Lives Matter movement now looks like a spike rather than a shift.<\/p>\n The UK saw a 56% rise in the sales of books by writers of colour in the financial year to 2021. Titles such as Reni Eddo-Lodge\u2019s Why I\u2019m No Longer Talking to White People About Race<\/a>, published in 2017, shot to the top of the UK nonfiction chart, making Eddo-Lodge the first Black British author to hold that position. Publishing houses raced to replicate the formula.<\/p>\n But the momentum didn\u2019t last. Earlier this year, leading Black literary figures told the Guardian<\/a> that UK publishing is now less accessible to Black authors than it was five years ago. Analysis by the Bookseller in 2023<\/a> found that the post-2020 boom \u201cfailed to result in the promised broadening of publishing\u2019s output\u201d. And just last week, a literacy charity reported<\/a> a \u201ccatastrophic decline\u201d in the number of children\u2019s books featuring Black main characters, down by more than a fifth between 2023 and 2024.<\/p>\n \u201cIt can be soul-destroying to look at the ebbs and flows of a system that isn\u2019t necessarily based on integrity and authenticity,\u201d Stephens says. \u201cIt\u2019s about what\u2019s hot.\u201d<\/p>\n For Ryder, the problem isn\u2019t a mystery. \u201cThe publishing financial model is broken,\u201d he says. \u201cEverybody holds up Why I\u2019m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, but the truth is that when it was published, it just fell off and died, until the murder of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter. We clearly have a model that does not favour what is now acknowledged as brilliant, Black literature.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTwo seemingly conflicting things are happening at the same time,\u201d he adds. \u201cThe festival is growing really rapidly. And at the same time, lots of Black literature seems to be contracting. What that tells me is that there is a desperate need and a massive desire for community among people who enjoy Black literature. And what we need to do is build on that community.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Jordan Stephens: \u2018With all that\u2019s going on, it is nice to remind ourselves that Black people are doing dope shit.\u2019 Photograph: Karis Beaumont\/The Observer<\/p>\n He isn\u2019t talking about the quality of the work, but the structure of an industry that still treats it as niche. \u201cIf we believe that literature is a cornerstone of our democracy \u2013 which it is, because it\u2019s putting out thinking and disseminating it across society \u2013 then we need to think about whether there needs to be state funding in it for underrepresented groups,\u201d he says. \u201cLiterature is so important to society, and relying on just the profit motive to ensure its success is not the way forward.\u201d<\/p>\n For Ryder, this is what makes the BBBF essential: it exists outside that model, and doesn\u2019t wait for publishing houses to decide that Black writing is marketable. \u201cFar too often we are responding to other people\u2019s agendas,\u201d he says. \u201cWhereas what\u2019s fantastic about this festival is that it is the agenda being set by Black people. It is the narratives being set by Black people. And you so rarely get spaces and opportunities to see that.\u201d<\/p>\n In a moment of rising political tension and cultural division in the UK, the festival has an even sharper resonance. This summer saw racist riots and far-right marches erupt in towns and cities across England. Reform UK has surged in the polls and St George\u2019s flags have been painted across pavements. A new cultural consensus \u2013 anti-DEI, anti-migrant, \u201canti-woke\u201d \u2013 is being loudly asserted in public spaces.<\/p>\n Look at the Harlem Renaissance: those writers weren\u2019t working in isolation, they were coming together, forming community<\/p><\/blockquote>\n While Ryder admits that the festival offers a counterweight to this hostile political climate, he is resistant to framing it as such: \u201cI don\u2019t want our actions to be dictated as merely the response to white people\u2019s concerns and white people\u2019s interests. What I want is for us to be setting an agenda for what we need as Black people.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis energy has been in Britain my whole life \u2013 my dad grew up with the National Front, the BNP, getting battered in the street,\u201d Stephens adds. \u201cThis is the imperialist nature of Britain. So right now, with all of that going on, it is nice to remind ourselves that Black people are doing dope shit.\u201d<\/p>\n Stephens is clear-eyed about the limitations of representation in the UK, though. \u201cEverything Black is just shoved into October and then people move on,\u201d he says. That October effect \u2013 the surge in interest during Black History Month followed by silence \u2013 is something many writers know too well.<\/p>\n With that in mind, the BBBF can serve as an assertion of cultural permanence, when Blackness can sometimes be treated as fleeting or conditional. And the sense of community-building, Ryder notes, echoes cultural renaissances past. \u201cThere\u2019s an untapped desire for a Black British community of creatives and thinkers,\u201d he says. \u201cIf we look back in history \u2013 the Harlem Renaissance \u2013 those writers weren\u2019t working in isolation. They were coming together, forming community. Once you have that community, other things will flow from it. Literature will flow from it, great thinking flows from it, great art flows from it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Sunday morning, the Barbican\u2019s vast concrete foyer will swap its usual quiet for a buzz of conversation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[3444,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-509059","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115394406310972885","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}