RF Kuang is having a chaotic start to the year. Before we chat, she kindly warns me that she might have to step away for a second to take a call from the mechanic. She also asks if we can Zoom with our cameras off – she’s just had eye surgery and shouldn’t spend too…

“Surprise, bitch—I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me.” For some, this issue of The Bookseller might feel like the literary version of that “American Horror Story” meme, where Emma Roberts’ character (spoiler alert) comes back from the dead. Reactions to us working on this second iteration of last year’s award-winning Black Issue,…

I first met Ayobami Adebayo six years ago to interview her about her debut Stay With Me; it was the first interview she’d done for the book. Many things have changed since, for one, Adebayo has just been longlisted for the Booker Prize for her latest novel A Spell of Good Things. For another, we’ve…

“I think love is a really transformational thing. For me, I’ve found being in relationships with other women, especially Black women, has been kind of like holding up a mirror to all of the different parts of yourself.” So says Liv Little about the driving force behind her delicate, evocative début Rosewater, which follows 28-year-old poet…

When I first meet Obioma Ugoala, we are at The House of St Barnabas, judging one of the British Book Awards; we are both on the panel for the new Discover Book of the Year. What strikes me is that Ugoala—who is affable, funny and articulate—really puts in the work. Alongside starring as Kristoff in…

On 12th June 2016, the world witnessed what many US media outlets were calling the “most deadly shooting in US history”, when a gunman walked into a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and killed at least 49 people, injuring a further 53. It is in times such as this that…

Richard Reed, co-founder of Innocent Drinks, ascribes the success of the multimillion- pound business to the way the brand’s “joyfulness, creativity and friendliness” managed to “connect with people”. The same could be said for Reed himself, whose exuberance, excitement and genuine interest in the people around him has enabled him to compile a collection of…

First published in The Bookseller magazine in 2018.  “You have to work twice as hard to get half as much as your white counterparts.” That’s the mantra—or warning—that is drilled into black British children by our parents. From a very early age we’re aware that due to a crippling mix of structural inequality, unconscious bias and racial…

Ellah Wakatama Allfrey OBE has held a host of interesting roles in the industry: from senior editor at Jonathan Cape to deputy editor of Granta magazine to Man Booker Prize judge. But she says her latest, publishing director at Indigo Press, is the most exciting yet.

Alexander McCall Smith is a man of many talents. Trained in medical law, he published his first non-academic book—children’s title The White Hippo (Hamish Hamilton)—in 1980, and until 2015 was a professor of medical law at the University of Edinburgh. He is now emeritus professor. A prolific writer, last year he worked on no fewer than seven…