Join us on tour in 2026
WritersMosaic Live at the British Library – Meet the Pioneers: The Revolutionary Publishers
With Margaret Busby, Colin Grant, Alexander D Great, Beverley Mason, Lemara Lindsay Prince and Lemn Sissay.
Festival / Panel
Pigott Theatre, British Library, London, Thursday 16 July 7pm
WritersMosaic pays tribute to revolutionary publishers of the global majority in Britain, Margaret Busby and Guyanese-born political activists Jessica and Eric Huntley.
In the late 1960s, Jessica and Eric Huntley and Margaret Busby were first among equals in carving out a path for writers and other creative artists, and in not waiting in vain for the mainstream to recognise them and their cause. In starting the revolutionary publishing houses Bogle-L’Ouverture and Allison & Busby – explored in Margaret’s new book, Part of the Story – these pioneers elevated the overlooked global majority in Britain, and enabled much that came after, from #Merky Books to the Jhalak Prize and WritersMosaic.
This evening of conversation, poetry and song, hosted by Colin Grant with Margaret Busby herself, Lemn Sissay, Lemara Lindsay Prince, Beverly Mason and the Calypsonian Alexander D Great, WritersMosaic celebrates the Huntleys and Margaret Busby whose record of excellence is evident in her latest book, Part of the Story.
WritersMosaic Live at the Southbank Centre – What we leave we carry
Festival / Panel
Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London, Wednesday 26 Aug 2026, 7.45pm
An evening of candid, profoundly human, sometimes funny and always moving stories of migration in celebration of Colin Grant’s book.
What do we leave behind when we move to a new place – and what do we carry with us, physically and emotionally, wherever we land?
Grant has travelled the country with writers from WritersMosaic, listening to stories of migration – foundational tales of arriving in a new land, along with rarely spoken tales of love and loss.
What We Leave We Carry is a chance to listen to Britain – in all its richness and complexity.
Grant is joined by storytellers from this oral history sharing the secrets of their migrant songs and objects: Suzanne Harrington, an Irish writer who travelled with an ‘introductory’ sick note from her psychiatrist; Maria Jastrzębska, a Polish poet recounting partisan songs that poked fun at Hitler; Amanda Vilanova, a Puerto Rican actor gifted her mother’s jewellery to sell in an emergency; and Clementine Burnley, a Cameroonian psychotherapist who arrived as a student in 1980s Glasgow inspired by ‘Kung Fu Fighting’.
The evening also features live Afro-Colombian music and dance from Akolá Tambó.
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