Race in the time of childhood
Sharmilla Beezmohun has worked in publishing since 1994, training at Virago and on Heinemann’s African and Caribbean Writers Series. For eleven years she was Deputy Editor of Wasafiri, the Magazine of International Contemporary Writing. In 2010, she co-founded Speaking Volumes Live Literature Productions with Sarah Sanders. Speaking Volumes’ work includes their original Breaking Ground concept (2013), which showcases writers of colour in the UK and abroad. The latest iteration, Breaking New Ground, champions British writers and illustrators of colour for children and young adults. In 2010 Sharmilla’s first novel, Echoes of a Green Land, was published in translation in Spain as Ecos de la tierra verde. She edited the academic collection Continental Shifts, Shifts in Perception: Black Cultures and Identities in Europe (2016); and, with Sarah White and Roxy Harris, co-edited A Meeting of the Continents: The International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books — Revisited (2005). An anthology celebrating ten years of Speaking Volumes entitled ‘Not Quite Right for Us’: Forty Writers Speak Volumes edited by Sharmilla was published by Flipped Eye in 2021. Sharmilla is a Trustee of Carcanet Publishers, Modern Poetry in Translation magazine and the George Padmore Institute, an archive housing unique collections of material from pioneering Black British political and cultural organisations. She is also on the International Organising Committee of AfroEurope@s, a cross-continent academic and cultural network.
