WritersMosaic and The British Library’s Eccles Institute will present the first in their Meet the Pioneers series, an evening of conversation and music dedicated to Jessica and Eric Huntley – Guyanaese-born political activists and founders of the Bogle L’Overture Publications in London. 

“A people without a history is like a tree without a root,” said the Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey. But too often the pioneers of global majority culture in Britain have been obscured from us, purposely so. In the late 1960s, Margaret Busby along with Jessica and Eric Huntley were first among equals in carving out a path for writers and other creative artists, and not waiting in vain for ‘the man’ to recognise them and their cause. In starting the revolutionary publishing houses Allison & Busby and Bogle-L’Ouverture, these pioneers elevated the overlooked global majority in Britain. Without them there’d be no #Merky Books, Jhalak Prize or WritersMosaic.

In an evening of discussion, poetry and song, ‘Meet the pioneers’, hosted by Colin Grant with Margaret Busby, 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.