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Margaret Busby OBE (also titled Nana Akua Ackon) is a Ghanaian publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster based in the UK. She was Britain’s youngest and first black woman book publisher^[1] when in the 1960s she co-founded with Clive Allison (1944–2012)^[2] the London-based publishing house Allison and Busby (A & B).

Margaret Busby was born in Accra, Gold Coast (present-day Ghana), to Dr George Busby and Mrs Sarah Busby (née Christian), who both had family links to the Caribbean, particularly to Trinidad, Barbados and Dominica. Dr Busby was a lifelong friend of Kwame Nkrumah's mentor George Padmore^[3] and attended school with C. L. R. James.^[4] Through her maternal line, she is a cousin of newscaster Moira Stuart.^[5][6][7]

After leaving school at 15, Margaret Busby went on to read English at Bedford College, London University,^[8] where she became editor of her college literary magazine as well as publishing her own poetry. She was married to British jazz musician and educator Lionel Grigson (1942–1994).^[2]

She co-founded the publishing house Allison and Busby (A & B) in 1967, and was Editorial Director for the next 20 years^[9] published many significant authors including African-American Sam Greenlee (author of The Spook Who Sat by the Door, the first novel published by A & B),^[10][11] C. L. R. James, Buchi Emecheta, Chester Himes, George Lamming, Roy Heath, Ishmael Reed, John Edgar Wideman, Nuruddin Farah, Rosa Guy, Val Wilmer, Colin MacInnes, H. Rap Brown, Julius Lester, Adrian Mitchell, Miyamoto Musashi, Christine Qunta, Michael Horowitz, Carlos Moore, Michele Roberts, Molefe Pheto, Arthur Maimane, and Hunter S. Thompson.

Busby was subsequently Editorial Director of Earthscan (publishing titles by Han Suyin, Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, René Dumont, Carolina Maria de Jesus and others),^[9] before pursuing a freelance career as an editor and writer.

As a journalist, she has written for such leading publications as The Guardian (notably writing obituaries of artists and activists including Jessica Huntley, Buzz Johnson, Jayne Cortez, Jan Carew, Rosa Guy and Frank Critchlow),^[12] The Observer, The Independent, The Sunday Times, The Literary Review, The New Statesman, and elsewhere.

She compiled the pioneering work Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent, and has also contributed to other books, specialist journals and the general press.

She has also worked for radio and television since the late 1960s, when she presented the magazine programme London Line for the Central Office of Information,^[13] as well as Break For Women on the BBC African Service, and later Talking Africa on Spectrum Radio, in addition to appearing on a range of programmes including Kaleidoscope, Front Row, Open Book, Woman's Hour, and Democracy Now! (USA).^[4]

Her radio abridgements and dramatizations for BBC Radio include work by C. L. R. James, Jean Rhys, Wole Soyinka, Timothy Mo, Sam Selvon, Walter Mosley, Henry Louis Gates, Lawrence Scott and Simi Bedford. Her play based on C. L. R. James's novel Minty Alley was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1998,^[14][15] winning a Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) "Race in the Media Award" in 1999.^[16][17]

Her writing for the stage includes Sankofa (1999),^[18] Yaa Asantewaa – Warrior Queen (UK/Ghana, 2001-02),^[19][20][21] directed by Geraldine Connor,^[22] and An African Cargo (Greenwich Theatre, 2007).^{[23][24][25][26]}

She has worked continuously for diversity within the publishing industry and in the 1980s was a founding member of the organization Greater Access to Publishing (GAP), which engaged in campaigns for increased Black representation in British publishing. She is the patron of Independent Black Publishers (IBP).^[9]

She has been a judge for many literary competitions, among them the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Orange Prize, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Commonwealth Book Prize (for which she was chair of the judges in 2012).^[9] and Africa39. She has served on the boards or in advisory positions for other cultural organisations, including The Africa Centre, London, English PEN, the African & Caribbean Music Circuit, the Hackney Empire theatre, the Organization of Women Writers of Africa, and Wasafiri magazine. She is currently Prize Ambassador of the SI Leeds Literary Prize and a patron of the Etisalat Prize for Literature.

• 1970: Society of Young Publishers Award^[27]
• 1993: Pandora Award^[27]
• 1999: Race In the Media Award for radio play, Minty Alley.^[4]
• 1999: Ghanaian traditional honour as Nana Akua Ackon, Cape Coast.^[28]
• 2006: Officer of the Order of the British Empire, for services to Literature and to Publishing.^[29]
• 2004: Open University Honorary Doctorate^[30] for Services to the Arts and Sciences.
• 2011: Honorary Fellowship, Queen Mary, University of London^[31]
• 2015: Bocas Henry Swanzy Award.^[32]
• 2015: UK African Heritage High Achievers Recognition Award from the House of Amau^[33][34]

Category:living people Category:Ghanaian women writers Category:20th-century women writers Category:British publishers (people)