Britain’s first black female publisher Margaret Busby will edit a new anthology that would feature 200 female African writers across generations. Titled New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of 20th- and 21st-Century Writing by Women of African Descent, it will be a sequel to Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present, edited by Busby also and published in 1992 by Ballantine Books. The forthcoming anthology “charts a contemporary literary canon from 1900 and captures their [female writers of African descent’s] continuing literary contribution as never before.”

Among its 200 contributors are: Aminatta Forna, Bernadine Evaristo, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Imbolo Mbue, Warsan Shire, Zadie Smith, Patience Agbabi, Sefi Atta, Ayesha Harruna Attah, Malorie Blackman, Tanella Boni, Diana Evans, Danielle Legros Georges, Bonnie Greer, Andrea Levy, Yewande Omotoso, Nawal El Saadawi, Taiye Selasi, and Andrea Stuart.

Here is the announcement.

A magnificent follow-up to Margaret Busby’s original landmark anthology, Daughters of Africa, this new companion volume brings together fresh and vibrant voices that have emerged in the last 25 years.

Arranged chronologically, it brings together the work of women from across the globe—Antigua to Zimbabwe, Angola to the USA—to show the remarkable range of the African diaspora. It celebrates a unifying heritage and illustrates an uplifting sense of sisterhood and the strong links that endure from generation to generation as well as the common obstacles that female writers of colour continue to face as they negotiate issues of race, gender and class.

A glorious portrayal of the richness, magnitude and range of the singular and combined accomplishments of these women, New Daughters of Africa also testifies to a wealth of genres: autobiography, memoirs, oral history, letters, diaries, short stories, novels, poetry, drama, humour, politics, journalism, essays and speeches.

It showcases key figures and popular contemporaries, as well as overlooked historical authors and today’s new and emerging writers.

A unique and seminal anthology, New Daughters of Africa represents the global sweep, diversity and extraordinary literary achievements of Black women writers whose voices, despite on going discussions, remain under-represented and underrated.

Margaret Busby. Image from Hackneygazette.co.uk.

Hailed as the “Doyenne of Black British Publishing” by Blackhistorymonth.org.uk, Margaret Busby, a member of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), was born in 1944 in Accra, in then Gold Coast, “to parents with roots in Barbados, Trinidad and Dominica.” Her decision to co-found the publishing press Allison & Busby, with Clive Allison, in 1967, made her Britain’s youngest and first Black woman book publisher.

In 20 years as Allison & Busby’s editorial director, she oversaw the publication of such significant books as Buchi Emecheta’s Second-Class Citizen, George Lamming’s The Pleasures of Exile, Sam Greenlee’s The Spook Who Sat by the Door, and C.L.R. James’ The Black Jacobins. Her press further brought to public attention the work of such names as Rosa Guy, Miyamoto Musashi, Val Wilmer, Michele Roberts, and Andrew Salkey.

Busby has since served as a judge for the Wole Soyinka Prize, the Commonwealth Book Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Caine Prize for African Writing, and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. She is, at the moment, the Prize Ambassador of the SI Leeds Literary Prize and a patron of the Etisalat Prize for Literature.

Find out more HERE.