As a black British writer, I had to bypass mainstream publishers to get a book deal

Despite having what some might consider an interesting ‘origin story’, it felt for a long time like my journey was also somehow a hindrance to building a writing career in the UK, writes Maame Blue

I found a white industry averse to any real diversity (Getty/iStockphoto)

I have a bit of an obsession with people. Or rather, how people treat each other. Even as a child, I could be found chatting away to myself in the corner, putting on a one-person play with ten different characters, all at passionate odds with each other.

Yes, I was a weird kid, and I’ve made my peace with that.

And I knew I wanted to be a writer before I really understood what that was. But coming from a Ghanaian family of doctors, teachers, social workers and directors, I was expected to go to university and get a good job, and “writer” didn’t really fit into the categories of approved employment options that were presented to me at the time – options that many of my other friends with immigrant parents and grandparents also felt restricted by. So I turned my attention to psychology instead. It still fed my love of all things involving people, whilst getting a respectable nod from the elders in my family. And I thought it would be enough to satiate the constant storylines my mind kept conjuring up, that I took as an indication of my passion for people, rather than a desire to create their narratives myself.

After five years of being entrenched in psychotherapy, I was encouraged to take a break, to recharge my batteries and come back to the work refreshed.

That was in 2014 and I never quite made it back, because my passion for writing exploded as soon as I left the therapist chair for the last time. My pen was suddenly spilling with stories and opinion pieces that I was posting publicly on my blog. As a therapist, I had communed with people in a very intimate way, hearing about the good, the bad and the ugly sides of living, and then using the skills I had learnt to show clients the tools they already had to find a new place of healing, or simply just hope. The psychotherapy work made me a better writer, undoubtedly.

I kept that in mind as I began to submit my work to small competitions and other people’s blogs, writing for now-defunct online magazines for free, on topics from pop culture to politics, two things I knew very little about at the time – but I’m a keen researcher if nothing else. My love for writing never wavered, even if I was making zero money, swimming in rejections and had no formal writing qualifications. I considered trying to study, looking for some (hopefully free) way to do that, but that route just didn’t feel right for me. I thrived on learning whilst doing. Eventually, I got a few pieces in literary journals and got shortlisted for a couple of small competitions, whilst working on the manuscript that would become my debut novel Bad Love.

And yet, despite having what some might consider an interesting “origin story”, it felt for a long time like my non-traditional journey was also somehow a hindrance to building a writing career in the UK.

After years of writing whilst juggling full-time jobs, relocating countries and using a typewriter in my editing process (not recommended), as an un-agented writer I was offered a publishing deal by Jacaranda Books, this year’s British Book Awards Small Press winners – to be a part of their #Twentyin2020 initiative.

I became one of 20 black British writers to be published in 2020, and my route was about as unconventional as they come. Add to that being published for the first time during a global pandemic – and under the weighty spotlight that many debut black authors might now feel in the wake of a reckoning of the publishing industry’s racial inequality.

The Rethinking Diversity in Publishing report from Words of Colour, University College London and Spread the Word confirms the very things I feared when approaching UK publishing: from the many rejections I received that praised my writing but couldn’t relate to my story, to never really seeing myself reflected in the books I read. And then when I tried to write that book myself, that also wasn’t good enough, thus perpetuating the cycle of a predominantly white industry averse to any real diversity, despite there being a plethora of black writers and people of colour just waiting in the wings with amazing stories.

It has been both overwhelming and satisfying to finally have my book – about the different ways love shapes our identities – out there in the world. And as the Black Lives Matter movement finally takes the global main-stage, my obsession with people and how we treat each other is more alive now than it has ever been.

Maame Blue is part of Jacaranda Books’ #Twentyin2020 initiative. Her debut novel ‘Bad Love’ is available now