My LBF: Kate Shaw, founder, The Shaw Agency

This will be my first fair since the pandemic began and also the first since starting The Shaw Agency, so it feels important—and exciting—to be coming back. It will be great to meet lovely publishing people again face-to-face and finally dish out some of those business cards I had printed just before the first lockdown. I’m looking forward to liberally distributing them like confetti.

My first LBF was in 2000 and I’ve been to most since—except for maternity leave. In 2000 I worked at Aitken Alexander and the offices were so close to the fair (then at Earl’s Court) that we could walk back to the office between meetings. I remember nervously attending my first LBF appointment, with an audio producer, then dashing back to the office to send some emails, passing the elegant frame of Gillon Aitken striding in the other direction.

This year, I’m particularly looking forward to talking about new novels by Susan Elliot Wright, Jo Clegg, Anna Stuart and Louise Mumford; and for dramatic rights I’m excited to be bringing the thriller The Second Stranger by Martin Griffin and teen horror Bite Risk, by S J Wills. I’m also looking forward to meeting Sara Nelson of Harper US, who published L J Adlington’s The Dressmakers of Auschwitz so brilliantly; and also having a good catch-up with Clare Hey of Simon & Schuster and Kirsty Stansfield of Nosy Crow.

I love it when an LBF party celebrates a new venture and new relationships, like the Trapeze launch party at the Hachette stand in 2016. The Shaw Agency’s Isabel Ashdown was one of the launch authors, acquired by Sam Eades, and they have been a great team ever since. At that party I got to climb to the upstairs terrace of Hachette’s impressive stand, which added a frisson of vertigo.

Apart from one rain-drenched year, my impression is that it’s always beautifully sunny during the fair and I love seeing the way publishing dresses when the sun shines. I also remember fondly 2010, the year of the Icelandic volcano eruption—not that I celebrate natural disasters. It was unfortunate that so many overseas visitors couldn’t attend but it meant the agents’ centre was full of UK agents with no meetings and a relaxed spirit of camaraderie prevailed. It was also the first and only time there were hundreds of spare places to sit, with agents freely and jokingly offering seats and whole tables to each other.

I usually dash back to the family after the fair, but I remember the first fair after my third child was born, when I found myself veering into a quiet pub—The Plough in East Dulwich—on the way home. Oh the bliss of downing a well-deserved pint and enjoying the peace!

My tips for a successful fair are, first: double-check the venue address. Imagine turning up at Earl’s Court the year the fair moved back to Olympia! (Ahem). Next: wear flat shoes. Finally, for someone like me who struggles to remember names, faces and gets lost on the way back from the loo: a map and a wide, welcoming smile.