Black Ballad Book Festival opens with Hachette's support

Black Ballad’s inaugural book festival is running this week as part of a series of activities to mark Black History Month, with support from Hachette UK.

The festival, which is running from 22nd to 24th October, will feature 11 different events, including workshops, panel discussions and one-on-one conversations with authors and publishing professionals. It is the first book festival run by Black Ballad, a UK-based lifestyle platform for Black British women.

"Pathways into Publishing: A Careers Panel" with Hachette UK, will take place from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. on 24th October. PR consultant Ronke Lawal will be in conversation with three Hachette UK colleagues: Rachael Jones, key account manager for sales, senior production controller at Hachette Children’s Group Denise Woolery and Feyi Oyesanya, editorial assistant at Headline. 

The panel is aimed at publishing hopefuls and offers more information about the different roles within publishing. This forms part of Hachette UK’s Changing the Story programme to demystify publishing and make the industry more transparent and accessible to underrepresented groups. 

Tobi Oredein, c.e.o. and founder of Black Ballad, commented: "Jendella Benson, our head of editorial, has done a fantastic job in making sure that our editorial content shines a light on authors that are often overlooked. So her idea of a book festival seemed like not just the next step in us celebrating literature by Black women, but doing the work of equipping Black women who want to write or work in publishing with the tools to break into an industry that is often guarded by gatekeepers that tend to keep this demographic out of this industry." 

Melanie Tansey, group HR director at Hachette UK, commented: “Black Ballad’s brilliant work aligns so clearly with our mission to make it easy for everyone, everywhere to unlock new worlds of ideas, learning, entertainment and opportunity, and we’re thrilled to be part of their book festival. We hope that our partnership with Black Ballad will help encourage more Black women to consider publishing as a career, which will enrich our industry, enable us to reach more readers and mean better stories for everyone.” 

Tickets are available here.