Inclusive children's publisher Lantana celebrates 10th anniversary

Lantana, children’s publisher and social enterprise, celebrated its 10th anniversary last week with a party at the Art Workers’ Guild in Bloomsbury in London.

The small press was founded in 2014 by Alice Curry to publish inclusive books for children by authors from under-represented groups and from around the world.

Lantana has since published nearly 70 titles by more than 100 authors, illustrators and translators, from picture books and illustrated early fiction through to non-fiction and middle grade. It has sold more than 300,000 books across its primary markets in the UK, US and Canada.

Curry said: "From the start, our books have recognised the potential in every individual – a testament to the strength found in diversity and the extraordinary things that can happen when a community supports and believes in each person’s unique contributions. It has been a joy and privilege to see this mission unfold over the past decade, and to celebrate our arrival at this significant milestone with friends, family and colleagues.”

At the party, Curry gave a speech looking back at Lantana’s beginnings, in which she spoke of leaving a career in academia to found a publishing start-up in order to ensure her mixed-race nephews and nieces would grow up seeing themselves represented in books – a mission that has since expanded.

Curry reflected on some of the highlights of the past 10 years, including the company’s first published title Chicken in the Kitchen, which won the Children’s Africana Book Award in the US.

She also spoke of her delight at the books’ ability to “take on a life of their own” including being made into story walks, converted into Kamishibai storytelling plates, turned into musical theatre productions, featured on TV and translated into multiple languages.

Curry thanked Lantana’s authors, illustrators and translators, many of whom were at the party and many more watching via livestream, as well as the extended international network of colleagues, with particular emphasis on Lerner Publishing Group, its publishing partner in the US.

She spoke about the many parents, teachers and librarians who have written personal notes to Lantana over the years to say how much Lantana’s books have impacted the children in their care.

In 2017, Curry won the Kim Scott Walwyn Prize and since then Lantana has been shortlisted for the Bologna Prize for Best European Children’s Publisher of the Year, the Clarissa Luard Award for Independent Publishing, the National Children’s Book Award Regional Small Press of the Year Award and the Skoll Venture Award for Social Enterprise.

In 2018, Lantana was selected as one of 10 start-ups to join a mentorship scheme supported by the University of Oxford, designed to nurture high-potential ventures for a period of six months. The accelerator provided Lantana with a package worth £60,000 for business growth and development.

Lantana was the only publishing company to make it onto the programme, besting 234 other applicants after an extensive interview process, and one of only three businesses with female chief executive officers.