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Rosen and Ressa among authors at Ebury showcase
Michael Rosen and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Maria Ressa were among the authors at Ebury’s showcase at the Royal Academy of Arts on 1st September.
The event celebrated the imprint’s smart non-fiction hub and its prize-winning list of non-fiction books and authors, showcasing its most exciting titles and new voices for 2023. Authors joined from imprints W H Allen, Ebury Press, Witness and Ebury Edge.
Drummond Moir, deputy publisher, said he was “proud” of the hub and its authors’ recent achievements. “They’ve hit bestseller lists across continents, in several languages and in every format. They’ve won or been shortlisted for all five of the UK’s major non-fiction prizes as well as a host of other accolades” he said, highlighting exciting new works coming from Naoise Mac Sweeney, with The West: A New World History in 14 Lives (W H Allen) and Kimberley Wilson with How The Food We Eat is Fuelling Our Mental Health Crisis (W H Allen). Laura Nicol, head of campaigns, said: "Our authors have been making waves this year, much sought after experts, prize winners, cultural commentators, activists and changemakers. I hope you leave this party as excited as we are about our brilliant books."
Rosen read his poem “These are the Hands”, written to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the NHS, and spoke about his new book Getting Better (Ebury Press) which is out in February 2023. He was followed by Ressa whose book How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future (W H Allen) publishes in November.
Ressa is a Filipino-American journalist whose work investigating online disinformation networks and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s regime has landed her with 10 arrest warrants in less than two years, and saw her win last year’s Nobel Peace Prize. “This invitation for this event went to the Philippine courts because I’ve got several criminal cases and I could go to jail for the rest of my life, but they said the Ebury showcase, actually is so important that they let me out of the country,” she joked. “But what they didn’t tell me is there are free books.”
Ressa spoke about the importance of optimism. “Right now it feels like we’re in the upside down, the world we are living in is really stranger than any fiction we can think about. It is demoralising, it is hopeless, it is painful, it is the heart of darkness,” she said.
However, she said her book is focused on “how we get from where we are, this horrible dystopia to where we want to be". She has simplified it down to five key lessons which she said “seem almost naïve”. They are to learn, speak, draw the line between good and evil, trust and have faith. “I’ve seen the worst of humanity, but I still believe in the best,” she said.
"You have to be the good. And in order to be the good you have to believe that there is good in the world... I’m so worried about the world, please in your area of influence, use these five things, take it, run with it.”
Also in attendance to announce forthcoming books were Sir Vince Cable for How to be a Politician (Ebury Press), Tom Petch for Speed, Aggression, Surprise: The Untold Story of the Origins of the SAS (W H Allen), Claer Barrett for What They Don’t Teach You About Money (Ebury Edge), Gabriel Gatehouse, Liam Thomas and David Veevers.
Recently published Ebury authors also in attendance included: Darren McGarvey, whose polemic The Social Distance Between Us (Ebury Press) was serialised on BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week; Sunday Times bestsellers Janina Ramirez for Femina (W H Allen) and Will Iredale for Pathfinders (W H Allen); Historian and University-Challenge champion Hannah Rose Woods for Rule, Nostalgia (W H Allen); Charles Clover for Rewilding the Sea (Witness Books), James Montague for 1312: Among the Ultras (Ebury Press), and Ali Millar for The Last Days (Ebury Press).
