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Round Table Books appoints Bidé as co-director and establishes advisory board
Independent Brixton bookshop Round Table Books has appointed Jasmina Bidé as its new co-director and is establishing an advisory board with members including author Caleb Azumah Nelson and Sweet Cherry publisher Sanjee de Silva.
The bookshop champions inclusive titles and is a Community Interest Company (CIC). Bidé joined co-directors Aimée Felone and Meera Ghanshamdas in August, helping the bookshop to expand its reach in the community.
Felone told The Bookseller: “In the last year or so we’ve done more events than ever before, and because I’ve been more focused on KO [children’s publisher Knights Of] and I can’t do as many events […] that’s where Meera and I had a discussion about someone on the ground to support.”
Ghanshamdas added: “Jasmina was an amazing hire – she had been a regular customer and kept recommending amazing books, and I kept joking that she should just come work here. And then just before Christmas she hesitated when I made the joke, and I said we have a role coming up on a Sunday and that’s how it began, and within a very short space of time you could see she was made for this.”
Bidé’s appointment has allowed the bookshop to work on more projects. “We support a lot of events around Black History Month and that’s really intensified this year” Ghanshamdas said. “We would have to say no to things this year. But between Jasmina and I, and two other staff members, and Aimee at points as well […] there is just an incredibly strong team that we’re able to be in four different places at the same time. That’s critical to us being able to support our community and support those relationships that we’ve established.”
Felone stressed that Bidé’s appointment also encouraged the bookshop to interrogate its financial sustainability and think about its direction, a key focus with the appointment of an advisory board.
The bookshop was founded by Felone and her publishing team at Knights Of in 2019, after successfully raising more than £30,000 in crowdfunding to turn its then high street pop-up into a permanent space.
“In the five years we’ve managed to survive a pandemic, moving from pop up to bricks and mortar, move shop location” Felone said. “But where are we going? It was really important to bring someone on who could ask those questions as well.”
“As a Community Interest Company it is suggested that you have a board. In some Community Interest Companies the board will just consist of the directors. We never want to do the bare minimum as a CIC” said Ghanshamdas. “We’re about feeding back into the community, running events that are accessible, that are free, bringing amazing authors for both kids and adults to spaces and really serving our community in a literary way and really developing new readers.
“We didn’t just want it to be the three of us, we wanted it to be people within either parallel spaces within the book industry, or people within the traditional book industry and CIC-related to be able to feed into conversations about how we really develop things in a very cohesive way.”
A key word for the company is ‘intentionality’ rather than just being responsive to changes.
The board consists of eight members. “I think we really want people asking those questions we don’t have time to consider” said Felone. "We want people who would challenge us as much as celebrate and sustain the work that we’re already doing”.
The board members are: Author Caleb Azumah Nelson; Sweet Cherry publisher Sanjee de Silva; Senior commissioning editor at Merky Books Lemara Lindsay-Prince; Author and editor of Black Ballad Jendella Benson; Founder of the Free Books campaign and cultural historian and writer Sofia Akel; London-based youth worker and author Ciaran Thapar; Interim executive director for research and development at the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) Farrah Serroukh, and editorial director at Knights Of Eishar Brar.
