 Good evening everyone and welcome to this final event for the SOWAS Festival of Ideas on Decolonizing Knowledge. My name is Amina Yakin and I'm the director of the festival. It's been a huge honor for me to have been able to work with an incredible team during this festival. We have had all sorts of conversations. We began on Monday 19th October with the opening program and a keynote lecture on Decolonizing Knowledge, the flow of knowledge in regards to the positioning of the global south by the incoming SOWAS director, Professor Adam Habib and he's the director of WITS at the moment. And we've had discussions and conversations that have really pushed things to the absolute limit with regards to what it means to be thinking about decolonizing when it comes to the issue of refugees and migrants. Are there other ways of how we might connect across cultures and what is happening around the huge political debates of our times, what happened this summer with the George Floyd's murder, the Black Lives Matter protests and indeed we have been thinking and talking about these things and connected to them is the question of reparations, of statues, of slavery, of enslavement. We've talked about heritage and repatriation and also we've been mesmerized by oral storytelling and I've learned things from Haiti to the multilingual Mishira in India and Pakistan and it's been an incredible learning experience. I think it's without the creative input of master classes this festival would not feel the same that it's been because we're talking about critical thinking in our panel discussions with our incredible researchers. So the festival has been led very much by the theme of research that it's very necessary for us in the world that we live in in a kind of fake news world that our thinking is research led that we still think critically that we are not shut down by trolling and we don't feel that we can't talk about things that matter to us as the doors of the pandemic closed down sources of funding and make make precarity a new norm for all of us. So that is you know those are the things that have been happening in the festival the conversations have been many and I'm really amazed by the work that colleagues are doing and also by the guest speakers who have generously given up their time to join us from across the world and I was just saying to this particular panel when as we were starting that when we envisaged this festival originally it was going to happen in in May in in the institution at SOAS in SOAS building and from there it's gone to a virtual festival from a one day event to a six day packed series of conversations talks masterclasses and all and you know musical performances it's just been incredible and phenomenal and there are so many people to thank in who have helped to make this possible and I must mention them because without them at the helm of this none of this would have been possible so I have to thank the incredible force that is Stephanie Grosnt I don't know if she'll consent to showing her face but she really has been instrumental with regards to helping me put together the program in in sort of bringing together speakers and reaching out and and just keeping things ticking over and along with Stephanie there's Angelica Vashiera without whom of course we wouldn't be able to to pay and to connect with a lot of our speakers Angelica thank you so much Sunil Sunil in the centers and programs office as well Kumi Dany who've been helping with tech support I mean these guys really are doing this for some of them are doing this for the first time so I am so grateful and so thankful they are just incredible and and the force of youth is behind us and I am also very grateful to SOAS radio for their podcasts to Fred and Miriam François for doing that to Aki to Jack in various places of the institution who've kind of come forward at different points and to and to my colleagues who have taken part in the panels supported the project listened patiently to me and come forward with their ideas and and I must mention Alison Scott Baumann, Vania Hamzic, Shruba Saleh, Mira Sabranatham the chair of the former chair of the Decolonizing Working Group from whom I've taken over without their support you know I would not be able to put this together and also Andrea Cornwall the pro-director for research it is my great pleasure to hand over and I'm and I'm sure I've missed people in this kind of vote of thanks for which I apologize and I thank you all I thank all the attendees all the people who've joined the festival from all parts you've really made the festival what it is you've given it the spirit that it needed and to be global at a time like this is is is so important and so valuable for us I think we've had an kind of challenging time at SOAS over the summer and this festival has really been about what SOAS is about and can be and we very much hope this is the spirit that we will be taking forward with all of your support so for tonight's event I'm delighted we've had several partners in in the various events as well that we've been hosting and Bacha Bolivar just did their performance thank you to them for an amazing performance of Decolonizing not just a buzzword the Women's Resource Center for their work on CEDAW for for funding a little bit of our work to Alex Lewis who is no longer at SOAS but who helped with some of the funding and and for this evening to Wasafiri to Malachi McIntosh in particular who we have been harassing since I think the first time that we were thinking about this and we are so lucky this evening to have such an incredible range of writers with us you are going to be in absolutely you know amazing places and a conversation that will lighten up your well not lighten light up your Saturday evening on race class and writing Decolonizing the publishing industry I'm grateful to all on this panel and and a huge thanks to Sushila from from sort of and to Margaret and to Malachi and Emma and Jennifer I'm really looking forward to this so I will now hand over to the host for this evening Malachi over to you thank you so much and a warm welcome to you all hi everyone good evening and welcome to to our collective living rooms my name is Malachi McIntosh as Amina says I'm the editor and publishing director of Wasafiri the magazine of international contemporary writing and I'm going to be your chair host for the evening on this conversation about race class writing Decolonizing the publishing industry as Amina just said the program of the festival ideas over the past week has been vast taking all sorts of different perspectives and all aspects of this question of decolonization and I'm hopeful that we act as a good end cap to to the discussions to the performances to the workshops to the dialogues everything that's happened thus far this week and I think though based on a panelist certainly not on me that you're in for a treat um tonight's discussion will be uniting a range of perspectives across a range of different backgrounds and experiences within the publishing industry to reflect on this question of decolonization as necessity um broadly in the UK publishing I think will be our main focus um from a lot of different directions um I'm joined by Margaret Busby and I think almost everyone does doesn't really need an introduction but but just in case um Margaret Busby a major cultural figure in Britain and around the world Margaret's born in Ghana educated in the UK became Britain's youngest and first black woman publisher when she co-founded Alisson and Busby in the 1960s and has published a range of notable authors from Butchie and Cheta to Rosa Guy, C. L. R. James and worked with almost every writer you've probably heard of among them Tony Morrison and Ngoody D. Yunga. Also with us today is Shishila Nasta, the founder of Wasifiri and the editor-in-chief of the magazine from 1984 to 2019. Shishila's published widely in a variety of genres primarily research on the South Asian diaspora, the Caribbean and Black Britain. Her latest work an anthology called Brave New Words unites 15 of the world's leading writers to reflect on the power of writing. Now also with us is Emma Wallace, senior brand manager from Murky Books for an award-winning publishing imprint famously launched by Stormzy and Penguin Random House in 2018. She leads on all things related to the public image of Murky from brands and social media management to community growth to initiatives and partner development and by no means least, last but by no means least, Jennifer Wong who's a poet and associate lecturer at Oxford Brooks University. She grew up in Hong Kong and lives in the UK. She's the author of several collections including Goldfish and Diary of a Mu Mu Sales Girl and her latest collection Letters Home explores complexities of history, migration and translation. There's been a PBS wild card choice by the Poetry Book Society and was highly commended in 2020 for a prize. We have unfortunately lost Edwidge Stantica who we had hoped to join us today but because of scheduling issues and time zones that ultimately wasn't possible. But I'm feeling confident that we have the range of expertise to make this a productive discussion. The structure of how we're going to proceed is we will have a conversation between the panelists to last somewhere in the range of 40 minutes to 15 minutes and then afterwards have a Q&A. I'm very used to doing these sorts of events in person where now would be when I gave you the housekeeping notes about where the bathroom is and what happens if there's a fire. Everyone's at home so you probably know where the bathroom is and if there's a fire then you know as you would leave the Zoom call and good luck from us. There is however one piece of housekeeping I need to give you for the virtual space which is on the Q&A. You'll see that there's a chat function as you often have on Zoom which is a space just to have comments and discussions as the conversation rolls over and there's also a separate Q&A space where we'd like you to drop questions. So after the 50 minutes roughly a conversation between us will switch over to Q&A and rather than having to just turn on the cameras and everything else having to balance sound and anything like that I'll go through the Q&A and select some questions to draw out. So please do drop questions in there as and when they sort of occur to you over the course of the evening of the conversation and we'll turn to those in sort of the final segment of the conversation. Again a very very warm welcome to me and to this space that we're all sharing in the ether and to this conversation. I wanted to kick off by way of introductions to the panelists and getting our sort of our brains ticking over with just a question to each individual in the order that I introduced them so Margaret and Shishila then Emma then Jennifer about roots into the literary world and how individuals have engaged with questions of race and class. So I just wanted to start Margaret with you and it's a question I'll ask to everyone how did you find your way into sort of the literary sphere as it were and how have questions of race and class influenced your work? Well I started my career in publishing when I was really very young so I had no context really to judge how the industry was and I guess also because it was back in the 60s so there was a very different societal field and I was I was very conscious of being a very unusual figure if you like in the industry in Britain but it didn't impact on what I wanted to do because I was too young to know what I should be doing or to know what conventions were so I was just doing what I wanted to do and that gave me a certain sort of freedom to take on different writers which writers who perhaps would not have been taken on by other publishers and who in a way transcended various traditional barriers of race and class that that's publishing had been used to tell them does that make sense? That makes perfect sense and I guess switching back to that question of how race and class have influenced your own work you said you're an unusual figure and I'm guessing that's kind of a nice way of saying your face is the kind of face that people weren't used to seeing I mean how did that affect the way that you approach your work besides kind of seeking out and writers perhaps being overlooked by the mainstream? Well as you said I was the first African black African woman to head a publishing company probably in this country and at the time I wasn't aware of that I it was only subsequent because I met actually the first Caribbean black publisher John LaRose who started New Beacon Books the year before I started in 1966 he started so it was people like John and later Jessica Huntley and other people in America I met Tony Morrison who was an editor with Random House and it was by meeting those sorts of people in the industry but I realized that I was not alone as a black woman in the industry certainly within the mainstream I can't think of any others I met in this country but having autonomous companies like New Beacon Books and Vogue a Louverture publications was a great support and we did collaborate and work together and also when a magazine like What's a Fury came on the scene that was something that kind of it didn't necessarily validate what I was doing but it was a support we were all within the same area of what we were trying to do the sorts of writers we were publishing not the way they were all black writers or all from the Caribbean or from Africa but there was a certain openness of of spirit and imagination of and things that we were coming across things that we're looking for because of our own perspectives because we were not all coming from a perspective of being a white English middle class person which is I suppose at that time what the industry was used to. Thanks Margaret Shishio this is probably a natural place to bring you into the conversation with the same question and so you emerged as Margaret said out of the same era and I guess the early movements of black publishing in Britain through Alson Buzzbee through New Beacon Books and how did you sort of enter into the field and how have questions of race and class influenced your work? Shishio, do we have you? You're muted and we can't quite see you yet. Unmute, there we are, I seem to be, there we are. Okay, sorry, yes I mean I think in a way when I founded What's a Fury there were sort of lots of similar issues at play as Margaret just described I think I came from a slightly different angle I suppose what motivated me in terms of founding the magazine and I'd never been an editor before I didn't really know what I was doing was the fact that what I read at school had never really kind of spoken to me in terms of the kinds of characters I met in the novels I was reading in the sixth form and so on and when I got to university and studied African-Caribbean literature and started reading people like Gene Rees and George Lamming and Sam Selvon and Neguge and Echebe I began to realise a whole different world and I got quite excited about it just on a purely literary level not really so much to do with representation at that point and and then I moved into working in schools and became involved with an organisation called AtCal which was the Association of the Teaching of Caribbean African Literature and so I kind of went into thinking about how one could change the curriculum, how one could create more books and create more readers and alert readers to to the kind of literature that was out there and and and rather similarly again you know every literary party I went to and people said what are you working on I was doing research at the time and I always used to say you know Sam Selvon and B.S. Nipole and they didn't know that B.S. Nipole was but usually people had no idea of the writers so I got passionate about creating a magazine that would bring these writers to the forefront and not just famous writers, writers that were little known and that might maybe be seriously reviewed which they weren't being done that wasn't happening in the mainstream press so and in terms of race and class I think it's always been central it was one of the founding elements of Wasafiri to kind of counteract the orthodoxies of the mainstream publishing industry which was simply not covering the kind of writing we wanted to cover and it wasn't just to do with black writing it was just to do with reading stories that were included in the whole canon and the canon as it was at the time was very narrowly defined so the idea was really to expand things to tell not the other story but to tell many stories at the same time and create dialogues across the world and across these different communities and obviously art and politics that's an old kernel and it's always there but it's it's still repeats itself and that's what motivated me really. Thanks Shishira and I suppose we're fast-forwarding a bit from the emergence of this field in the 60s into the 80s to your experience Emma and including working with murky books which you know I think most people on the call will know was just found a very very recent name so could you tell us a bit about your movement into the field and again how you've engaged with those questions so far. Sure yeah and my introduction kind of feels like I'm being introduced to a game show and it's super hard following on from Shishira and Margaret because I've only been in the publishing industry about four years now so speaking personally I mean publishing I don't know I'd never really kind of thought of getting into the industry and I still felt kind of like from the outside looking in that it was an industry that was built for sort of white middle-class professionals and I actually I'm a SOAS alumni so I studied history at SOAS and if you kind of told me that I'd end up where I am now after studying history at SOAS I probably would have laughed in your face so yeah it's a bit of a weird journey my background is digital marketing I've worked in startups before I worked at BBC before Penguin and I kind of just stumbled into it and a lot of people say that but yeah I guess right place right time came into the industry and then when I was in Penguin murky books was launched a couple years later and the team was super small and the sort of idea behind murky was that it wasn't just the focus wouldn't be just editorial that there would there is a real need for to cultivate a community of young readers and aspiring writers who don't often see themselves represented within the pages of the book and they're out there but they're not engaging with a lot of the traditional kind of publishing houses within Penguin at the moment so that's when I kind of moved across and brought my kind of experience working in digital marketing to murky and in terms of murky books I mean our entire roster of authors is is filled with black and brown authors most of whom come from working class backgrounds and I'll admit a lot of them are London based and that's something that we do need to address as we move forward but the entire reason behind our existence is that Stormzy wanted to create a place where underrepresented writers could come and for their stories to not only be told but also sort of heard and uplifted and so it's my job to sort of reach that new generation of aspiring writers and readers and sort of bring them together under the imprint and so I lead on things like brand led initiatives like army writers prize which is a competition for unpublished underrepresented writers across the UK and and the ultimate prize there is kind of a publishing contract with us at murky books and and we launched that last year and it's launched again this year obviously not in the capacity that I would have hoped for because of COVID but you know we move and and the sort of kind of inspiration behind everything that we do with murky books is to help people who don't feel that publishing industry is an attainable place to be and and to help them to navigate and demystify this sort of landscape and so yeah that's kind of a real whiz through of how I kind of ended up where I am which is basically stumbling and kind of finding my myself at murky books. Thanks Emma and I mean there are already some interesting parallels between the story it's not least I think as we move through time the question of you know publishing feeling like something that is properly accessible and kind of pertains after 40 50 years and that's something we can come back to Jenny Jennifer I wanted to ask you a question and the same question about you know how questions of race and class influence your work in the publishing industry how you came into the industry but of course just wanted before you answered to find the fact that you're coming from this from a very different perspective so being a writer in Hong Kong who's come to the UK first to study and then to establish your publishing career and teaching career as someone who's actively teaching creative writing I just wondered if this is good and if you could touch on some of those things and your response as well. Thank you thank you Mankai and I'm really lovely to listen to what everyone has to talk about this subject I think for me because I first came along to study as an undergrad I study English literature and and because when I first started it was the first time I came to England and I have never been to England before and I felt like quite an alienating experience as well as a very exciting experience and I felt like because I did my degree in literature at Oxford back then and probably because it was a long time ago that the syllabus is totally it's very focused on traditional or British literature that is and there's not much talk about diversity and so on and I felt like very excited to come across so many you know like so many such new knowledge and all those that I've always admired but at the same time I feel like I'm just so different from what I'm reading what I was reading and so I think at that time there wasn't really quite a desire for me to to write about my story I was just really trying to appreciate that and then the second time like after I've finished my degree and having worked in Hong Kong for a few years I came back to England in 2008 wanting to do a master's in creative writing and back then I chose to do that at UGA and I felt like it's such a different experience coming again to England and this time and working on creative writing and back then I had very little idea of what creative writing degree is supposed to lead to I just thought that because I've been working for a few years in marketing in Hong Kong and in government as well it's time to do something that I really like and I thought I would take it as more like a gap year and but it's certainly as a person or as a like a creative writer that makes makes a lot of difference to me and it was like because of the openness of the people in my program and also the tutors I realized that I can actually talk about my race or I can talk about my own version of story or history about my migration experience in my poetry and I felt that's quite liberating but I think even though at that point that's how I felt but I think it took me quite a long time to figure out you know the ways to kind of work on it in my poetry how to actually put it together how to put together a collection on these stories or these narratives and to also figure out what I wanted to say because I guess in terms of race my understanding it's like quite ambivalent sometimes because I constantly seem to be moving between do I feel like more like a person from Hong Kong or from China or Chinese culture Chinese history or am I currently because I've lived so so many years in England do I feel like I'm a British or British immigrant in some ways and those labels continuously make me feel like they have questions rather than answers in my poetry but I feel like that's also just to summarize it's kind of where my ideas for Letters Home come from like my latest poetry book so I I think like in a way it is all these accumulating together that kind of led me to want to explore this in greater depth in my you know in my poems and in my latest collection. Thanks Jennifer maybe if you can just bring everyone into the conversation at the stage and Jennifer I think what you said is perfectly set to the next thing that I wanted to I wanted to ask everyone because we have representatives in this group on the screen and I guess again a range of experience across generations and I think the natural thing that happens in these conversations around decolonization especially around publishing is how much things have changed and Jennifer you kind of said you know in your experience your first experience and you thought quite constrained and returning to UVA it felt like things opened up a bit so that's a kind of you know an arc of some sort of progress I don't know if that's institutional and and I just wanted to ask and you know across the various places that folks are working she should have worked in academia Margaret sort of being a sort of front facing in the publishing industry kind of commissioning editing writers and Emma sort of marketing books and do you feel that perceptions of your own personal sort of race and class have affected the kind of work people expect you to make I think everyone's touched on this a bit and has that shifted over the course of your career and I know so in sort of what ways and there's no need to answer sort of in series I think it'd be great for us to kind of speak together and respond to each other and before people weigh in just a reminder to the audience please do drop any questions you have as they generate into the Q&A and we'll return to those but yeah how do you how do you feel perceptions have affected your work kind of were expected from you the kind of work that you want to do and has that shifted over the course of your careers and how can I I think the perceptions certainly affected the way in which Wasafiri was seen and and I think it's kind of appropriate to mention the fact that Wasafiri was state funded at at a certain point after going through lots of pockets of ethnic minority so-called funding etc etc etc and the recent debate I think which many of you will have seen on Twitter the last few days between Martin and Amos and you know his piece in the Evening Standard which was critiquing the Booker Prize you know and you know implying really that you know Bernardine Evaristo's shared win was somehow to do with cultural politics which is such an old debate it's kind of relevant because in you know Wasafiri was constantly plagued by this every time we managed to get a review in a mainstream newspaper this issue would come up again and again and again and actually one of the major ones was in the TLS in 1990 in an article called Littleness in Literature and there'd been a a show on at the South Bank of Little Magazines and I won't name the reviewer but the reviewer wrote a piece about these Little Magazines and then he started commenting on a recent round of Arts Council funding which for us was the first time we'd been seen as a mainstream arts council client which was a big move and he basically just said you know the star revolutionaries of today are the feminist artists the black artists demanding attention as much by their political condition as they work you know and that goes on and on and on and it seems to be happening happened this week indeed so in terms of perceptions I think one thing I found really difficult was this battle about I'm not only publishing black and Asian and diasporic literature I'm publishing good writing from everywhere but we are prioritizing that as well because that kind of writing hasn't been seen as much as it ought to be but it was simply to do with quality and I know it's been a kind of problem and more recently in my own work when I've been proposing my book The Bloomsbury Indians to publishers and they find out what it's about they say why don't you write a book about Ian Forster's Indian friends rather than the Bloomsbury Indians so you can see the kind of shift and I know this debate will go on later in terms of education but it's changing ways of thinking which seems to be very very difficult so however many initiatives we have it seems very hard to shift it. Thanks Shishira, any other thoughts? Emma you're reaching for it. Well I can't really talk about publishing because I'm no longer if you like in the publishing industry but I think one of the the ways I see that things haven't changed so much is through the fact that well it's just a kind of publishing the fact I edited two anthologies the first one Dorses of Africa came out in 1992 and New Dorses of Africa came out in 2019. Now when the first volume was being put together I was very aware of the fact that people assumed there were just a handful of African women writers or women of African descent and those are the high profile names that everybody would always focus on without you know giving any credence the fact that there were hundreds of other writers who could have been given attention and sadly the same thing is true in the 21st century that there are a handful of high profile African women writers or women of African descent and the others are sort of also around and I've heard as recently as last year writers saying well we were going to have a feature in such a national paper on on on this particular writer who was a an African Muslim writer but she was told that we already had one last week so we can't do another one so it's as if one has to represent all in fact there's a in in New Dorses of Africa this is an essay by Leslie Locke who talks about having a discussion with her publisher who was trying to persuade her she shouldn't have more than three African three black characters so there is that feeling still that you know one person has to represent the whole ethnicity or whatever it is and and I'm not sure whether that has changed enough yet because it still seems to me that people see diverse literature as some sort of anomaly and the norm is to have you know no black people no brown people no working-class people so I think that is still something that we need to find a way to change I definitely agree with that I think that's something we're very wary of at Maki Books and I think we're wary of becoming a place where sort of you know black and brown writers are put and it kind of devolves the other publishing houses and imprints of responsibility of having more writers of colour and of different backgrounds on their own sort of rosters and I think that kind of leads into a point I wanted to make around not often having the space to fail in the publishing industry I think we're quite lucky at Maki Books and I'm quite lucky at Maki Books in that we knew there's eyes on us we're currently given the space to experiment and try things out but whether we're sorry whether we're also given the space to fail like so many other imprints were when they were first put together is yet to be determined and I'm not entirely sure that you know how long we'll be able to sort of have that space to experiment and to grow and to bring more writers under the imprint in the way that we are before we kind of asked you know that commercial viability kind of question where you know obviously I feel like when it comes to commercial viability black and brown writers on or writers of different backgrounds and underrepresented writers in general aren't really afforded a level playing field compared to the kind of usual stereotypical writers that come through and but yeah that's just wanted to raise that my my two cents I was going to slide in is just then the things that had been said sort of reminded me of the response to the the Booker Prize lists that we have at the moment when there are several sort of hot takes of people coming in and doing the same grumbles about you know it's it's where where the young male white writers is one of one in particular the implication that people are being edged out that it was as some people have said about the joint Booker Prize when last year that it was just a sort of performative political thing and you know the quality writers were were kind of elsewhere or being overlooked in favor of this sort of gestural political style I want to get back to the kind of political issues but I do want to bring into the conversation questions of class which are sort of foregrounded in the title and because Emma I think you sort of pointed to this in the very beginning when you said you know at murky we have mainly London based authors and that's something that we're thinking about obviously in Britain at the moment lots of conversations about class are beginning to engage with this question of North South Divide of the white working class opportunities across fields but also in the arts as it has been sort of rising as a kind of topic of editorials and complaints and things like that and Jennifer when I first asked you to what your thoughts were about how kind of race and class affected your output of what you felt like you could write you sort of responded and firstly by saying you wanted to read something which was wonderful and be great to do that and but responded thinking about how both in your case you feel like both things sort of intersect and overlap yeah thank you thank you Malachi um I yes I agree like I think sometimes race and class have this interception as well and so one thing sort of you know converges with another and for example when I came for myself in writing these poems I tend to have like um I struggle a lot with the question of class because I wasn't sure I am still not very sure what class I'm in because um for a very long time I think um um I I've always assumed that I'm sort of working class or from a working class family because we've always you know been very pragmatic with whatever like the values and and the thing is like um creative writing in my family they always suspected creative writing and publishing as something that only is only for the higher or you know like higher classes in the society and they think that you know you as a Chinese person you know and as an immigrant you know why should you be you know writing anything at all or try not to you know get to invest it in that area and I think um that's um why I also for example in my book um I write about my father because um he he has this sense that um he works as a hotel manager and um hotel uh food and beverage manager um kind of looking after some um the dining facilities um but we we feel that like you know there's um in Chinese society there's always this glory of like working very hard and they think like um it is um you know the sort of education that I later on or get involved in or even um to kind of get the work in academia to them is a very distant dream and um especially for those immigrants and I think there is a connection to it so um should I read a bit of from that um my father who taught me how to fold severe penguins I was eight or nine when I saw you practice folding severe penguins for a long time Christmas was a matter of watching fireworks on television mother trying not to let her feelings show and those evenings you came home too tired to speak 13 hours of pacing around dining rooms impeccable cutlery well iron table linen other families happiness under the chandeliers that's what work is has been for you since you turn 18 and for all the fathers in the golden eighties it's been a hard day's night a husband must provide as long as he is alive I try to think about who you really were a schoolboy before duty your father who never offered your mother a kind word a kiss but he kept a white shiny statue of mouth long after the couch was over you never finish high school because your father said as you couldn't he couldn't tolerate the idea of excessive schooling a sign of moral corruption or sighting the day I was accepted for the school on one Jordan road where the school drive glittered with Mercedes we knew we were moving beyond our leak and yet and yet it suddenly seemed as if something was brightening again in you something that has nothing to do with table napkins um I think although this actually this poem was about my dad and he he works in Hong Kong but but still I think like this is pretty much something that is relevant to immigrants in England and lots of immigrant families they struggle with how they perceive race and class excellent and I think that brings into the conversation and everyone please mute we don't have to be so polite anymore we can we can unmute that is we don't have to be so polite anymore we can we can talk over each other and respond to each other and so for the time that we have left but um that line about moving beyond our league uh Jennifer I think speaks really well to everything that has been mentioned so far certainly on the publishing side the idea that we only have space for one person the idea that you know we can only have a handful of people in in play at one time who are the leaders in the fields um and those leaders in some level have to present in a certain kind of way you know almost like the Michelle Obama's British publishing and that's what's expected you can't necessarily perform your identity in any other kind of way um you know the idea which comes out in report after report after report the most recent being rethinking diversity and publishing about quality the assumption that you know this works out good enough for you know very few writers of color will be writing writing to that to the level necessary in order to publish and you know this idea of there being a league and or two speeds and writers of color here and others are there I just wonder I mean across a varieties of different experience there has been some change there has been some some failure to change and we have a question in oh two questions we have one question which is kind of kind of gesturing towards this but I mean how are these ideas overthrown or or or can they be so all of these stereotypical assumptions um uh in the industry about about what's possible about who should be doing what is it is the best way forward you know doing independent initiatives um is the thing about empowering writers to to feel they're capable of participating um is it about kind of cultivating cultivating against sort of alternative spaces as what Safari was I mean how have you seen effective resistance to to these stereotypes kind of orchestrating I think I don't know I mean I I suppose I feel it it goes back always to education and what you read so I think you know I think Blake Morrison said things you said at one point you know your your books up shells become your book selves and in a way the publishers their book shelves also become their book selves so what are they reading where are they going to university what's happening with the curriculum um for me you know literally going to camp was a complete I have now in terms of reading a diversity of writers and I know a lot of university syllabus has now changed um but schools sadly um are lagging behind and in the 80s when Wasafiri started in fact a lot was going on in schools um and people were beginning beginning to shift and changed the way they saw things but I think unless at a very fundamental level people see this writing alongside as part of the education so they're not doing it as other writing as it was called in the GCSE we're not going to change anything it's always going to be oh that ethnic minority magazine or that black writer it's it's always going to be that and I don't see any other way of changing it other than through education and through changing the way people think at quite a fundamental level and I don't know how we achieve that because we've been trying to do it for ages but that's how I feel about it I think it's also important to encourage a wider range of people to be involved in the industry at every level I mean on this panel we've got people who are editors writers publishers and I think we need to broaden that so that the focus isn't as it quite often is on the writing and getting the writers published we also need to be the publishers publishing the writers and you know the reviewers reviewing the writers so that it's from a variety of perspectives we're not we're not being reviewed by somebody who thinks they're doing us a favor or being politically correct or whatever we are representing ourselves as well as the the wider literary field so I think that is important that we try and encourage other people to think that publishing editing all the other levels of the industry are possibilities for them too I agree with that yeah wholeheartedly and the education bit as well is obviously super super important but in terms of inside publishing I think I've seen quite a bit of change only within our the publishing house that murky books is in in the short time that we've been around just by having our editor Lamarra Lindsay Prince in the room when it comes to acquisition meetings myself in the room when it comes to talking about the marketing publicity promotional stage of the book in both of us in the room when it comes to talking about you know to the sales teams about where you know the sales reps go off and pitch certain books from the publishing house and in general that's where I've started to see a little bit of of a shift within our own sort of like immediate kind of environment at murky books I think that's super important that that's kind of translated more widely across other publishing houses other publishing companies the industry as a whole because it's yeah at each sort of key stage within the within the sort of overall structure of the industry that that you find that you're kind of is working actively against the books that a lot of the time people don't feel that don't fit into the stereotypical sort of purchase from a reader and so yeah I think that's super important as well I wonder I mean I think maybe some of the the folks on the call might be in agreement with the statements it's necessary to sort of penetrate all levels of the organization but I wonder too if there's the evidence on that front is it's also slightly troubling so we have a the publishing industry itself is is famously unrepresentative of Britain at any level across race or class and even region again but in addition for all the schemes to get junior editors and interns and so on of diverse backgrounds of color into publishing industry very few of us have turned into permanent positions so I guess the question to everyone is why do you think that is and you know how could that be addressed because it sounds like it needs to be addressed in order to make these changes so good and salary is a big sort of barrier to entry I think and it's notoriously low and coming from outside the industry just over four years ago I kind of experienced that firsthand but yeah it's it really cuts out a lot of people that that just weren't able to take that job or or get their foot into the industry because they don't have a place to stay in London they can't afford rent here they you know there's no there's no office up north there's you know it's just not affordable and not realistic so therefore it's just like you're creating a whole industry of a certain type of person who can afford to work in it um I think that's a massive barrier the solution on that front is higher salaries or starting salaries higher salaries which again with yeah I again I've only been working in the industry for four years and it's been a constant discussion throughout those four years so I can't imagine how long it's been going on before that um but yeah I don't know how to fix that one unfortunately but I think we'll have to also see that there are new ways of publishing new technologies online publishing so I think we can see that as a way that people can access can can influence perhaps what is made available and what is published even if it's not in in the same form I think sorry no please no but also returning to some of the things that I guess Margaret and I live through and and are happening again now with independent independent publishers bookshops collectives collaborations through the internet through digital publishing which kind of sidestep some of the gatekeepers I guess that are still the gates that aren't open yet even though we want them to be yeah but I wonder I mean um so Jennifer you're published by an independent not just press um looking in the middle ends um a great published poetry publisher just a shout out to them um for sort of finding underrepresented voices but I wonder to what extent and and maybe um everyone can weigh on in on this those sort of alternative spaces for publication and promotion are able to lead to longevity so I think Emma were you saying you know uh will people will you get at murky books as much an opportunity to fail as other imprints and is the independent route a way to kind of a secure hold in in publishing on a market she would have seen many careers sort of rise and and fade and is there a way to transmute that into you know lasting success broader represent broader recognition is it the case I think many young writers think you know the way to to get established is necessarily to go to the biggest possible house I mean how did he say such a question I could be who's that a question for question for everyone I suppose um I mean so the first question I guess is a natural place to shift into the Q&A that's been through is um someone wrote I get a sense that it's easier to get to publishing a tree um as an editor but I think this council writers as well by quote doing your own thing setting up your magazine or publication for example I've heard this many times from people would you give that advice to aspiring editors especially people of color who may not have the necessary connections um and this is a conversation that is always going on in this space of decolonization I think so in the university sphere there's another loser who set up a three black university or trying to say that universities can't be performed from inside we need to go to alternative spaces um we've just said that you know maybe we should think about alternative venues now there are more options on the internet and so but I suppose the the unspoken question often is you know is that a way to a thriving career can it be how does one sort of turn that alternative publication into the sort of lasting space within the literary sphere either as an editor or as an artist and I guess that was just my question to everybody I think it's important to say that being an editor being in the editorial department is not the only way into publishing publishing has a lot of different segments of you know whether it's the rights department sales department purposes department so there are ways to utilize whichever skills you have to get into the industry and probably the editorial department may be the hardest department to get into so I think looking at other ways other aspects of the skills you have as a way to lead you in the industry as well worth considering if you know and following up if you like I sorry I just also wanted to mention maybe like maybe from my area like in terms of people trying to work on more reviews or put out more like articles or you know whatever like that they can contribute and sometimes it might take a while for for a writer of color to to kind of discover what what exactly is the best way to capture the publisher's attention or what suits the you know what what will be possible to publish but you know I think it's just like the willingness I mean just to kind of like test it out test out the watchers but at the same time I agree like you know we really need to what we need is really like a more diverse taste and and not to kind of assume that all the writers are the same even if they are just writers of color they are all very diverse and there is market for all you know a wide range of them and this doesn't mean that you know just like publisher has taken one and and that's already enough to kind of cover the racial you know diversity. Thank you all. Jennifer I'm wondering if you could talk a bit about being published by independent publisher and how that has been and what that has sort of enabled for you as a writer. Yeah thank you I I feel that it's really lovely to be published by an independent publisher like an artist is very you know very sensitive to to the to the work that I produce and give me a lot of freedom to to kind of explore what I wanted to say or put in in the collection and I think that's sort of willingness to sort of give license to the writer to the permission it's very important and I think it it it is not easy to to to to picture a collection to to publishers and it does take it did take me quite a while but I I think ultimately I'm really happy with the way that is produced and especially because I'm trying really hard to not to over exoticize or not to exoticize at all like the idea of race and and I don't want it to be like a book about race like it's not really a book about race it's just about my story and and and I wanted and I wanted the editors to kind of appreciate and try to understand that and I think Jane has been really helpful in sort of showing understanding and you know and going through the sort of editorial changes that is needed because very often because I came with a you know English is not my first language so and sometimes it can be really like it needs a process in order to to make make it really work and speak to the English speaking reader or readership so in your case that did give you the space to sort of explore things flourish have support I think it does yeah I think um that the publisher has been quite understanding but on the other hand I do appreciate that it's not always happening like that and sometimes you also need to assert what is really like um what is the thing that we have the right as as a writer what is the right so I I mean I have also in publishing maybe other book reviews like um some editors have been you know like they just try to correct almost or like your entire review and I sometimes wonder if that's it's because they think that I'm from a different background or is that just for perfection sake so sometimes it can be hard to tell um I think I should lots of questions are starting to come through um so I think I should get a few questions in a month whether that's a little while and we've got I don't want to filter too much um a question mainly a question for Emma and Margaret um so on the quite on on the issue of independent publishing um do you have tips for setting up your own publishing endeavor uh dedicated to publishing black writers is that a viable business idea how does one go about it you go ahead Emma I was just about to say you can take that Margaret no when I started I I was so young I didn't really know what I was doing so I mean I all I can say is if I could do it straight out of university anybody could do it but it was it was a question of doing yeah following what you believe in we had very little money we had lots of ideals and in fact it wasn't when I started out as the buzzbee with with my partner Clive Allison it wasn't only black books we were publishing we were publishing books we wanted to publish which we thought were good books or we were bringing books back into print that was a print whether it was you know George Lamming or CLR James but we were publishing a wide range of books and we had a lot of energy so it was our own energy that drove things rather than having much money you know we were working you know almost 24 hours a day and we were we were doing things in a way it's what happens with with independent small independent publishers now they put a lot of effort into everything they do because they they haven't got the money that the large conglomerates have so I think you have to be prepared to work hard it's not easy but it's very rewarding so you know I would say do it but um there's no shortcuts to just putting a lot of energy and belief into what you're doing and turning up people like Emma asking her advice yeah I definitely agree I think um there's a lot to be learned from from going independent as well so our just for example our now commissioning editor she started out um she published her own magazine called Plant in Papers and that's how she kind of learned her process when it came to the editorial side of the work and she came into to murky books I think it's I think it's just been a year now but she obviously had to learn on the go the sort of structures of the publishing industry but she had that base knowledge from doing her own thing and she had the connections and she could she basically got off the ground running and she she's an amazing individual and I can't pose enough but she she got that from doing her own thing first I think there's a lot to be said from that and obviously she had she's spoken to me about the failures that she's had but she's learned from them and learned from them quite quickly as well um and you only have to look at publishers like round table nights of and see the amazing things that they're doing and uh I mean they've they've done an amazing amount of hard work and but they've they've got to where they are now and and they're um you know out there and one of the best in in children's publishing at the moment and um yeah I definitely encourage sort of more independent it's coming through thank you both and it looks like most of the questions quite a few questions coming through now um and please everyone do do something send more as you have um are about practicality is and I wonder if that's just because people accept that the industry is the industry and the question is really how do we how do we engage with it as as it is um almost a flip side of the question that we just asked about setting up independence um imprint yourself is uh as a writer if I don't manage to find an agent who understands the value of and readership that exists from my work how can I get my writing to readers besides self-publishing yes it depends which publishers I mean you're talking about because obviously it's a huge field and uh I guess somewhere like was it theory or maybe murky books or some of the smaller publishers would may look at something whereas a mainstream publisher maybe wouldn't but I think literary prizes actually have quite a and small literary prizes have quite a big part to play as well in terms of not that I particularly like prize culture and and people winning and comparing and so on but it actually does promote the names of writers who are up and coming particularly new prizes um and then that hopefully gets them to the notice of agents and to perhaps to a publishing deal um and was that that was the yeah the agent question as well um I'd encourage you to slide in people's dms on on social media I mean I feel like you know you don't ask you don't get an I welcome you to email us at murky books is also we can't publish everyone but we try to sort of in make the introductions to agents that we work with and we value and and have relationships with and to writers so you're very welcome to to to get in contact with us and and we can help where we can but yeah I definitely there's so many agents now on on social media and and authors most of the time kind of shout out their agents on on social media as well and you can kind of get a feel for kind of which writer your voice is similar to or your project is similar to you or and you have similarities with um and you can I don't know I'd I'd personally go and find their kind of agents and and just yeah just tweet and get in touch with as many people as they can but as this prayer question is is it necessary to have an agent to to sort of make your way through have an agent yeah well publishers usually prefer to take on books that come via an agent unless you happen to know the publisher personally or an editor personally and I think it's it's probably because they get so many submissions and and also it's a sort of way of filtering out things that are you know hopeless or totally unsuitable for that particular publisher I suppose so it certainly can be as hard to find the right agent and there are more agents some who at the moment are probably focusing on a greater diversity of writing than there were before but I think it's it's a good discipline to try and submit your work to an agent and see what the submission because agents have submissions policies they normally say send me the first three chapters or something so you need to take look at it from the point of view of the publisher they're getting well when I was a publisher I was getting 50 titles 50 submissions a week and I was wasn't even publishing 50 a year so what is going to make any particular submission every particular manuscript stand out from the others you have to look at it from that perspective you know they cannot just reply or or acknowledge sometimes every submission they get so an agent is a good way to start and and to focus on what it is you're trying to do but I think also it's a question of don't stop writing the fact that you can get your first book easily published doesn't mean say you have to stop writing and wait for that to happen just keep writing and reading I also wanted to mention for example like as a writer building a portfolio is also important I guess you know on one hand it's really important to find a good agent a good publisher to get your work out but I think many writers sometimes they kind of forgot that it's important to kind of like there's a process like you need to kind of build up a really good portfolio have a really great idea for book and the proposal and the the sample chapters and all these and I think it's really important to invest time in that as well and to think like why your story is really important there are a couple of questions which have come through and I think we might want to kind of turn the conversation back to bigger structural issues it's right we may be slightly rhetorical so someone said do we need more in order to have more working-class voices and voices outside of London do you think it'd be good to have offices for publishing houses outside of the north and two people have asked outside of sorry the south so in the north two people have asked um do we need more black publishers to get diverse writing to readers um I'm not sure if anyone wants to chime in on those questions but I have a feeling uh yeah I won't put words in the mic but I don't know if anyone has any we'll just swap off we certainly need more black publishers that's that's you know there's no question about that because and we don't necessarily we're not necessarily talking about independent autonomous black publishers we're talking about people within the industry whether they are black or of other ethnicities or other backgrounds just to make the industry less of a clique if you like I think that has been the problem so far so I think if there are any ways to get the industry more representative of society I think that's that's what we have to see it as it's not simply and there are there as we talked about the challenges there are whether it's to do with salaries or or such like to getting in but I think one shouldn't give up on it and one has to remember that there are there are associated fields that one can be involved with I mean working in a bookshop standing in Goodstead for working in the publishing industry for example or anything to do with books is is a good thing to have in your CV if you're trying to get in the industry thank you Michael I want to change tack a little bit and consolidate a few questions that have come through and that are a bit more structural so it seems like something that has been a sea change not least this year but probably from before this year and opportunities being created for working class writers also writers of color and within British publishing in particular the question is is that a trend in in your eyes and is there a way if it feels like a trend to stop it from being one so there's a lot of questioning around publishers coming forward and saying you know this kind of we need to listen phrases that are published and we need to do this and that lots of initiatives that have been put forward and I have a sock subscription that's been quite aligned it's a bit of a weird thing but the company that I get socks from set of black lives matter email to everyone saying we need to do better it just seemed like the thing that was happening so in publishing you know is this a sea change that we're watching is this just gestural and how if it is necessary to decolonize publishing do you make sure that this change lasts and I know she's really very talked about education but sort of practically the 70 odd people on on this call and all probably from very a variety of different backgrounds and what can be done to sustain this is it a trend what can we do to make it not a trend if so I don't have an answer is anybody else million dollar question sort of seen these trends before I mean that so in a way that is an answer yeah I think in a way it's to do with finance because the industry as it stands will do some will do whatever it can if it's if it's actually profiting from it I think we can see how this year that there there have been books that have reached the top of the best selling list because everybody's been talking about and I think if that can be seen as something that's going to happen more often then I think we will see that there's more sustainability in that area but I don't know in a way we should have had some of those publishers on this panel to answer that question but it sounds like Margaret is saying it's about dollars and cents so if the books aren't selling they're not going to get picked up so perhaps the call there is for everyone to support the writers that they see kind of coming out something like that but is that enough and she should look like you might be shaking her I don't know I mean I think there's two things I'd say one is I suppose it goes back and I am going to go back to education a bit but it's to do with the people in publishing having more of a sense of history the longer histories of the writing so it's not just the new kid on the block you know that's being promoted and maybe the first two novels and then they disappear then the writers disappear and the books go out of print and you know and you're trying to teach something or find a book by somebody and you can't even find it so you need to sustain a writer's career if they're a promising writer more than their first two novels or first two collections of poetry or whatever and I think you know the whole issue it goes back to the whole class thing but the whole thing about how do you assess quality you know who's writing the books who are they for and who's reading them you know um how do you assess that quality and how do you try and create a culture within whether it's mainstream or or black publishing you know actually as well which can also get quite narrow in its perspectives how do you change a culture which is actually genuinely going to to kind of include a breadth of writing and not make these value judgments all the time which are based on assumptions I mean one story you know which you know I was often recited you know samsar wants to learn in London is when people actually saw Sam on stage speaking standard English it's it's written for those who don't know in a kind of literary vernacular and it's a classic novel of black London um they couldn't believe he actually spoke standard English and that he wasn't working class in the way that they assumed that he was because he'd adopted the voice in his novel so you know there are those assumptions and there was that whole debate when you know um Jim Kelman's book came out um a long time ago around it not being proper English so how do you decide what proper English is sorry that's probably Garth but no no no it's not who's doing the deciding it's about who's making those decisions yeah yeah well I feel I feel a bit of responsibility has been the last um uh part of the the decolonizing sort of festival of ideas but I mean from the questions I have come in and and sort of the various the way the conversation has flowed to an extent it always seems that in this field of how do I change this industry how do I change the university how do I make this place more accepting there is a fundamental confrontation of the very small individual versus the very massive edifice which predates them by hundreds of years so she shared your question was how do we change this culture um and to change the culture always seems like a very very big thing um so I just wondered I want to push a little bit further so to the people on the call and beyond the people who they'll speak to about this panel um on the question of publishing I mean what is something that you think what is a recommendation you can make to an individual to shift this thing a little bit to help in this effort to make publishing a bit broader um so what's just from each of you maybe just one thing you would say that people can do now that will help I think I think one of the things one of the things is it's not to see it as a a huge thing that you have to accomplish in one go one step at a time I mean I always say what is publishing it's making public so if you photocopy something a dozen times you're publishing so you have to start from where you are what you can manage and and not think about competing with the huge conglomerate so they're already there you have to think what can I do how can I get it to the audience who I wanted to to to receive this and and start from there start from where you are what what you can manage on your own or with with your associates and do it that way rather than looking at some huge unachievable goal that you can't afford to do from the beginning thanks very good other thoughts one piece of advice what I think of is also like um other than trying to um you know get get themselves involved in the field and try to you know like um publish their work more often it's um it's for the the readers to really take that responsibility like the more that they have to create this market for um for um you know understanding and reading writers of color works and you know diversifying their taste as well and um I think there is really like um the potential to to have more like a greater sense of equality and to have more representation of different kinds of writers and I agree with Soshila like the education is really important it's kind of really starts the whole thing to get everyone's and you know more informed about the choices out there and yeah I was going to go with that but for the for the consumer uh reading wider than your usual kind of to be read pile um for the people within it I guess um holding the powers to be to account which is is happening in a in a small way um after everything that happened over the summer unfortunately um the catalyst for that was another black murder but um you know hopefully it will be sustained um and for anyone looking to enter the industry yeah just think wider than there was so much more than just the editorial team um you can be a part of many different departments within within the publishing industry and um that's kind of how we will create the change okay thank you Soshila yeah I mean in terms of within publishing it's obviously diversifying reading expanding what you know um which is difficult because obviously they're reading all the time but also I think putting more money into marketing um um writers they just believe in whatever their color or background and I think quite often the black and Asian market gets kind of narrowed to very specific audiences and actually it shouldn't do and I think that marketing budget is actually quite important in terms of selling books so I think that's that's really important and I think in terms of the writers I think my advice would just be to have faith in what you're doing and what you're writing um and not try and play to any trends or views of what you think you ought to be doing but rather just write what you want to write about yourself which is really what Jenny was saying as well which is to write her own story regardless of how it might be perceived or how she knows it might be perceived I think it's also important to keep reading yeah yeah and reads read outside of your comfort zone reads reads in the way that you think everybody ought to read and in so far as in so far as you can are the things that as we kind of move to a time that you all are seeing that you're excited about in the industry I suppose we've said lots of things that ought to change and things that aren't great and things challenges and struggles that we've had but are there initiatives or writers even that you see coming up that you that give you kind of cost for hope I mean we get emails and and instagram messages and people contact us on twitter every day that are aspiring writers and that kind of um really encourages the work that we're trying to do and and who we're trying to reach and also speaking to we've started going to in schools obviously pre-covid before covid um and talking to year 10s year 11s and they're like soon as they see um you know the authors that that that we have coming up they're they're instantly kind of like hooked and and asking questions and and that is is super inspiring and I think there is a slight shift in in the younger generation and hopefully that continues are there questions for her? I think it's what's one thing that's very exciting is that the sort of sediment of all the activism and all the independent publishing houses all the individuals and and there are many individuals obviously who are not on this panel like Khadija Sisi and Meeparks and lots and lots and lots of people and agents who've been working at this for many many years the fact that things have changed that we have you know Margaret chairing the Booker Prize we have you know all these reading lists being topped by black writers for whatever reason good you know whether it's for the right reasons or not I just think that is great that it's happened and it is something to be very excited and proud about I think it's also encouraging to to realize that there are publishers who have always done the right thing and you know they may not have that many uh black or Asian or or you know their workforce may not be as as broad as we would like it to be or they would like to but they still recognize quality in in the writers they take on and win prizes and so on so it's not just every publisher who's having to make changes there are certain publishers who are now I suppose one can go back to that phrase of Ngugi is decolonizing their minds perhaps and you know we have to hope that that's something that will be sustained and just as in the demonstrations it's encouraging to see that there are a lot of people who are supporting the Black Lives matter movement who wouldn't necessarily have been doing so you know some time back so I think people's eyes are being opened in a way that I think isn't encouraging things to see thank you Jennifer last word I think I agree it's like it's quite a hopeful scene and I think it's also a trial and error thing it's like it doesn't mean that we have to be right every time in making the choice it's choosing those writers or you know publications and so on like I hope that there will be more resources like and everybody is really just kind of willing like there's a willingness to to sort of spend time reading and teaching and also like understanding these writers and to kind of broaden the range right thank you um between 2009 and 2019 the London review books published 105 articles by 39 different poetry critics and all 39 were white there's 105 articles reviewed 127 different books and all 127 were by white poets that is the context of this conversation there is no question that there's still an incredible amount of work to be done um but our four guests panelists have all found their way to break through into what's often a resistant industry and their advice of course is to to keep going um I want to thank everyone for joining us I want to thank Emma, Margaret, Sheila, Jennifer for sharing their thoughts Jennifer for sharing your work um around this naughty issue of decolonizing the publishing industry these conversations have been going on for a long time um but change has been made and change continues to be made not least by the individuals sort of represented on your screen I think we can't clap altogether because strange things happen on Zoom when you try to do that um so uh clapping your own sort of silent and muted ways in your various different hands um thank you for spending the last 90 minutes uh the last 90 minutes for us and and I do very much hope that you took something from the conversation that's that's helpful to you in the various areas where you're working we're thinking um and and so I just wanted to say um on behalf of us at Wasapiri um a huge thank you to the organizers of this event and the entire Festival Ideas in particular thank you to Stephanie, Amina, Kumi, and Danny for doing technical support for us today um teaching us how to use Zoom in my case um and generally just being very friendly and delivering what is a spectacularly has been a spectacularly complicated event um with with good cheer and we really very much appreciate it and we really very much I think appreciate you you creating space for these kinds of conversations which can, must, and will will continue um I hope everyone has a wonderful evening and and we very much hope to see you soon. Take care. Thanks Malakai. Thanks. Thank you Malakai.