Megaphone Writers CIC is a non-profit organisation for the benefit of children’s writers of colour, and all child readers. It emerged from a mentoring scheme started by a writer of colour in 2016 in response to the lack of diversity in children’s literature. We support people of colour who write for children and teenagers, by providing them with affordable, accessible, transformative opportunities to develop their creativity and skills and connect to an audience. We want every child to see themselves in stories – and as authors of their own stories.
Megaphone Mentoring for children’s writers of colour was started by children’s author and creative writing teacher Leila Rasheed in 2015. She realised how frequently she was the only writer of colour in a room at children’s publishing events, and that little diversity, reflection or representation of their lives, familes, experiences was available to children in their libraries and bookshops, even in a majority-minority city like her home town, Birmingham. Book Trust research found that between 2007 and 2017, fewer than 2% of children’s book authors had been British people of colour.
“If we want many different stories, we need many different story-tellers…Megaphone supports writers through the often painful process of writing a first novel… in the hope of making their novels into actual published books that can reach children and show them that they too have permission to tell their many stories.”
Leila Rasheed, from A Story about Stories, 2015
The first mentoring scheme produced critically acclaimed and prize-winning authors, Danielle Jawando (winner: Jhalak Prize, Great Reads Best Senior Novel, YA Book Prize, Diverse Books Award), Maisie Chan (winner: Jhalak Prize, Branford Boase Award) and Joyce Efia Harmer (Times Children’s Book of the Week). Later schemes have led to book deals and publication for Nazima Pathan (DREAM HUNTERS), Iqbal Hussain (THE NIGHT I BORROWED TIME) and many members of the wider Megaphone Community have also gained book deals and publication.
In 2020 former commissioning editor Stephanie King also came on board to support Megaphone Commuity, and in 2021 Megaphone Writers CIC was constituted in order to secure a sustainable future for an organisation whose aim is to benefit people of colour in children’s literature.
To date, the scheme has been funded on a project-by-project basis, with majority funding from Arts Council National Lottery Project Grants, and smaller funding from The Publishers’ Association, ALCS and Usborne Publishing. We have no structural funding and daily administration is mainly on a volunteer basis.
CIC number 13808064