India Chambers

India is now working as an Assistant Editor at Penguin, in their longstanding children’s imprint, Puffin Books. India previously studied an undergraduate degree in English at Goldsmiths, graduating in 2017.

Why did you decide to study the MA Black British Literature?
I really enjoyed my undergraduate degree, but I realised in my second year that we were studying a lot of authors from the same parts of the world and from a very specific lens. I’d also been learning about the literary canon, and how that’s problematic. I realised that while I’d read some writing from Black authors, it was mostly postcolonial literature or by African American writers. So I wanted to change my focus, and I started searching for Masters courses with that in mind. Being Black British myself this MA sounded perfect – it combined my love of literature with the ability to study works from this really specific perspective. 

Did these expectations tally with your experience of the Masters?
They definitely did. I had the chance to read a load of Black British writing, which is obviously amazing. But it was also the first time at university I’d been in a space where the majority of people looked like me. That was really affirming and important. At undergraduate level I barely spoke in seminars, and really only when heavily prompted to do so. But on the MA there was a lot more space for collaboration. The different perspectives that were being brought to the texts we studied were really nuanced, which is great. It was a really good experience.

We got to learn a lot about the history of Black Britain as well, including a lot of things that I didn't know personally. And I got to connect with a lot of amazing people, and go to some amazing book events. We also went to see a lot of productions, which was awesome. Dr Deirdre Osborne and Professor Joan Anim-Addo [who co-developed the MA] were always happy to share their insights and made sure to signpost things that could enrich our experience on the course. 

Were there any modules you studied or texts/writers you discovered that particularly stuck with you?
One of the first things we studied was historicising the field of Black British literature, and we learnt about Mary Prince, who is the first woman of African descent to have been published in the UK. Her self-written text from the early 1800s is about her life and her experience of living within slavery, and it’s also about movement and travel around different colonial spaces. It was really, really interesting – especially because a lot of people think that Black British history started with the Windrush era. So while that was the first text published here, it was also made really clear to us that there has been a Black presence in the UK for ages. 

Also reading some of Warsan Shire’s poetry – which inspired Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’ album – was really cool. She’s a British-Somali poet, and it’s amazing, amazing work.

Another standout memory was studying a lot of plays. I love going to the theatre but normally hate reading plays, but I really enjoyed reading debbie tucker green’s work, for example. There was also a play we studied called ‘Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner’, which is about the social media era. It’s just amazing – basically it’s like Twitter, but in a play form.

The course is good in that it’s got such a wide variety of literature, and also across different formats. And it features some contemporary texts as well, which is lovely – to be able to study the work of people that are living and breathing, many of whom are in London, is also really awesome.

What did you do your MA dissertation on?
My thesis looked at the representation and writing of Black mixed-race women in Britain, specifically the literature of Zadie Smith, Diana Evans and Bernardine Evaristo. It was a really good opportunity because my mum is English and Indian, and my dad is Jamaican, and so it was nice to be able to explore writers who come from similar backgrounds and who have similar identities to myself, and look at their representation in writing. 

You did an internship that was offered as part of Goldsmiths’ collaboration with publisher Quercus (owned by publishing group Hachette). What was that like?
Deirdre and Joan knew that I was trying to get into publishing and encouraged me to apply. It was a paid internship that had been matched to an entry-level salary, which was awesome and really incentivised me to go for it. 

On the three weeks of the internship I worked with three different departments. During the first week I was with Greenfinch, which is a non-fiction imprint of Quercus. They’ve actually just published Deirdre and Joan’s book, ‘This is the Canon: Decolonize Your Bookshelf in 50 Books’, and that was something I worked on while I was there. I did a lot of work on the bibliography, making sure all of the dates for when the texts were first written and translated into English were correct. I also reached out to some people who I thought could provide good quotes for the book cover and blurb. As well as that I got to attend lots of Greenfinch meetings – all of their editorial meetings, and acquisitions meetings where I got to find out how it works when they’re discussing buying books, and about active acquiring. I also did some research about authors they were thinking of getting to write some non-fiction titles (which is called profile-led publishing), so that was really awesome.

Then in my second week I was at MacLehose Press, an imprint that deals with books in translation. So I got to read a bunch of Japanese fiction, which is great because I’m really into that at the moment. And I got to work out buying rights, and learn about how when you're acquiring a book you need to be able to work out whether it will work in different markets. 

On my third week I was with marketing and PR, which included getting involved with their new book that they put out with Emily Ratajkowski, and writing copy for their Instagram account.

So I got to do lots of different things, which was really awesome for going into my current role as Assistant Editor at Penguin because I had an expectation about what working in publishing would be like, and direct examples to draw on. I also made a lot of friends and connections at Hachette – it definitely opened up that world for me.

Do you feel like your experiences on the MA helped you bring a unique perspective to the internship and your career?
I’m working in children’s publishing now, and as part of that we’re always thinking about how to be representative and how to reach different audiences. The MA gave me an increased understanding of why that’s so important, and through my work I’ve developed an understanding of how to make those arguments from a business standpoint. 

Also I read quite widely on the MA, and it pushed me to read even more widely beyond that. So I have a lot of references where authors are concerned, and I think a lot of publishing is knowing where you’d place a book in the market, what titles it compares to, and how you can upsell those other titles through that one.

The Masters also gave me skills in being able to read really quickly, and being able to write in a way that makes other people understand you. And obviously a lot of my work is looking at an author’s manuscript and writing a review or producing edits. So studying the MA and writing my responses to literature has definitely come in really, really useful for my professional practice.