Lisa James

How did you come to be on the Masters at Goldsmiths?
My undergraduate degree was English, American & Postcolonial Literature from University of Kent. I was most interested the postcolonial side and wanted to read more Caribbean literature.

I originally started at Goldsmiths on the MA Literary Studies: Caribbean Pathway, but then, probably about halfway through, I felt a bit disillusioned with postgraduate study in general and took a break. One of my friends had been doing the MA Black British Writing [now MA Black British Literature]. So having talked to them and seeing how much they had enjoyed it I got in contact with Deirdre and Joan [the MA founders] after about a year or so. With their help, I transferred my credits. The MA Literary Studies Caribbean Pathway was kind of outward looking – the Caribbean diaspora is vast – in Canada and America etc. Whereas this Masters was solely about Black British authors, writing about and published in the UK on experiences I could relate to. Then I graduated January 2020 and the world shut down two months later!

How long did you have between finishing your first degree and starting the Masters?
About two years. I think part of the reason I felt disillusioned was that there was quite a big gap in terms of what was expected of me – coming from authors on really established canons who had their own literary critics. Then coming in to read Caribbean or Black British writing where sometimes I would literally have an author in front of me and there was no critical reading on them apart from a book review from 1965 when it was first published.

The MA Black British Literature is unique in the UK, so did it feel like you were cutting out a new path?
Yeah, definitely. And it’s a sentiment shared and echoed by the friends I made on the course.

I remember talking to a lecturer and telling her I was finding it difficult writing my essays. I had my theory, but in an MA it's expected that you; 1. back up a theory and then; 2. you interrogate the theory. How do I interrogate the theory when no theory exists?

That is the difficulty but also the challenge in it. A lot of these writers have been under-served for years, so you might find yourself on the frontier. My lecturer told me that I shouldn’t be turned off by the fact that I was finding it difficult because I was writing what could eventually form the framework for literary theory many years down the road.

When you first went to university, were you thinking that you wanted to pursue a career in publishing?
I just knew that I wanted to go to university and I wanted to get an English degree. I wasn't necessarily sure what I wanted to do with it.

When I was at Quercus, many people in the office had studied English. Having been told that you can't “do anything” with an English degree and then seeing this whole giant office near full of people with them, I felt validated.

What sort of activities were you doing on the internship?
I was working for six weeks for the publisher Quercus, which is owned by Hachette. And Greenfinch, which is an imprint of Quercus. Greenfinch specialises in illustrated nonfiction – so things like memoirs or on the joy of baking.

I was carrying out research. For example, for an upcoming title about London I had to look specifically at what kind of direction the cover could take. So I looked at popular tourism books or tour guide books and researched where were they were on the bestseller lists, the size of the book, how many pages, etc. I’d look at the covers of the best-selling publications and make a mood board.

Is there a particular area of publishing that you want to work in?
I would say the area that I want to go into would be Marketing and Publicity and I quite the idea of working in an arts environment. So I was happy to be there and to get to work with that team towards the end of my internship.

How do you think the internship will help you as you start your career?
I've been able to see the benefits of it already. I'm being longlisted for jobs that didn't pay me any attention before. When I was there [at Quercus] I was longlisted for an editorial assistant job. We talked about the internship and they said they were really impressed with the scope of experience that I was getting.

After the internship, I now have a lot of skills outside of general office things. For example, in Marketing and Publicity they use a tool called Falcon to schedule tweets and I learned how to use that. So, if I apply for a marketing position in the future, I can say I know how to use this software and publicity databases.

I also learned a lot about Biblio, which is the program that feeds in all of the information that Amazon lists. Now I can put it on my CV because sometimes job adverts say they want experience of Biblio.

Before I was applying to publishers and getting rejections and I was thinking maybe I should pivot. But now that I have the internship under my belt, I think my interest definitely is renewed. And especially seeing that there's different ways in, because literally, within six weeks I didn't expect it. But so many jobs came up!

I'm still undecided whether I want to do Editorial, but I remember speaking to the publisher of the fantasy imprint and she said it doesn't matter where you start out in publishing and it doesn't solely matter about your background. You might find that you come in through Contracts or something, and you develop and see that maybe Editorial is where you want to be. She said there's always space to move around. Hachette, in particular, is very supportive of lateral movement between departments.

What contribution do you think interns from the MA make to the publisher?
Everyone was very interested in the programme and what I studied. It was the most interest I've had in the Masters outside of academia! So, it was nice to see that. And I was also surprised by how many Black authors there were within Quercus fiction that were going to be published or have been published. The internships are important because, it's one thing for publishing houses to publish these Black Caribbean and African writers, and another thing to hire the people who are actually interested in reading them. 

During my time at the University of Kent, Abdulrazak Gurnah, who recently won the Nobel Prize, was Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures. In subsequent coverage, his agent felt his work had been underappreciated over the years with Gurnah telling the Guardian that over time he became content with the readers he had but that he could always do with more. And I feel like that's how you create more readers for these books [by Black authors], by bringing in people of that background in the publishing process.