Margaret Busby

Margaret Busby OBE (also titled Nana Akua Ackon) is a Ghanaian-born publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster based in the UK. She was Britain’s youngest and first black woman book publisher when in the 1960s she co-founded with Clive Allison (1944–2012) the London-based publishing house Allison and Busby (A & B).

Margaret Busby was born in Accra, Gold Coast (present-day Ghana), to Dr George Busby and Mrs Sarah Busby (née Christian), who both had family links to the Caribbean, particularly to Trinidad, Barbados and Dominica. Dr Busby was a lifelong friend of Kwame Nkrumah's mentor George Padmore and attended school with C. L. R. James. Through her maternal line, she is a cousin of newscaster Moira Stuart.

After leaving school at 15, Margaret Busby read English at Bedford College, London University, where she became editor of her college literary magazine as well as publishing her own poetry. She was married to British jazz musician and educator Lionel Grigson (1942–1994).

She co-founded the publishing house Allison and Busby (A & B) in 1967, and was Editorial Director for the next 20 years, publishing many significant authors including Sam Greenlee (author of The Spook Who Sat by the Door, the first novel published by A & B),C. L. R. James, Buchi Emecheta, Chester Himes, George Lamming, Roy Heath, Ishmael Reed, John Edgar Wideman, Nuruddin Farah, Rosa Guy, Val Wilmer, Colin MacInnes, H. Rap Brown, Julius Lester, Geoffrey Grigson, Adrian Mitchell, Jill Murphy, Miyamoto Musashi, Christine Qunta, Michael Horovitz, Carlos Moore, Michèle Roberts, Molefe Pheto, Arthur Maimane, Hunter S. Thompson, Alexis Lykiard, Jack Trevor Story, Michael Moorcock, Ralph de Boissière, and Andrew Salkey.

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