Lantana Publishing’s Ten-year Anniversary
I met Alice Curry years ago when I brainstormed with a group of talented writers and storytellers with the objective of designing a MOOC on Coursera with a focus on writing for children. It was a fascinating process. Among all the other ripples those early conversations generated was the remarkable growth of a publishing house under Alice’s leadership. This year Lantana Publishing celebrated its 10th birthday. Here’s my conversation with Alice about this uncommon milestone.
[Uma] Congratulations on 10 years of Lantana Publishing! Would you talk about your early dream of starting this publishing house, inspired by your nephew Ryan? What was the conversation of books like at the time and what did you see missing from it?
Alice Curry (front ctr.) and Lantana team with authors and illustrators. Image courtesy of Lantana Publishing
[Alice] Thank you! As I think you know, I didn’t start my career in publishing. In fact, in the years preceding Lantana, I had no inkling that this would be my path in life. I did an English degree at the University of Oxford and then spent several years in academia in Australia, focusing on children’s literature. It was at this point that I became increasingly frustrated by the lack of diversity in the books I was encountering. I remember how excited I was when I came across my first YA novel by author Ambelin Kwaymullina of the Palyku people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia, and another by author Catherine Knuttson of the Métis Nation in Canada. I devoured works by Samoan author Lani Wendt Young and Nnedi Okorofor’s Nigerian-set middle grade fiction, as well as your novels, Uma! But a nagging thought kept coming back to me – why are there not more of these books? Why am I having to work so hard to seek them out?
[Uma] Yes! This was in part why I started writing and submitting work to publishers. Why, indeed.
[Alice] It was then that the seeds of what would become Lantana started sprouting in my mind. Unbeknownst to her, it was my sister Lucy who helped nudge me in the direction that has since set the course of my working life. She got engaged to her partner Yue whose parents had emigrated from Hong Kong and who in a short space of time had added a large, loving Chinese contingent to our family. Most importantly for me, their union brought the promise of mixed-race nephews and nieces – Ryan who came first, and then twins Clara and Kieran – and alongside that, a realisation of the sad reality that they might grow up never seeing themselves reflected in the books they read.
Lantana was born with a mission to ensure that children like my niece and nephews – children of colour, or those straddling two cultures – would grow up feeling seen, heard and represented. This mission has since expanded to include children from all under-represented groups, from all walks of life. It is our attempt to recognise the potential in every individual – a testament to the strength found in diversity and the extraordinary things that can happen when a community supports and believes in each person’s unique contributions. And it has been an absolute joy and privilege to see this mission unfold in the way it has over these past ten years.
[Uma] It’s an ambitious mission, to "publish inclusive books by authors from under-represented groups and from around the world.” That's an ambitious reach. What have some of your challenges been and how have you tackled them?
[Alice] In 2014, when I founded Lantana, the United Kingdom had no facility for measuring the number of books being published by authors or illustrators of colour, unlike the United States where the CCBC had been documenting the work of BIPOC creators since 1994. This posed a unique problem in Lantana’s early days since we had no statistics to rely on to persuade buyers that our books were filling a gap in the market – both commercial and ethical – and had to call on people to look at their bookshelves and acknowledge this gap for themselves. It was surprising how many customers had simply never noticed that this was the case until entreated to count the number of titles on their bookshelves, at which point it became abundantly clear.
In 2018, the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education published the first ever nationwide book count of titles by Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic authors, and the damning statistic emerged that only 1% of all children’s books published the previous year had featured a protagonist of colour. Although this came as no surprise to us, it evidently shocked the industry as a whole and kickstarted a much wider conversation than had hitherto been had about the stunning lack of representation across publishing – from book creators down to the publishing workforce – a conversation that was propelled into the public consciousness even more forcefully after the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests. This appalling turn of events saw us redouble our efforts to forge ahead with the work we had started several years earlier, with the advantage of now having a set of statistics to draw on to justify our publishing programme and ultimately encourage other publishers to join us in championing inclusive children's books.
“We have always sought to introduce new and debut authors and illustrators to the industry, which is not difficult when these creators have historically been marginalised within traditional publishing. ”
[Uma] Your list is a blend of original works by debut authors and translations of books originally published outside the UK. Why is this mix important?
[Alice] We have always sought to introduce new and debut authors and illustrators to the industry, which is not difficult when these creators have historically been marginalised within traditional publishing. Even in our early years, we never had any trouble sourcing material to publish since our call for works by authors from under-represented groups was so unusual at the time that new authors flocked to our submissions page. It is one of the privileges of publishing to launch the career of a debut author or illustrator. We have had real success with illustrator Poonam Mistry, whose first book, You’re Safe With Me, was shortlisted for the most prestigious illustration award in the UK, the Kate Greenaway Medal, now the Carnegie Medal, and illustrator Sandhya Prabhat whom we launched in the UK with I Am Brown, and who quickly went on to secure an agent and a plethora of commissions with big publishing houses.
Our move into translated literature came a few years later, and we have relished the opportunity to introduce talented international authors and illustrators to the English-speaking world, including award-winning Colombian author Irene Vasco whose book, Letters in Charcoal, was named a USBBY Outstanding International Book this year. Translated works are now a pillar of our publishing programme since translated fiction has historically been – and continues to be – a significant gap in children’s publishing yet is so vital for opening young readers’ eyes to the lived experiences of children growing up in countries other than their own in a way that not only makes sense of our increasingly connected world but also encourages empathy and understanding between often fractured societies. At Lantana, we are proud of the balance we have established between stories reflecting the lived experiences of children from under-represented groups – whether that’s by dint of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, disability and so on – and stories reflecting the wider lived experiences of children from around the world.
[Uma] Lantana books are not only invitations to a wide range of young readers, they also invite authors and illustrators from under-represented groups to focus on the art of creating a children’s book. If you could tell aspiring writers and artists to do three things to hone their craft, what would those be?
[Alice] It is a maxim often told, but my first suggestion would be to read, read, read. Become deeply familiar with the genre or medium you are writing in and with authors you admire, so that you know exactly how, and in what way, your writing will fit into the current publishing landscape while also ensuring it stands out from the crowd. Publishing relies on a balance of familiar and different. A story needs to be familiar enough for readers to recognise it in some intangible way, yet different enough that it advances the genre into uncharted territory. At Lantana, we’ve never been afraid to take risks, but some risks are easier to quantify, and therefore invest our time and money into, than others.
My second recommendation is to find and own your truth – the story that only you can tell or the artistic style that truly reflects you. This may take numerous drafts and edits – it may take months and years – and don’t be afraid to let go of concepts or styles that aren’t working in order to try something new. The balance will always be between telling a story that reflects your unique view of the world and one that is universal enough in its literary or artistic style to draw readers in. I won’t pretend that that’s an easy balance to master!
My third suggestion is a practical one and relates more to securing a publishing deal than honing your craft per se. Always read the specific instructions given by a literary agent or publisher to whom you are submitting your work. It sounds obvious, but the number of times we’ve received manuscripts that fall outside our remit, or are without the detail we’ve requested, truly boggles the mind. It not only wastes our time as publishers but wastes your time as authors and illustrators whose efforts could more productively be funnelled into honing your craft!
[Uma] Honing the craft—thank you Alice and here’s to the next decade of Lantana Publishing.
