Elise Dillsworth Agency

30/06/2025

Great to see this interview with Foday Mannah in The Bookseller magazine. https://www.thebookseller.com/author-interviews/foday-mannah-on-his-debut-crime-novel-set-between-sierra-leone-and-scotland

30/06/2025

Anthony Joseph will be at the Bradford Literary Festival on Friday, 4th July performing selections from his acclaimed poetry, including the T.S. Eliot Prize-winning SONNETS FOR ALBERT. https://www.bradfordlitfest.co.uk/

30/06/2025

Karen Downs-Barton will be at the Ledbury Poetry Festival on Friday, 4th July discussing her wonderful debut collection MINX. https://ledburypoetry.org.uk/home/whats-on/

16/06/2025

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Thursday August 14th. The theme this year is ‘Repair’ and as ever I’ll b…

16/06/2025

“Flitting between Scotland and Sierra Leone, this debut crime novel by Foday Mannah manages to include all the genre’s characteristic tropes – revelations, red herrings, cliffhangers – while charting the day-to-day experiences of migrant communities living and working in Edinburgh. Capturing moments of workaday domestic reality – a makeshift hair salon in a missing woman’s living room, for instance – offers a compelling counterpoint to the drama common in crime fiction, which too often erases the lives of its victims in favour of police chases and femmes fatales. Stylistically, too, Mannah is attuned to the sense of horror that can be provoked by a precise, undramatic sentence. One line I still remember, a few days after finishing the novel, describes the discovery of an unconscious woman in the boot of a car: ‘Scattered around her were numerous […] tree-shaped air fresheners.” LOU SELFRIDGE, Assistant Editor

10/06/2025

Do listen to Karen Downs-Barton talk about her debut collection on The Verb. MINX “explores worlds that poetry often doesn’t, of children’s homes, multi-generational Romani families in language that gloriously experiments with form and style and shape.” https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002d88g?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

07/06/2025

We're looking forward to chatting with Mr. Foday Mannah about his debut novel, "The Search for Othella Savage". Join us on zoom!

06/06/2025

Many congratulations to Foday Mannah on being shortlisted for his debut novel THE SEARCH FOR OTHELLA SAVAGE. 👏🏾🇸🇱

05/06/2025

02/06/2025

REMEMBERING ALISON MORRISON
The Alison Morrison Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award marked its tenth anniversary at the 2025 Independent Publishing Awards. Elise Dillsworth remembers the pioneering publisher and friend for whom the Award was named.

I first met Alison in 2004, at an event about the lack of diversity in publishing. She was working as marketing director for Walker Books at the time, while I was an editor at Virago, and we became friends immediately. She had a big personality and her enthusiasm for books and everything she did was infectious.

We already knew that publishing’s workforce did not properly reflect the make-up of the British population, and that there was not enough support for people from under-represented backgrounds who were working in the industry or wanted to enter it. Our views were confirmed by In Full Colour, a survey undertaken by Arts Council England and The Bookseller that revealed how publishing remained predominantly white and middle class, with Black and Asian professionals feeling marginalised.

This provided the impetus for Alison and I to co-found the Diversity in Publishing Network—DipNet for short—in 2004. Our aim was to support these professionals with new connections and role models, to encourage more Black and Asian people into our industry, and to get all publishers to look closely at their diversity—or lack of.

As Alison said at the time, we were determined to deliver on DipNet’s good intentions. Though there is still work to be done, her unwavering focus and energy, and that of all those who worked for DipNet, ensured that it did indeed lead to substantial and lasting change.

Alison would be as delighted as I am to see how independent publishers have shown their commitment to diversity in its broadest terms. We lost Alison in a tragic and unimaginable way in 2014, but her memory legacy lives on. In 2015 we set up the Alison Morrison Diversity Award—now the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award—to honour her achievements and reward the achievements of IPG members in this area. It’s been my pleasure to help judge and present this award for a decade now, and we have seen the quantity and quality of entries grow every year. We can trace this heartening progress directly back to DipNet and Alison’s pioneering work. I’m grateful to the IPG team for continuing to remember her in this way.

Alison’s unflagging drive was also reflected in her successful career in children’s publishing. This included seven years at Walker and senior roles at Egmont and Penguin, before she moved to Which? as head of customer experience. She also did important work as chair of Booktrust’s board of trustees from 2005 to 2007. She had a full and rewarding professional life, but it was her son Kori who gave her the most joy. After ten years of the Award, we remember Alison with love, respect and gratitude for all she achieved in life.

02/06/2025

“Foday’s evocative novel pushes the parameters of its genre to explore issues within the African diaspora, like religious and political corruption, the unfair treatment of women … the compelling and cleverly crafted tale gives us Hawa Barrie, who lives in Scotland on the periphery of a Sierra Leonean community with the Lion Mountain Church at its heart.” The Sunday Post