Hachette UK sponsors Black Ballad event

Hachette UK is sponsoring and co-hosting a panel event for Black Ballad’s 2021 Book Festival, as part of a series of activities to mark Black History Month.

Black Ballad’s inaugural festival, which is running from 22nd to 24th October, will feature an engaging mix of 11 different events, including workshops, panel discussions and one-on-one conversations with authors and publishing professionals.

The Hachette UK sponsored panel, Pathways into Publishing: A Careers Panel with Hachette UK, will take place at 1-2pm on 24th October. PR Consultant Ronke Lawal, who has previously hosted events for Black Ballad, will be in conversation with three Hachette UK colleagues: Rachael Jones (Key Account Manager, Sales at Hachette UK), Denise Woolery (Senior Production Controller, Hachette Children’s Group) and Feyi Oyesanya (Editorial Assistant at Headline).

The panel will seek to help publishing hopefuls find out more about the different roles within publishing. This forms part of Hachette UK’s ‘Changing the Story’ mission to demystify publishing and make the industry more transparent and accessible to underrepresented groups.

Tobi Oredein, CEO and founder of Black Ballad, commented: “Jendella Benson, our Head of Editorial, has done a fantastic job in making sure that our editorial content shines a light on authors that are often overlooked. So her idea of a Book Festival seemed like not just the next step in us celebrating literature by Black women, but doing the work of equipping Black women who want to write or work in publishing with the tools to break into an industry that is often guarded by gatekeepers that tend to keep this demographic out of this industry.”

Melanie Tansey, Group HR Director at Hachette UK, commented: “Black Ballad’s brilliant work aligns so clearly with our mission to make it easy for everyone, everywhere to unlock new worlds of ideas, learning, entertainment and opportunity, and we’re thrilled to be part of their Book Festival. We hope that our partnership with Black Ballad will help encourage more Black women to consider publishing as a career, which will enrich our industry, enable us to reach more readers and mean better stories for everyone.”
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Tickets are now available for the event, which you can sign up for here.