DIPNet

About Urbantopia Books

Urbantopia Books is an award-winning publishing house dedicated to publishing culturally and socially diverse books. Our main aim is to bridge that gap in the publishing industry by producing diverse range contemporary books for readers of all ages.

HISTORY

Urbantopia Books was founded by Assistant Head Teacher Ola Laniyan Amoako in July 2009.

When I first started my teaching career in Hackney I noticed the lack of culturally diverse or urban book for the older children in the school. Frustrated by this I embarked on writing modern, urban tales for children aged 9 and above, however when I attempted to find a publisher, I found myself hitting a brick wall.

Many blogs, websites and books often advise writers to find publishers who have published similar books to what they have written, however the sheer lack of publishing houses publishing culturally diverse books meant my chances of being published was near impossible.

Troubled by this, I began researching the issue of diversity in publishing. There were many discussions on the issues and even thousands of pounds being spent to research the issue however; my conclusion was that nothing was being done about it.

The final straw was when I started reading the findings from research conducted by The Reading Agency and Harper Collins. They found less people of BME backgrounds were buying books for their children. They stated:

“The recent findings are a major cry out to the publishing industry to address the lack of diversity and representation.” More importantly, they finished off by stating:

“WE NEED TO SOURCE AND ENCOURAGE NEW VOICES.”

It was this final statement that made decide to start Urbantopia.

Urbantopia Books was launched in the summer of 2009 and its first book was published in March 2010. Since then we have received encouraging words of support from the national media. There seems to be a general consensus that Urbantopia is an absolute necessity in today’s society.

We were recently nominated for the ‘Diversity Awards’ by the Independent Publishers Guild and awarded ‘Creative Business of the Year’ by the Precious Awards. In addition to this, we were chosen as part of the ‘Smarta 100’ business awards.

Our authors come from a diverse range of backgrounds and all our books are very modern and contemporary.

Authors:

Mina Bint Muhammad is our youngest author. At the prime age 15 she has completed her first novel See Red, a story about a young Muslim teenage girl who finds herself caught between fitting in socially and her following her religion. The story is humorous with a gritty tone.

Azzurra Bertoncini is a 27 year old writer who has written the diary of a Turkish girl who dies from anorexia.

Lily Bass is of Indian decent and her book Mumbai Story follows a young girl who is accused of murder by the corrupt Mumbai Police when she finds a dead body in her friend’s house.

The Future:

Urbantopia Books currently only publishes fiction novels, however, we are expanding into non-fiction and short stories.

The next twelve months are very exciting as we have promising works coming through.

We are always looking for talented, unsigned writers. Please visit our site at: http://www.urbantopia.co.uk