Reni Eddo-Lodge, the author of the 2017 bestseller Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, has launched an imprint with the publisher HarperCollins.
Monument Books will publish titles by writers “who can help us understand our past, navigate our present and map new futures”, said Kishani Widyaratna, publishing director at 4th Estate, the HarperCollins imprint with which Monument Books is being launched in collaboration.
Eddo-Lodge said she started Monument Books to “pay it forward”. Her first book, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, won multiple awards after its publication.
“By the age of 30, I had sold over a million books and was the first black author to top the British book charts,” she said. “During the pandemic, I thought carefully about the responsibility that my position has afforded me, and I wanted to create something with a collective spirit.”
The imprint will launch in February next year with a book compiled by Steve McQueen. Resistance, a photographic history of activism in Britain, also features writing by Gary Younge, Paul Gilroy and Shami Chakrabarti. It accompanies an exhibition at Margate’s Turner Contemporary which opens in February.
“I’ve always admired Steve McQueen’s work,” said Eddo-Lodge. “We share a lot of interests – culture, archival material, human stories – that are also part of the ethos of the imprint. He’s an excellent visual storyteller and I trusted his eye to tell these stories of resistance in a fresh way.”
The name Monument is “derived from the idea of each work on the list standing as a new monument to ideas, stories and culture, as well as uplifting or refashioning past legacies,” said 4th Estate. “The aspiration is that each title will become a landmark on a reader’s journey of discovery through the list and beyond. It also borrows from the idea of a monument as a meeting place and books as a point of connection.”
The imprint will publish three books a year – mostly nonfiction, but also fiction and classics. Eddo-Lodge will serve as editor-at-large, to “shape the vision of the imprint, look for interesting authors” and work with the 4th Estate team to “bring [authors’] work to life”.
“Writers know how writers work, and I know what it takes to turn a blank page into something that people want to read,” said Eddo-Lodge, adding that she is “excited” to see how the list evolves.
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, which is published by Bloomsbury, won the Jhalak prize and the British Book award for a work of narrative nonfiction, and was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford and Orwell prizes.
“At a time when the world feels increasingly polarised and uncertain, it is a privilege for us to be working with Reni Eddo-Lodge on an imprint that will help connect readers to the world around them and to each other,” said Widyaratna.
