#Merky Books is an award winning imprint launched in 2018 by Stormzy and Penguin Random House UK with a clear ambition to publish books that will own – and change – the mainstream. We are home to bold voices from untraditional spaces that are inclusive and intersectional. We exist to break down barriers in the publishing industry, and we bring books to life in an exciting way.
Our publishing includes a memoir of a writing life by Children’s Laureate Malorie Blackman and the heroic life of Olympic champion Caster Semenya, literary writers such as the award-winning Derek Owusu and the first New Writers’ Prize winners Hafsa Zayyan and Monika Radojevic, and cultural stories such as the book which decolonised literature, Jade LB’s Keisha the Sket and Calum Jacobs’ A New Formation on the glory of Black British football. Alongside our expansive publishing our community values are vital to what we do, and we invest in the voices of today and tomorrow with an annual New Writers’ Prize, engage directly with a cultivated audience through our brand channels and partnerships, and connect directly with communities of readers, writers, illustrators across the country with our literary festivals.
