Taking Up Space

***THE FLAGSHIP 2019 RELEASE OF #MERKY BOOKS* **

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* *‘Brilliant’** CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS

**‘Hugely important’** PAULA AKPAN

**‘Essential’** BERNARDINE EVARISTO

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As a minority in a predominantly white institution, taking up space is an act of resistance. Recent Cambridge grads Chelsea and Ore experienced this first-hand, and wrote *Taking Up Space* as a guide and a manifesto for change.

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* *FOR BLACK GIRLS:**

Understand that your journey is unique. Use this book as a guide. Our wish for you is that you read this and feel empowered, comforted and validated in every emotion you experience, or decision that you make.

**FOR EVERYONE ELSE:**

We can only hope that reading this helps you to be a better friend, parent, sibling or teacher to black girls living through what we did. It's time we stepped away from seeing this as a problem that black people are charged with solving on their own.

**It's a collective effort.**

**And everyone has a role to play.**

*Featuring honest conversations with students past and present, **Taking Up Space** goes beyond the buzzwords of diversity and inclusion and explores what those words truly mean for young black girls today.*

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**#Merky Books** was set up by publishers Penguin Random House and Stormzy in June 2018 to find and publish the best writers of a new generation and to publish the stories that are not being heard. #Merky Books aims to open up the world of publishing, and this year has launched a New Writer’s Prize and will soon be launching a #Merky Books traineeship.

‘I know too many talented writers that don’t always have an outlet or a means to get their work seen, and hopefully #Merky Books can now be a reference point for them to say “I can be an author”, and for that to be a realistic and achievable goal… Reading and writing as a kid were integral to where I am today and I, from the bottom of my heart, cannot wait to hear your stories and get them out into the big wide world.’

**STORMZY**