Johny Pitts – författare

Winner of the Jhalak PrizeWinner of the Bread & Roses Award for Radical Publishing 'A revelation' Owen Jones'Afropean seizes the blur of contradictions that have obscured Europe's relationship with blackness and paints it into something new, confident and lyrical' Afua Hirsch A Guardian, New Statesman and BBC History Magazine Best Book of 2019 'Afropean. Here was a space where blackness was taking part in shaping European identity ... A continent of Algerian flea markets, Surinamese shamanism, German Reggae and Moorish castles. Yes, all this was part of Europe too ... With my brown skin and my British passport - still a ticket into mainland Europe at the time of writing - I set out in search of the Afropeans, on a cold October morning.'Afropean is an on-the-ground documentary of areas where Europeans of African descent are juggling their multiple allegiances and forging new identities. Here is an alternative map of the continent, taking the reader to places like Cova Da Moura, the Cape Verdean shantytown on the outskirts of Lisbon with its own underground economy, and Rinkeby, the area of Stockholm that is eighty per cent Muslim. Johny Pitts visits the former Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, where West African students are still making the most of Cold War ties with the USSR, and Clichy Sous Bois in Paris, which gave birth to the 2005 riots, all the while presenting Afropeans as lead actors in their own story.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS ‘Beautiful, haunting, thought-provoking … A book I will return to again and again’ Bernardine Evaristo A gorgeously produced, hugely original examination of Black Britishness in the 21st century What is Black Britain?In 2021, award-winning poet Roger Robinson and acclaimed photographer Johny Pitts rented a red Mini Cooper and decided to follow the coast clockwise in search of an answer to this question. Leaving London, they followed the River Thames east towards Tilbury, where the Empire Windrush docked in 1948. Too often, that is where the history told about Black Britain begins and ends – but Robinson and Pitts continued out of London, following the coast clockwise through Margate to Land’s End, Bristol to Blackpool, Glasgow to John O’Groats and Scarborough to Southend on Sea. Here, the authors found not only Black British culture long overlooked in official narratives of Britain, but also the history of Empire and transatlantic slavery to which every Briton is tethered.Home Is Not a Place is the spectacular result of the journey they documented: a free-form composition of photography, poetry and essays that offers a book-length reflection upon Black Britishness – its complexity, strength and resilience – at the start of a new decade. ‘Masterful … A thing of brilliance’ Caleb Azumah Nelson, author of Open Water

Look Again is a new series of short books from Tate Publishing, opening up the conversation about British art over the last 500 years, and exploring what art has to tell us about our lives today. Written by leading voices from the worlds of literature, art and culture, each book sheds new light on some of the most well-known, best-loved and thought-provoking artworks in the national collection, and asks us to look again.Author, photographer and broadcaster Johny Pitts examines the notion of 'visibility' in Tate's galleries, asking who gets to be seen - and why.The well-known faces of our best-loved paintings hang visible on the walls of Tate - but look beyond and you will also see the 'invisible' figures in the background whose stories have been obscured by history, hidden in plain sight. And yet, these stories belong to those on whom the galleries depend the most: standing guard in the corners, serving in our cafes and cleaning in the early mornings. Featuring original sketches by Tate staff that respond to works from Britain's national collection of art, Look Again: Visibility asks us to bear witness to figures who have long been overlooked by a system that profits from their labour while simultaneously dismissing it as 'unskilled' - and suggests that perhaps the way to reach a fuller understanding of our history is to start looking at it through new eyes.

Defiant, humorous, empathetic and insightful, 'Not Quite Right For Us' pierces through the hierarchical mechanics of class, race, gender. A celebration of outsiderness and an ode to otherness, 'Not Quite Right For Us' is a singular collection of stories, essays and poems by a dynamic mix of established and surging voices alike, edited by Sharmilla Beezmohun and including Linton Kwesi Johnson, Aminatta Forna, Xiaolu Guo, Johny Pitts, Rishi Dastidar, Tim Wells and Rafeef Ziadah. This remarkable anthology marks the tenth anniversary of the live-literature organisation co-founded by Sharmilla, Speaking Volumes. Part cri du coeur, part warning shot, part affirmation, this is the book we need now.