BAD BETTY EXECUTIVE TEAM
Amy Acre
Editor / Director
Amy Acre curates Bad Betty’s core list in partnership with Jake Wild Hall, works closely with authors to bring their books to life, and looks after the day-to-day running of the press, including publishing coordination, marketing and design.
Amy Acre is a poet and editor, born in London and living in Nottingham. Her debut collection, Mothersong (Bloomsbury, 2023), was shortlisted for the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, and named a Book of the Year in The Telegraph and The Financial Times.
Jake Wild Hall
Producer / Artistic Director
Jake Wild Hall heads up acquisition, partnership development and events management including programming, producing and hosting Bad Betty Live, events marketing and outreach.
Jake founded open mic Boomerang Club in 2014, publisher Bad Betty in 2017 and indie press festival OOIPP in 2021. He is the author of pamphlets Blank (2019) and Solomon’s World (2016, Saboteur Awards Best Pamphlet longlist). He has performed on BBC Radio and at festivals and literary events across the UK, and won the PBH 2016 Spirit Of The Free Fringe Award.
Anja Konig
Editor, Little Betty
Anja Konig co-curates Little Betty’s pamphlet list, and works with authors to edit, refine and develop their manuscripts.
Anja grew up in the German language and now writes in English. Her first pamphlet Advice for an Only Child was shortlisted for the 2015 Michael Marks Prize and her first collection Animal Experiments was nominated for the 2021 Laurel Prize. Her pamphlet Species is out with Bad Betty now. She is madly interested in all living things and can’t stop hoping.
Vanessa Kisuule
Editor, Little Betty
Vanessa Kisuule co-curates Little Betty’s pamphlet list, and works with authors to edit, refine and develop their manuscripts.
Vanessa Kisuule has performed around the world and featured on BBC iPlayer, Radio 1, Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, Blue Peter, Don’t Flop and TEDx. Her poetry collections are published by Burning Eye Books, and non-fiction debut Neverland is forthcoming from Canongate. She has written for The Guardian, NME and Lonely Planet, and was highly commended in the 2019 Forward Prizes. She tutors the Southbank’s New Poets Collective and was Bristol City Poet 2018–2020.
Madeleine Fox
Finance Officer
Madeleine Fox manages Bad Betty’s day to day finances and helps to create systems that will serve the organisation as it grows.
Madeleine has worked within the arts for almost two decades, spanning the public, charity and private sectors. She has delivered projects as varied as children’s literacy schemes, festival programming and operational and financial management, and loves all of it equally!
Bridie Squires
Bad Betty Live host
Bridie Squires is a poet, playwright, producer and performance artist from Nottingham.
Previously journalist and editor at LeftLion Magazine, she was appointed Nottingham Trent University’s first Writer in Residence in 2019, and founded Nottingham spoken-word collective GOBS in 2020. Bridie was Producer for Nottingham Poetry Festival and Young Creative Awards, and has delivered workshops for Nottingham City Council, Archway Learning Trust, UNESCO City of Literature, and Nottingham Community Artists Network. She published her debut poetry collection Duck on Bike in 2023, and is currently collaborating with Nottingham Playhouse to develop her one-woman loop station play, Casino Zero.
BAD BETTY ADVISORY BOARD
Hannah Trevarthan
Board Chair
Hannah Trevarthen is Director of Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature and currently the UNESCO Creative Cities of Literature Network Lead. Prior to this she worked at English PEN, one of the world’s oldest human rights organisations, in the roles of Events and Partnerships Manager and Interim Director. Between 2019 and 2022, she led Common Currency, English PEN’s centenary celebration, an international multi-partner project funded by Arts Council England. She began her career working in the programming team at Edinburgh International Book Festival. She is a member of the Oxford Brookes University Publishing Advisory Board.
L. Kiew
L Kiew has been leading finance and broader organisational functions for a diverse range of not-for-profit organisations for close to 20 years. She is currently Director of Finance and Operations of Maudsley Charity. Actively involved in and a contributor to charity sector developments in strategic finance and governance, L Kiew is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA). She has previously served as a Trustee of Poetry London and London Gardens Trust. She is passionate about making a difference in organisations and wider society through opportunity and risk management, inclusion and good governance. L Kiew’s first collection More than Weeds was published by Nine Arches Press (2023).
Jazzmine Breary
Jazzmine Breary is Chief Operating Officer (COO) at leading independent publisher, Jacaranda Books. Joining the organisation at its inception, Breary and the team have published over 70 titles including multiple award-winners, and carved out a unique space in the industry, with initiatives including the unprecedented Twenty in 2020. Her areas of focus are sales, marketing, publicity and data management. Alongside working toward an increasingly inclusive industry, Jazzmine is interested in educating fellow independent publishers and publishing professionals of colour on the importance of data as a tool to build sustainable businesses and wealth. She is a regular public speaker at events including the Building Inclusivity in Publishing conference, The Association of Authors’ Agents Conference, the British Library’s first publishing diversity conference and the inaugural M Fest. She contributed to the 2015 Writing the Future report and served on the committee of Women in Publishing UK from 2012-2014.
Maisie Lawrence
Maisie Lawrence is a British–American poet and editor. She spent three years managing the UK’s premiere poetry award, the Forward Prizes. During her time there, she worked to permanently diversify the judging panels and make the awards open and inclusive to traditionally marginalised voices. A member of the influential Malika’s Poetry Kitchen collective, she co-edited their anthology, Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different (Corsair, 2021). She has worked at Simon & Schuster and Canelo and is now an editor at Bookouture, where she edits and publishes commercial fiction. Maisie is a co-founder of Pride in Publishing, a network for LGBTQ+ people who work with books and was selected as a Bookseller Rising Star in 2022.