During November, students at Burlington Danes Academy located in the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham had a visit from an author panel. All of the authors were from the highly rated young author anthropology ' A Change is Gonna Come'. The authors included Aisha Bushby, Patrice Lawrence, Yasmin Rahman and Ayisha Malik.

The authors spoke of their stories which had BAME (Black, Asian and minority ethnic) protagonists and spoke of their reasons for their choice of storyline from the theme of change. Many of the authors also spoke of how through their stories they wanted to create positive representation of their backgrounds as frequently there is negative representation in the media. The story 'Fortune Favours the Bold' by Rahman further explores the effect of negative media on normal people specifically Muslims after a terrorist attack. This negative representation results in the generalisation of an entire community which is often unfair and results in stigma. The stories in this anthropology represents the daily taboo issues and daily lives of BAME communities.

The authors later reflected on their journey to becoming writers.

90% of the UK industry is White.

The above statistic lead to some obstacles for our panel of authors. These included making people see beyond their ethnicity, relying on the editor to understand the nature and the background of a story and being pressured to write stereotypical stories based on what was represented in mainstream media.

Ayisha Rahman shockingly shared one instance when writing the ending to a story about a Muslim girl having suicidal thoughts during her further studies, when the Professor suggested the girl become a suicide bomber. This upsetting ending reflects a proportion of the population that not wish to display the lives of everyday Muslims but rather reinforce damming and false stereotypes. It also demonstrates the obstacle of pressure in a competitive industry.

Moreover, the above statistic of a majority White publishing industry caused issues of self-doubt in our panel of authors. Patrice Lawrence stated ' I still struggled to see myself as an author didn't see people like myself'. This was a shocking revelation was partially as a result of not seeing authors similar to herself. This further validated the enthusiasm and excitement the students had when greeting the authors as BAME authors are such as a minority of the publishing industry as a whole. Furthermore, as Hammersmith and Fulham is a borough where 1/3 of its population is BAME it allowed the students to see that anything is possible as these authors were BAME and have a range of stories like the students themselves. One student in year 10 particular commented how ' It was an incredibly insightful experience as they were from a similar background to me. '