Abiola Bello was just a little girl when she discovered her love of writing.
Now, she’s the co-founder of a publishing house and an awards ceremony. The Stoke Newington author has even scooped up a few awards of her own.
Bello sat down with East End Review ahead of the 10-year anniversary of her publishing house, Hashtag Press, to discuss her love of literature and how she made her way in the industry.
“I was writing when I was eight years old, just for fun”, she said. “When I was 11 or 12, my English teacher made us do a creative writing exercise.
“She called me up afterwards and she said, ‘What do you want to be when you're older?’
“My mum wanted me to be a tennis player, so I said that. And she said, ‘I think you should be an author’.
“I remember asking, ‘Is that even a real job?’”
Bello initially tried to get work experience and learn to write through university courses, but in the end, her success as a writer came from figuring out the industry herself.
“I didn’t know anything about publishing”, she continued. “So I had to really teach myself the industry. [...] It was quite a long road”.
Now, she supports up-and-coming authors looking to kickstart their own careers. She launched the Author School in 2016, inviting editors and publishers to explain ‘how it all works’.
That same year she founded Hashtag Press, something she said has been one of her proudest achievements to date.
“We published my debut book, Emily Knight, under Hashtag to see if we could do it well. And we did. In 2021, I got a deal with Simon and Schuster. And that was kind of the start of everything.
“It's hard running an indie publishing house”, she continued.
“I think now what's difficult is just the price of everything, like the price of paper is really high”.
More than money, Bello said challenging the status quo in an established industry has been an uphill battle. “We're all about diversity and having fair representation”, she continued.
“But the publishing industry as a whole isn't really about that, so we’re fighting against the tide of a really old industry and trying to say it needs to change, which is difficult to do.
“We work with debut authors a lot, so it's a lot of really trying to help them navigate this industry”.
Bello co-founded the Diverse Book Awards with award-winning publicist Helen Lewis. which is now presented at Waterstones Piccadilly every year.
“This was around 2020 [...] and there weren’t many [awards] for diversity. I thought that was weird. Everyone in publishing [was] now shouting about diversity, and there [weren’t] really any competitions for diversity.
“So I said, ‘Why don't we just start a book competition? How hard can it be?’ Which is my motto in life, really”.
Bello said she and Lewis initially initially worried the awards wouldn’t catch on - so much so, they didn’t hire any judges. “We were the judges”, she said. “We ended up getting [more than 60] books sent in that we had to read ourselves”.
“It just caught fire very, very quickly. The big publishers got on it really quick”.
Bello is also currently working on the next instalment of the Wild Magic chapter book series, set for release on 26 March, 2026.
“It's set in Mexico, and it's about sea turtles and ocean pollution”, she told East End Review.
“When I've been going on school visits, I do talk to the kids and I ask, ‘Do you know what's going on in the world?’
“And some of them are aware about the ocean and that animals are getting trapped [in plastic waste], which I want them to know about, but some of them don’t.
“I’ve also been working on a new chapter book series, which I'm excited about, I'm working on a new young adult book as well, and I'm working on an adult book. So I'm trying to do different things”.
One of these projects has seen Bello co-write Marcus Rashford’s chapter book series, The Breakfast Club Adventures. “It came about quite randomly”, she admitted.
“They were looking for someone to co-write. So Macmillan went to my agent and asked if I’d be interested.
“I wasn't sure at first because this would be book number seven and I hadn't really read the series… I know football quite well, but I didn't know how much football was in it.
“But my brother is a massive Manchester United fan and he was like, ‘You have to do this book.
“The turnover was very quick, it's a very quick process. But Rashford is very nice, working with him has been really cool”.
Find out more about Bello’s work here.
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