Ghanaian-born Oxfordshire Publisher, Mrs. Becky Nana Ayebia Clarke, has been appointed an Honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in recognition of her services to the UK publishing industry.
A statement issued by the British High Commission in Accra on Thursday said Mrs. Ayebia Clarke was born in Ghana and immigrated to the UK in 1974.
She has BA and MA degrees from the Open University (OU) and the University of Oxford respectively.
She was Literature Submissions Editor of the highly acclaimed Heinemann African and Caribbean Writers Series at Oxford for 12 years.
The statement said in her time there, the vast list of prominent African and Caribbean writers including some Nobel prize-winning authors whom she helped publish included Wole Soyinka, Ama Ata Aidoo, Chinua Achebe, Nadine Gordimer, Ayi Kwei Armah, Derek Walcott, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Kofi Awoonor, Kofi Anyidoho and several others.
After the African and Caribbean Writers series was discontinued, Nana Ayebia together with her husband David Clarke in October 2003 founded Ayebia Clarke Publishing as a way of unearthing new talent and looking at new directions in African writing and publishing.
"Within a remarkably short time, Ayebia Clarke Publishing has established itself as a leading African international brand of quality that publishes African and Caribbean literature from both established and new authors, thereby filling the gap left by the demise of Heinemann's African and Caribbean Writers' Series," the statement said.