The Original BookBlast®
Hearing her Anglophile French father play word games at the breakfast table, a mother reading her novels aloud to test rhythm and flow, and a fiercely independent godmother roaming the globe with a love of Russian and Muslim cultures that made her books bestsellers of the day — Georgia de Chamberet grew up immersed in storytelling, language and a kaleidoscope of cultures from the start.
Her mother, the artist, novelist and journalist Gael Elton Mayo, embodied the post-war ideal of universal humanity. Gael’s collaboration in Paris as a writer-researcher for Magnum Photographers alongside Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa and David ‘Chim’ Seymour greatly influenced her creative expression; a rich, kaleidoscopic world view that she passed down to her daughter.
When Georgia left Quartet Books in 1997 and set up her own business, what began as a one-woman crusade to champion original writing and overlooked voices from beyond the mainstream grew into an authentic, durable platform celebrating writers, translators and independent publishers who prioritise good writing over profit, daring to think differently. BookBlast® has consistently backed bold voices, bridged cultures and brought fresh, inventive ideas to the literary establishment.
The choice of the name BookBlast® for the company was inspired in part by the modernist energy of BLAST magazine — founded by Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Jessica Dismorr and others — and in part by a conversation with Gillon Aitken, the literary agent of Georgia’s mother, Gael Elton Mayo.
1996: Georgia de Chamberet leaves Quartet Books where, as a Senior Editor specialising in translation, she signed up and edited Annie Ernaux/Tanya Leslie (Nobel 2022), Tahar Ben Jelloun/Alan Sheridan, Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans)/Patricia Clancy – winner of the Independent Award for Foreign Fiction in 1992 with The Death of Napoleon.
1997: Dubbed “L’enfant terrible of British publishing” by Le Figaro newspaper, Georgia founds BookBlast Ltd, literary agency.
1998: Landmark publication, Empire Windrush: Fifty Years of Writing About Black Britain, (ed.) Onyekachi Wambu.
1999: Landmark publication, XCiTés: the Flamingo Book of New French Writing, showcasing a new generation of French writers unpublished in English at the time — Frédéric Beigbeder, Tonino Benacquista, Virginie Despentes, Michel Houellebecq, Abdourahman Waberi among them.
2000: Landmark publication, Le Foot: The Legends of French Football (ed,) Christov Ruhn, featuring a wide range of contributors from both sides of the Channel united by their passion for the most popular sport on the planet — David Baddiel, Will Buckley, Tam Dean Burn, Marcel Desailly, Michel Platini, Salman Rushdie & Irvine Welsh among them.
2000: The first BookBlast® website goes live.
2005: Georgia is a founding committee member of English PEN’s Writers in Translation programme, alongside Susie Nicklin, Julian Evans and others.
2008-9: BookBlast® becomes a registered trademark in the UK & the USA.
2015: bookblast.org is selected by the curators of Electronic Archives and Manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford, as being of lasting research value and is catalogued in their digital archives.
2016: The BookBlast® Celebrates Independent Publishing campaign is launched online for authors, translators publishers and readers to connect with each other, culminating in the BookBlast® 10×10 Tour around the regions of England, in association with Waterstones in 2018.
2018: A judge for the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation in the thirteenth year of the prize alongside Pete Ayrton, Fadia Faqir and Sophia Vasalou.
2020: The BookBlast® Podcast series, Bridging the Divide: Translation and the Art of Empathy.
2024: BookBlast® Limited (Ltd) becomes a Community Interest Company (CIC), formalising its long-standing commitment to championing the boldest voices from beyond the mainstream and world literature in English translation.