Our 21st Birthday Party
Ivan’s Take
Ivan: We invited 220 people to a party last Wednesday for our authors, their publishers and other people we like in UK and Irish publishing.
The question no one asked — I hardly asked myself — was ‘why throw a party?’
It’s not expected by anyone. A few of the biggest corporation-scale publishers have an annual author party — Canongate, the hip mid-sized publisher, puts on a good club night around Book Fairs. But parties hosted by agencies are rarer. It’s expensive. It’s a lot to organise. Did I mention it’s expensive? Yet I had this yearning to do it.
It happens that when I started as a literary agent twenty-one years ago Mulcahy Sweeney literary agency was a brand-new agency. That’s an agency with no authors and no income. So in this context “agency” is a simulacrum for me and I am taking the opportunity to have a 21st birthday party again. Although no one else has been with the agency for the full twenty-one years, there are a lot of colleagues and associates who have worked with me for many. I felt keen to acknowledge their contribution in public. Ex-colleagues who were essential to the agency in the past. I remember and I appreciate them — still, this could have been achieved over a bunch of dinners, so why the party?
We had a party because — thankfully — selling books is still small and grounded enough to be a people business.
We had a party because I love working in this industry and I enjoy so many of the people I deal with; it’s worth relishing that.
I’m aware that modesty is what people tend to lean towards, but since this is my birthday party I will repeat my speech if I want to.
Read my speech here.
Sallyanne’s Take
Sallyanne: Publishing has functioned pretty well these past few years with more remote working and virtual meetings; it’s efficient and inclusive. But that makes celebrations like this even more special. The chance conversation that could only happen in person, that might one day result in a book, perhaps several years down the line. Authors and publishers having a rare opportunity to bond with and support their peers.
It was a lovely, vital reminder of what our industry is at its best: charged by passionate, committed people who love what they do and want to spread that joy (and of course, enjoy free booze in a nice setting). It was a wonderful celebration of creativity and connection, I hope a worthy celebration of our clients who were there, as well as those who couldn’t make it (and who were represented by their books on display).
It’s a testament to the spirit of the agency that we had in attendance such a mix of people who have been part of its fabric over the past 21 years, including former members of staff and clients.
As Ivan said in his speech, the vibe is good.
Tilly’s Take
Tilly: Work parties aren’t supposed to be fun right? Everyone’s tight with formal rigour and preoccupied with hierarchical yoga are they not? See the problem is I worked for Mulcahy Sweeney literary agency during COVID and left before the publishing industry had a chance to re-boot socially so I’ve never been to a publishing party before. For the Mulcahy Sweeney agency party tonight then I’m expecting Pinter not poetry — discordant social dynamics revealed in single sentences not harmony. This has nothing to do with the agency’s party-throwing abilities this is pure and simple denomination work: this is “work party” and not just “work party” but party for “people in publishing” — you know career people who also read? Wtf.
I arrive and what do I see?
Not a well-lit room above a pub as I’d imagined no, this is a Georgian house on a leafy road with a scalloping façade and there are security guards at the door. They’re holding a list — I nod, I’m on that. Then I walk into the conceptual dark to find a pleasing antechamber with soft furnishings — I turn and pass through an interior archway towards a central chamber where I am met, delightfully, not by the sounds of polite tinkering but the complicated swelling of people drinking and having fun. The sound is resounding in this large space — I clock now — erm, — wot?
Is this a freakin loft party?
Did no one tell me it was gonna give this much New York? I’d have worn something else. I try to explain this to co-founder Ivan Mulcahy and buddha-ing literary agent Edwina de Charnacé but it sounds ridiculous because they’ve just been to New York and I’m referring to one the most clichéd ideas of New York there is: New York as photographer’s studio; urban socialite serenity with beautiful financial possibilities — snap snap, snap snap; high ceilings, white walls — that balcony up there against the exposed brick wall which stands in for the sexy anonymous functionality of the fire escape and this here not-red-carpet-exactly but giant roll of white epoxy floor coating covering almost half of the entire room stretching high up the wall I swear we were like a giant poem in that room half the material was space — good space — and I didn’t meet a single asshole (full stop) everything passed between us with the silent understanding of line breaks, great stanzaic life form that we were with some odd couplets smoking cigarettes out-doors and I wasn’t exactly humming “looking for a guy in publishing” but having just been working in finance for the past few weeks I can tell you it felt like a relief to be back amongst my people. And I don’t feel that often. As I walked around and met many of them for the first time I felt buoyant and proud to be alive or — just, part of, the Mulcahy Sweeney literary agency (I edit the newsletters). Can I get a raise – of your glass?
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