Vimbai Shire

Vimbai Shire is an editor, skills trainer, mentor and founder of Beyond White Space, a publishing services company that provides training, editorial and design expertise and project management to publishers, businesses, institutions and individuals. She has edited long- and short-form fiction and non-fiction for award-winning authors including Leila Aboulela, Aminatta Forna and Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, and for numerous publishing clients including Canongate, Granta Magazine, Hachette, HarperCollins, The Indigo Press, Penguin Random House, Oneworld, Pan Macmillan, and Scribe UK.
Vimbai was mentor and skills coach to the inaugural cohort of graduate apprentices from the UK’s first Publishing Apprenticeship programme, a scheme to which she also produced and delivered strategic content development. In 2021, she spearheaded the online programme, ‘Online wih Vimbai’, in association with the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, where she provided editing expertise and mentorship to commended African short-story writers.
She has delivered publishing skills training and writing workshops to students, editors and writers via Africa Utopia (Southbank); Bath Spa Unversity; Universty of East Anglia; The University of Exeter and Spread the Word.
Recent editorial projects of note have included An Olive Grove in Ends by Moses Mckenzie; Misfits: A Personal Manifesto by Michaela Coel; The Colour of Madness (revised edition) by Samara Linton and Rianna Walcott, The Good Ally by Nova Reid; This is the Canon: Decolonize Your Bookshelves in 50 Books by Joan Anim-Addo, Deirdre Osborne and Kadija Sesay George;  Standing Heavy by GauZ’ and Your Story Matters by Nikesh Shukla.