The Common Press

Lots more events coming your way this May! 7pm until late unless otherwise stated. All tickets in bio ✨🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈📖 Upcoming: 📖 Books and Writing 📖 Wed 13: Tigress With Wings book launch with @rupinderkw @serenbooks , ft @thatmoonpoet @punkofcolour @wooolgatherer Shagufta Iqbal Tue 26: Oral: erotic poetry readings Thu 28: The Common Press Authors' Night with @edenmckenziegoddard @kaispellmeier & hosted by @readsbycoral featuring Q&A, readings and signings 👥 Community and socials 👥 Tue 12: Second Tuesday Monologues: BODY readings and panel with @thelovetankcic Wed 20: IDAHOBIT x ELOP, International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia celebration with @thlgbtforum @elop_lgbt @thelovetankcic @kylothekid_ Wed 27: Polystation, non-monogamous social and conversation with @polystation_hq @theboywithwings 📍Off-site at 97 Stoke Newington Road N16 8BX📍 Tues 12: Fairy Tale Town: A Citizen's Tale with @popnollyuk @ollypike @diversity_mel @j.lynch93 & Alex Canning Sat 16: International Lesbians Coffee Afternoon, social from midday to 2pm Sun 31: The Common Press x @badgecafe , crafting badges 2-5pm #thecommonpress

We're so excited to announce that The Common Press has been selected as a London Regional & Country Finalist for the British Book Awards @thebritishbookawards Independent Bookshop of the Year, sponsored by Gardners @_gardners !! We're in the company of some other fab independent bookshops 😍✨ Massive shout out to our team: Directors Aisha @aisha_shaibu_lenoir and Freddie @theselectedworksof Cultural Events Programmer and Producer Prince @prince_idriss_k Social Media Manager Lux @lux_pyre and our incredible booksellers Gabi @paqarinkama Eden Kitty @k_o_writing TK @boywiife_ & Blake @oxbowblake ✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨ @_thebookseller #thecommonpress #BritishBookAwards #Nibbies #independentbookshop #queerlondon

🏳️‍⚧️ We stand with all authors withdrawing from the Polari Prize. 🏳️‍⚧️ In response to a proud TERF being included on the longlist for this year's Polari Prize, over half of the nominated authors have removed themselves from consideration, and two of the judges - including the fabulous Nicola Dinan - have stepped down. 🏳️‍⚧️ We find Polari's public statement(s) to be disgraceful. To choose to, and to double down on, the decision to platform an outspoken self-identified TERF with a wildly harmful history of depicting trans people, CSA survivors and historical events in this current political climate is a certified CHOICE. 🏳️‍⚧️ Asserting the right of longlistees to "hold radically different positions on substantive issues" - ie, the right to be transphobic - is dehumanising and transphobic in itself. By doubling down, Polari has failed the trans community and wider queer literary community in its handling of the issue. 🏳️‍⚧️ In solidarity with the incredible authors who have dropped out of the Polari Prize, we'll be offering 15% off on all their books until the end of September. 🏳️‍⚧️ Trans lives are not a debate. You can buy the titles on slide 6 in store and online at the top of our Linktree in bio 🔗 #thecommonpress #polariprize

Had the most wholesome Wednesday evening at @thecommonpress the best way to celebrate my launch in London, in this part of London, in this bookstore 💖 Huge thank you to my gorgeous and generous guest poets @wooolgatherer @punkofcolour @prerana__kumar @thatmoonpoet & Shagufta Iqbal much love 🫶🏽🫶🏽✨✨ And the wonderful @thecommonpress for having me ♥️ And thank you everyone that came despite all the weather chaos ! 💜 #poetry #londonevents #poetrycommunity #southasianwriters

We have so many incredible new books in across memoir, poetry, non-fiction and fiction 📖📚✨ All available in store and online, linked in our story! The Future in Our Past by @callum_cant_ and Matthew Lee (@versobooks ) On the centenary of the 1926 General Strike, this on-the-ground history revisits the communities where workers brought Britain to a standstill and asks what it means for working class liberation today. Dante's Inferno by Lorna Goodison (@carcanetpress ) A quarter-century in the making, this Jamaican retelling of Dante's hell is rooted in Caribbean vernacular and guided by the spirit of Louise Bennett. We love!! Missed Connections with Tall Girls by @gwendolyssa (@littlepuss.press ) Brash, funny, and uncompromising poems about trans life, homelessness, and survival at the edges of everything. My Port of Beirut by @lamia.ziade , translated by @emkateram (@plutopress ) A stunning illustrated memoir weaving personal memory and political history into a record of grief and rage following the 2020 Beirut port explosion. I Hope We Choose Love by @kaichengthom (@arsenalpulp ) A heartbreaking and hopeful collection of essays and poems asking what it means to pursue justice, forgiveness, and love at what feels like the end of the world. E by Noa Micaela Fields (@nightboatbooks ) A dazzling debut poetry collection built from mishearing, trans joy, and the sonic possibilities of sound slipping through hearing aids. Folkish by @shortestwitch (@ninearchespress ) A fantastic debut poetry collection full of ghosts, saints, and Northern English folklore, furious and playful in equal measure. Breasts: A Relatively Brief Relationship by @jhedelstein (@phoenix_bks ) A short, striking memoir about the complicated, funny, and ultimately devastating relationship one woman has with her own body. #thecommonpress

Last night at The Common Press we gathered for our monthly Second Tuesday Monologues (STM) with the theme "Body". We shared stories exploring what the body holds, remembers, resists, and becomes. Thank you to everyone who performed, listened, and shared space. The honesty in the room stayed with us long after. If you’d like to perform at future STM nights, email Rob at [email protected] - this is a paid opportunity. 📍 @thecommonpress , London 💬 Followed by open group discussion Upcoming themes: 9.06 Queer Migrants 14.07 South Asian Heritage Month 11.08 Substances 08.09 Sex 13.10 Black History Month 10.11 Elders 08.12 Change See you at the next one 💫

Still thinking about the magic of the 'Fairy Tale Town: A Citizen’s Guide' launch party last night✨📚🌈 Such a joyful evening celebrating this beautiful new release from @popnollyuk in collaboration with @thecommonpress 💙 The book explores citizenship, democracy and collaboration in a way that feels hopeful, accessible and uplifting for children, and the passion behind it was so clear from every conversation on the night. We loved: 📖 Hearing Olly Pike read from the book ✍️ Meeting the authors and creators 💬 Conversations around inclusivity, representation and belonging 🌟 Celebrating the power of stories to help children understand both themselves and others “It felt like an invitation to step into a world where imagination sparkles, kindness leads the way and everyone has a safe space to be themselves.” - Nicholas Legon, Head of Operations and Finance ✨ Huge congratulations to the whole Pop’n’Olly team on such a special publication. We’re so proud to partner with people doing such important work in children’s literature and education 🌈 #FairyTaleTown #InclusiveBooks #ChildrensBooks #PrimaryEducation #RepresentationMatters

We’re so excited to be working with @thecommonpress to bring you an incredible event of queer joy and defiance to celebrate the inaugural VERVE Voices anthology, QUEERPHORIA. Head to The Common Press website to book your tickets and watch these incredible writers speak about their contribution to the anthology. #QueerphoriaAnthology

You can now pre-order Femmephilia: Love Letters to Trans Mermaids, Queer Mothers, and Marilyn Monroe by Sophie Lewis @reproutopia , published by @haymarketbooks in our bio!! 🐙🧜🏽‍♀️🤰🏻 From the author of Enemy Feminisms and Abolish the Family, an original diagnosis of femmephobia in our culture, and a vision of a life-giving femme feminism for all 🔥 To be femme is to embody a dispossessed femininity, to be freighted with freedom, to refuse to be made proper or institutionalized. To love it is to embrace love for women (be they butch or not) in the broadest sense. In Femmephilia, Sophie Lewis makes the case for the vital importance of politicized femme-ness: a feminism that is self-consciously artificial, extravagant in its erotic and political appetites, and staunchly anti-work, abolitionist, and utopian. Femme labors deserve our care, respect, and support, but instead face dismissal from masculinist antagonists and feminist allies alike. Where neoliberal women’s empowerment has failed to combat the eruption of right-wing, anti-trans, and anti-feminist attacks, Lewis argues that femmephilia can help us imagine a radical future. In essays on the high femme genius of Marilyn Monroe and trans yearning in the myth of Apollo and Daphne; on octopuses and girlbosses, reluctant heterosexuals, lesbian separatists, and anti-work cats; and on a mother on strike from maternity, Femmephilia offers a new logic of liberation for all feminized people. Link to pre-order in our bio 🔗🔗🔗 The book will be released on 16th June and we will ship orders after this date ✨ #thecommonpress #femmephilia #sophielewis

Polysaturation: when is it too much? Modern connection can feel abundant… and overwhelming. How do we recognise our limits?
When does care turn into overload, and what do we do when it does? Join us for this month’s Polystation, a reflective, community‑led space to explore polysaturation, capacity, boundaries and balance. 📅 Wednesday 27th May
🕖 7:00–9:00 PM Come as you are. Listen, share, reflect. ✨
#Polystation #Polysaturation ##WhenIsItTooMuch #polyamory

This Wednesday! Join us for the launch Tigress with Wings by @rupinderkw , published by @serenbooks 🐅✨ This tender and laugh-out-loud collection weaves a poetic narrative of transformation – from girl to woman. The poems read like a long phone call – to your younger self, your mother and your artist-godmothers – following a girl as she learns to live in her body, claim her voice and awaken her own power. Intimately woven with the poet’s Panjabi heritage, Tigress with Wings is a celebration of feminine strength, creativity and survival in which the fierce, mythical tigress becomes an empowering emblem for adulthood 🔥 Rupinder will be joined by guest poets @woooolgathering @punkofcolour @thatmoonpoet and Shagufta Iqbal ✨ Tickets in bio 🔗 #thecommonpress #tigresswithwings

An evening with the Linden Archives in photographs and words with photographer Stuart Linden Rhodes at Common Press Books, 97 Stoke Newington Road, London N16 8BX