SPRING 2026 CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
We are OPEN for submissions from Monday 11 May to Sunday 17 May (deadline 11.59pm, UK time).
We are accepting proposals for essays and novellas. As always, we're keen to see translations in both genres. We're not looking for short story collections in this round.
For more information about what we're looking for and how to submit, please visit the 'Submissions' page on our website (link in bio) 🪴
We're not accepting poetry or children's literature in this round, but plan to open later in the year. We recommend signing up to our newsletter for updates & early notice of our submissions calls 💚
Background image credit: Amy Louise Evans (@amyevansillustration )
If you're wondering whether we might be interested in your work, here are some free, easy things you can do to find out if we're the right publisher for you!
(Links to recordings & blogs via linktree in bio)
We hope you find something helpful! ❤️
HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to Kwan Ann Tan (@kwanann.tan ), author of THE WAITER, *longlisted* for the 2026 Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation Adventure Writing Prize (@adventurewritingprize ) 🎉 🎉
With 11 different endings and countless journeys towards them, THE WAITER creates a labyrinthine world of possibilities and parallel worlds which combine to explore queer longing, consumerism and agency in a city and a psyche on the brink of collapse...
*Available as audiobook & paperback now*
Thank you @WNSmithFoundation - we're thrilled to see Kwan Ann's debut in this company! 💜
#AdventureWriting #AdventureWritingPrize
Now out in the wild: AARDVARK DAY by Victoria Gatehouse (@vickygatehouse )
The perfect gift for young naturalists that will ignite a love of poetry, too 🧡
Join us to celebrate the book's launch TONIGHT with Victoria & illustrator Kate Lucy Foster (@katefoster_art ) - all welcome!
Online launch: 7pm, via Zoom (registration link in bio)
As we're mid-way through our open call, we're looking forward to celebrating the publications selected from our August 2024 submissions!
Join us online, 7pm on 9 July as we launch two fresh & deliciously sensory titles for summer:
EATING AIR by Suyin Du Bois and MILK & MOON-WATER by Milena Williamson🍸️
Suyin (@suyin.du.bois ) and Milena (@milenaeve ) will share readings from the books and talk about how the poems came to be. If you haven't attended one of our online launches before, they are informal webinars that last up to one hour: only the panellists’ cameras are visible, and audience interaction is via the chat. Make yourself at home and join us for an evening of inspiration!
Register / pre-order you book via the links in our bio 🌸
Cover credits: Reena Makwana (@reena.makwana ) / Maggie Mason (@bymaggiemason )
I'm delighted to share that Noon was picked as a spring selection for the @shakespeareandcoparis Year of Reading subscription. It means so much to know this little book has travelled the globe a bit and reached more readers than I would have expected.
Thank you so much to the team for selecting it, to Linda for the photo, and to Colm for the generous quote on the front. 😊📚❤️
Colm – "Zain Rishi's debut, Noon, is a delicate meditation on inheritance and becoming. Gentle childhood reminiscences are seamlessly interspersed with scenes from later adolescence. Older now, but holding onto cherished memories ('the man is still the boy'), Rishi lingers evocatively over the ephemera that mark out days. 'I want to be as plain to you as a season,' Rishi declares, and his measured musings on faith, family and love are a testament to this."
RIP Carol Rumens, 1944-2026 ❤️
It feels fitting to share this poem from BEZDELKI, a small collection of elegies Carol wrote for her late partner, Yuri Drobyshev, and for which she won the 2018 Michael Marks award. BEZDELKI is a book rooted in the principle that death – even for atheists – isn’t purely loss. Instead, a kind of conversation between two people can be continued through willed acts of memory, whether by rooting through a toolbox or by revisiting well-loved books.
"Aardvark Day is wonderful and wonder-full and I loved it." ~ Rachel Piercey (@rachelpierceywriter )
We're thrilled with this praise from Rachel for AARDVARK DAY, the debut children's poetry collection by Victoria Gatehouse (@vickygatehouse )🩷
🌿 Order your copy from our webshop today & we'll post out tomorrow!
🌿 Join us next week to celebrate the online launch, 7pm on 14 May (link in bio)
A lovely afternoon at the launch of the student exhibition @jesmondlibrary today.
Thank you to Diane and the library team, the wonderful teachers @newcastleprep1885 , and all the students and parents who joined us to celebrate. It was a joy to see the creativity sparked by @robwaltonwriter ’s school visit brought to life, and shared as part of Jesmond Festival, where the exhibition will be on display throughout May.
Do stop by and read the revolting recipes dreamed up by the students, including blood and petrol prawns with mouldy maggot cheese, dead skin fajitas, a dragon drool happy meal, and pig poo and ghost pepper cake for dessert. Delightfully disgusting from start to finish.*
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*Follow these recipes at your peril!!
Have you ordered your copy of AARDVARK DAY yet? Here they are ready to go! Complete with factual notes alongside the poems and creative prompts at the end, this is the perfect gift for young nature-lovers and budding writers!
🪴 Buy via our webshop today (link in bio) & I'll post your book out tomorrow!🪴
FROM THE BLURB:
What can we learn from dragonflies, aardvarks, elephants, weeds and peat? Take a stroll through the natural world with Victoria Gatehouse (@vickygatehouse ) and let’s find out together. From frogs with superpowers to otters with pockets, AARDVARK DAY is full of poems that shine a light on the fascinating lives of creatures and wildlife – and it’s all true!
As a zoologist and nature lover, Gatehouse shares her passion for quirky creatures and fascinating plants in her debut children’s collection. Beautifully illustrated with organic-feeling, lively line drawings by Kate Lucy Foster (@katefoster_art ).
Andre Bagoo (@pleasureblog ) on MATE ARIAS by Lewis Buxton (@lewisbuxtonwriter ):
'At precisely the mid-way point when a sonnet might turn, we have a pleasing
split that dramatises the contradictory impulses of each character reconciled by their undefinable relationship: “I woudn’t go / if you didn’t come with me, Alex says.” The enjambment after “I wouldn’t go” both separating and holding together two people.
That, it turns out, is emblematic of how the poems in this wonderful pamphlet work. They stand individually. But when taken together as a cluster, they cohere in a way that echoes the homosociality they describe.'
Thank you so much Andre for this wonderful review in Magma: 94 (@magma__poetry ) 💛
Cover by Mark Andrew Webber (@markawebber_illustration )
*A Birmingham Editorial Readers Group selection - available in our webshop & all good bookshops*
