Indie publishers of Scotland - Guest post by Lisa Dempster [05.11.2010]
Another episode from Emerging Writers Festival director Lisa Dempster’s adventures in Edinburgh, wherein she discovers a vibrant stream of Scottish independent publishing…
One of the (many) great things about being in Edinburgh during the Book Festival was getting to discover some of the indie publishing scene happening in Scotland at the moment!
Check out what these awesome indies are up to:
Forest Publications – anthologies and chapbooks. Edinburgh based. They also run a great spoken word evening called The Golden Hour which I am reliably told ‘always ends in dancing’. The Golden Hour anthology comes with a CD as well, and is very pretty.
Cargo Publishing – these guys run an artistic club night in Glasgow and have just released their first book, the excellent Year of Open Doors. I think each of the stories is also released as an audiobook (audiostory?) – a great idea. The readings I heard from this book all blew me away and as such I am purchasing the audiobook versions – the Scottish really know how to tell a story.
Gutter mag – Super sleek and styley, Gutter come out of Glasgow and support ‘the best in new Scottish creative writing’. It is produced by the design and publishing firm Freight. All the work in this mag is top-notch! Check it out.
Writers’ Bloc – another performance-night-cum-publishing-collective. Nice chapbooks featuring quality fiction from a range of writers. There are some stories up on the website for your perusal, and from what I gather the event nights are always top notch.
Anon – a beautiful little poetry magazine with poems and articles. This is what they do: ‘Anon is a poetry magazine where poems are assessed anonymously. We publish the names of all our poets if they are accepted.’ Gorgeous in every way.
Read This Press – poetry micropress producing small-scale pamphlet collections and anthologies for new, young and emerging poets to showcase their work.
Word Power Books – a bookshop and publishing outfit printing radical and political books. They also run the Book Fringe.
These are the guys I discovered while in Edinburgh, but I would be keen to hear of any more indie publishing coming out of Scotland!
Lisa Dempster is the director of the Emerging Writers' Festival and the author of the Aduki Press title, Neon Pilgrim. This piece is cross-posted from Lisa’s Unwakeable blog.
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Comments
Donna Moore — 09 November at 09:42AM
There’s the wonderful Two Ravens Press: http://www.tworavenspress.com/index.html based in the Scottish Highlands.
Donna