‘“The Hands” moves from the slightly mysterious to the downright sinister’ - Anna Aslanyan reviews Paris Fantastique by @nicholasroyle.bsky.social for @thetls.bsky.social

Still ringing.

IT’S A CHRISTMAS COVER REVEAL! I’m delighted to unveil the cover for my new poetry collection THE BEAT THE PULSE THE WAVE! The book will be published by @arachnepress.bsky.social in June 2026 (Pride Month) and is available for pre-order now. arachnepress.com/The-Beat-the...

I am delighted to announce some news… I am part of a shortlist of 5 artists working in Contemporary Book Art nominated for Women to Watch exhibition - see details here: www.ukfriendsofnmwa.org/2027-contemp... The 5 shortlisted artists will show their work at Christie’s on 10-12 February 2026

2016 by Sarah Hesketh was named in the Guardian as a Poetry Book of the Year. Booksellers ordering in from Gardners are told “Publisher out of Stock”. The book's in stock both at the distributor and here, within arm’s reach – order from the CB editions website and I’ll post within 24 hours.

Order by 2pm Wednesday 17 December for delivery in time for Christmas (within the UK). We can gift-wrap, add a handwritten note, and/or send to a different UK address (no extra charge).

Drawer of Letters by Ricky Monahan Brown is a wry, elegiac and formally varied collection that navigates illness, grief, intimacy and reinvention with intelligence and bite. @rickyballboy.bsky.social www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

Nifitsa by Eleni Philippou is a richly textured, bilingual meditation on love, departure and political inheritance, moving through the topographies of Greece with lyric intensity and intellectual depth. www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

Good Ground by Olly Todd is an expansive and sharply observed collection that blends memoir, cultural commentary, and lyric digression with a skater’s eye for momentum and terrain. www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

A surprise seeing this popping up in Michael Caines’ column in the latest TLS @thetls.bsky.social following his discussion of this year’s *wordoftheyear* according to the usual authorities on the matter.

Auspicious signs

A "magnificent, serpentine modern epic ... this tour de force of language, imagination, varied technique, almost obsessive scholarship and huge emotional force must rank among the most outstanding of recent long British poems." Nick Cooke on Steve Ely's 'Eely' thehighwindowpress.com/category/rev...

Richard Eason - a supporter of Longbarrow Press for twenty years, and a good friend for thirty years - would have turned 52 today. A week after his death, I walked from Leeds to Goole, and thought of him. This is an account of the walking and thinking. longbarrowpress.substack.com/p/unrecovere...

'It is the best anthology of new work that I’ve read in years; anyone with an interest in contemporary British poetry should read it.' - Billy Mills Last few copies of 'The Footing': our first (and, to date, only) anthology (unlikely to be reprinted) thefooting.wordpress.com

"The exhibition documents a small section of the archival ephemera of British bookseller John Lyle (1932–2002)." www.instagram.com/p/DSCvfYsjdYJ/

Announcing The Scratch Winter Sale! For two weeks before our festive break buy all our titles with 25% off. For all the readers and writers in your life! www.scratch-books.co.uk/shop

In exchange for a very small sum of money @longbarrowpress.bsky.social have sent me another personalised pack of loveliness. Honestly, buy stuff off them- the work they publish is excellent and the quality of what they produce is first rate.

John Bevis's definitive study concerns itself with the lives and partnership of the Keartons, especially their role in the history of nature photography; their attitudes to and interaction with nature; and the status of invention in their work. uniformbooks.co.uk/thekeartons.php

A seasonal reminder that you can order our titles from our website; orders are despatched within 24 hours (last dates for Christmas orders: UK: 17 Dec. Sheffield: 23 Dec). Recent hardbacks inc. Steve Ely's 'Eely' and Angelina D'Roza's 'The Blue Hour'. Order here: longbarrowpress.com/current-publ...

We are thrilled to share the news that Katy Derbyshire’s translation of Mountainish by Zsuzsanna Gahse has been shortlisted for the @societyofauthors.bsky.social John Calder Translation Prize. This is a new award for English translations of full-length groundbreaking works of literary merit.

If you're in Sheffield, we can deliver by hand, on foot, to any address in the city encircled by the blue line (and we're happy to gift-wrap books, if you like, at no extra cost). This might be useful for any last-minute Christmas orders (last day to order via this method is Tuesday 23 Dec).

CB editions December newsletter, as archived on the Sonofabook blog: sonofabook.blogspot.com/2025/12/cbe-...

"For Christmas, not just for life..." Uniformbooks are available direct: uniformbooks.co.uk Our books may also be ordered through any bookshop; and online, Blackwells, for example, carry all of our titles, and offer free delivery. blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/sea...

‘There are stories of great tenderness alongside others which have the macabre strain of Roald Dahl’s adult stories’ – Imogen Tomlinson reviews Sightings by David Bevan (with images by Maya Sharp). substack.com/home/post/p-180534430

Brighton Art Book Fair this weekend johndilnot.com

"I recall a sense of writing from one ephemeral, collective platform (the pop-up shop) into another (Twitter), and that both were conducive to discovery and dialogue. Improvisations in an improvised space." SHIP's log: notes from a pop-up bookshop longbarrowpress.substack.com/p/ships-log

Thank you to Jonathan Coe (The Proof of My Innocence) for selecting Paris Fantastique by Nicholas Royle for the Observer’s ‘Writers recommend: the best books of 2025’ feature: observer.co.uk/culture/books/article/writers-recommend-the-best-books-of-2025

Brighton Art Book Fair is next weekend or see artists’ books, screen prints, boxes and paintings on my website johndilnot.com Free UK postage

Small Press Publishers are the *best* — but they need more support (and investment): www.thebookseller.com/comment/dont... (Spotted in newsletter by the excellent @cacrampton.bsky.social )

"We loan books from the local library, or we loan books through it from a library far away. But we also lend ourselves to the library — enlarging the commons and participating in the political project of making an informed society." @shannonmattern.bsky.social placesjournal.org/article/extr...

Sample read with clomping about soundtrack. uniformbooks.co.uk/done.php

Looking forward to bringing Longbarrow Press (and @intergraphiabooks.bsky.social) to the inaugural @dublinsmpressfair.bsky.social at the end of the month, alongside 30+ excellent presses. Fri 28 Nov & Sat 29 Nov, Pearse Street Library, Dublin 2, all welcome, admission free. dublinsmallpressfair.com

Whoopers cruise the Dutch Barn’s shadow, pen and cob, a litter of half-grown cygnets, upending in the algal soup, plucking out pondweed, diving beetles, the monstrous Palaeozoic nymphs of Anax imperator. 'Eely' Steve Ely A symphony in four movements longbarrowpress.com/current-publ...

Pamenar Reading on 6 Dec with Ágnes Lehóczky, Farid Matuk (visiting London🎉), Iris Colomb, and Yě Yě at 49 Great Ormond Street. We’ll also be celebrating Iris’s and Ágnes’s new Pamenar books. Doors 6pm, £5. After the reading, we’ll gather upstairs to hang out. Bring your own drink and stay awhile.

We were shocked and saddened to read that Rachel Cooke had died. She championed Michèle Roberts' work, and her take on French Cooking for One proposed the book to the bestsellers sphere. We remember her exemplary, fearless originality and generous spirit. observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

We were honoured to be mentioned in this fantastic article @rte.ie about the upcoming inaugural Dublin Small Press Fair alongside so many wonderful independent Irish publishers, including @lilliputpress.bsky.social, @skeinpress.bsky.social, @machapress.bsky.social, and so many more.

"I thought of how, as a child, I’d used pylons to calculate distance & time, and how they seemed to anchor space. I thought of how the turbines resisted this, how unmeasurable they seemed, in a nightscape with few visual referents." 'Landscapes of Power' longbarrowpress.substack.com/p/landscapes...

If you missed the limited print edition of The Minute Review's special issue on the Small Publishers Fair, here's a free download: drive.google.com/file/d/1lfb7... Previous issues are also available here: derekbeaulieu.ca/pdfs/ Here's a screenshot of my piece on the 2024 Fair.

"Books are often slow to materialise, and can be months or years in the making. They can also arise from next to nothing and take shape in a matter of days. Small Publishers Fair is both an incentive and a deadline." On the 2025 Small Publishers Fair longbarrowpress.substack.com/p/the-exchange

"There are 66 publishers at this year’s event. 66 arguments for the book and the idea of the book. 66 examples of what a small press can do."

Just finished Lara Pawson's Spent Light (bought at @smallpublishers.bsky.social) and it's every bit as good as everyone else says: unnervingly direct, startling, vivid

"No hierarchies. No roller banners. A conversation in the heart of the city." Translocal distribution: the latest number of The Minute Review, edited by @derekbeaulieu.bsky.social (with a focus on the 2024 @smallpublishers.bsky.social Fair) and distributed by him at the 2025 Fair.

My haul from this year's Small Publishers Fair.

After a wonderful weekend at @smallpublishers.bsky.social all our Series 4 pamphlets are now available to buy from our website, and for a limited time only, we'll pop you an added surprise in your package (UK only)—link in bio.

Small Publishers Fair @smallpublishers.bsky.social is the best event in the UK imo. Comrades in art and writing coming together for a joyously exhausting weekend of chats (and sales!). None of this would happen without the hard work and vision of the fantastic Helen Mitchell.

Sharing my haul from @smallpublishers.bsky.social 2025 - look at these GORGEOUS books 😍

I’M IN AWE - sharing images of handmade pamphlets, objects, zines, and more produced by my incredible MA poetry group for @smallpublishers.bsky.social 🧡

@smallpublishers.bsky.social Haul! I 'Flight Paths' by @ggaffa.bsky.social/@nightjarpress.bsky.social , NaoKo TakaHashi' & @intergraphiabooks.bsky.social 'Blabbermind' by Andrew Kotting, @susiecampbell.bsky.social & @guillemotpress.bsky.social ,SJ Fowler/ Sampson Low. Fantastic reading from all 🔥🔥🔥