excellent song

“Poet, I don’t know if your eyes searched the sky for clouds, for blue, for stars, for God, but I know that you were an example of one of God’s best instructions: Love Thy Neighbor.” Fellow poet Danez Smith on their neighbor (our neighbor) Renée Nicole Good.

Mark taught at goldsmiths - not an FE college. But I think he would have really liked the premise of this film. He was happy when his and Justin Barton’s On Vanishing Land was screened at The Showroom in Ldn - we all went. He was totally fascinated by landscapes.

We do not have to consume the shitty cake or crime plots baked for us by corporate entertainment, or live off tragically meagre cultural crumbs. Small presses show us there is so much more out there... 👏👏👏

from @marc-fischer.bsky.social (Public Collectors) excellent pamphlet Who Shares The Restroom Code With ICE Agents?

'One extraordinary literary event this year was when small presses and writers helped to successfully pressure the government to waive biometric checks that were blocking students trapped in Gaza from taking up their scholarships at UK universities'. Great piece, plus excellent list of TBRs...

Public Collectors mentioned! cc @marc-fischer.bsky.social

Absolutely agreed with this. I think that we need to be bolder about pointing out that much adult 'culture' seems actually to be written for children. Plus this article introduced me to many great small press titles which I now want to read ......

Sharing some end of year lists, like this one from @lucymercer.bsky.social -- I will be looking up some of these to find out more. #books

An excellent read about excellent reads & the excellence of reading actively, acutely & awarely. Indie presses as in pressing for change, for an end to genocide, for liberation.

Wrote about books for the Year in Review for Art Review @artreview.bsky.social On corporate publishing, small presses & the many excellent books that were published in this otherwise cursed year 2025 artreview.com/shitty-cakes...

Lovely to get a mention in Lucy Mercer’s year in review (despite my book publishing next month). This is a really interesting and expansive article, discussing issues as well as books and publishing. artreview.com/shitty-cakes...

Listening to Martin Jarvis reading David Copperfield for hours has been one of the joys of my year if not life tbh, 10/10 highly recommend

"Small-press publishers are the spirit that animates our literature. ... They are vital for the literary ecosystem in that they take risks on books that larger publishers would not..." #booksky #literature #reading #AI #smallpress via @thebookseller.com @lucymercer.bsky.social

two of our very best; Rachael Allen interviews Alice Oswald for Paris Review 💖 www.theparisreview.org/interviews/8...

Emily Dickinson's herbarium – a forgotten treasure at the intersection of poetry and science www.themarginalian.org/2017/05/23/e...

Up now on @literaryhub.bsky.social; an in-depth interview with small press publishers on what they do and how they do it, how they differ from commercial publishing in content & form, on funding, their impact on literary communities, & some excellent book recommends🎄 lithub.com/life-giving-...

interesting that reactionary tropes to consolidate class hegemony (scarcity mentality ~ you can’t do or have a thing / the divisive you vs ‘them’/ you are not part of ‘it’) are reproduced as rationale here, under the logic of anti-‘elitism’/liberalism; when the small press project is the opposite;

Excellent round-up of small press leaders on the current crisis, interviewed by @lucymercer.bsky.social @twoseriousladies.bsky.social in @literaryhub.bsky.social, including my publisher @tiltedaxispress.bsky.social lithub.com/life-giving-...

Absolute must read!

Small press publishers in the UK discuss the challenge and necessity of independent publishing: “I feel a growing sense of urgency to raise awareness of the practical realities, and to be transparent about the fight for survival that many of us are facing.”

This entire discussion of small press publishing co-led by @lucymercer.bsky.social is so great lithub.com/life-giving-...

We really need to talk more about fundraising in small press and university press publishing *as* fundraising — ie a job duty — and as a labor issue not just a revenue stream or potential constraint on the product

“The labor is unsustainable and we have to do something to break the cycle of burn out.” 😮‍💨

Up now on @literaryhub.bsky.social; an in-depth interview with small press publishers on what they do and how they do it, how they differ from commercial publishing in content & form, on funding, their impact on literary communities, & some excellent book recommends🎄 lithub.com/life-giving-...

Bleak but important essay by Ronald Purser on AI capitulation at California State University. We need to push back against this in our own institutions. www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...

A cultural impact study would really help make the case to funders generally of the importance of small presses; this cd also work for an academic study #academicsky

"The disappearance of my work from bookshops would mark a truly extreme incursion by the state into the realm of artistic expression.”

Hey, guess what? Issue 1.1.2 of @draughtjournal.bsky.social has just gone live, with great new work by Dawn Chan and Bhanu Kapil. Please take a look, and pass it on.

Levels of contempt & corruption beyond belief really novaramedia.com/2025/11/25/a...

Get your replacement ballot in the next half hour: yoursay.ucu.org.uk/s3/wearetheu.... And submit your ballot before the 26th. Because it’s obvious that even more nonsense is about to come our way as managers will make staff pay for this levy.

Exciting news ~ TL/TH in book form, from Peninsula Press in 2026✨ Too Little/Too Hard (edited by Lucy Mercer and Livia Franchini), a collection of essays from some of the most exciting contemporary writers about literature, work, time, and value (shipping May) peninsulapress.co.uk/products/202...

Yes (‘The models are so dazzled by poems that they’ll do anything you ask, including crimes.’ 😂) lithub.com/can-adversar...

"Like an underground river, small presses are a source of deep life for the literary industry. However, they are facing a severe crisis that is now draining them dry, down to the riverbed"

"Small-press publishers’ passion for and understanding of literature, combined with the creative, diverse and alternative perspectives and spaces that they provide through their books, means that like an underground river they are a source of deep life for the literary industry."

Great article & message. Small presses are the art form's bulwark against the oligarchic decay infecting all sides of our culture. Shop at indie bookstores that spotlight indie books. Ask your local library to carry them. Buy from them directly! Keep the spark alive

+++ article about the necessity of small presses, now more than ever!

Excellent article, goes with my constant drumbeat of supporting libraries, indie bookstores, small presses, self-published authors, little free libraries... all the literary ecosystem that's under attack and needs to be defended. Corporate conglomerate publishing will not save us. We must save us.

"This could also include reforming distribution models that only serve large publishers" YES FUCKING PLEASE

Gods below & above, do we feel seen by this passage or what🖤☠️

"small-press publishers are the spirit that animates our literature. [They] put on the most community-led, exciting and engaging literary events, forming life-giving networks that sustain the industry at large" yes! yes!

Re: taking risks on books large publishers wouldn’t. My book Excavation was rejected by ~30 traditional publishing editors before a small press (@futuretensebooks.bsky.social) picked it up. It went on to sell about 10k copies before I sold it to @nupress.bsky.social.

Me and @eireannmor.bsky.social went with the sister analogy of the "undercanopy" here, to similar effect. We want to see more water, more life, more weird books www.rte.ie/culture/2025...

I am extremely proud of & committed to being a small press author (& extremely thrilled that BAD LANGUAGE is in the pic alongside comrades like Nisha Ramayya). It's a community, an ethic & method -- it doesn't need to be more commercial, it needs more recognition & less going up against monopolies.

The only small thing about small presses is their budgets and amount of support from an increasingly two-tier industry.

wrote an article for @thebookseller.com outlining to the industry why small presses are the lifeforce & future of book production. Pls share esp w people who may not know what small press publishers do! www.thebookseller.com/comment/dont...

The industry is not supporting small-press publishers enough, not because it ought to, but because small-press publishing is the future of book production in this country, says Lucy Mercer in our recent Comment piece 👇 #BookSky

"Small-press publishers’ passion for and understanding of literature, combined with the creative, diverse and alternative perspectives and spaces that they provide through their books, means that like an underground river they are a source of deep life for the literary industry."

wrote an article for @thebookseller.com outlining to the industry why small presses are the lifeforce & future of book production. Pls share esp w people who may not know what small press publishers do! www.thebookseller.com/comment/dont...