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THE INDEPENDENTS NEWS & VIEWS
10.02.17
www.thebookseller.com
Parity is the priority for a trio of independents new to the UK market
BY NATASHA ONWUEMEZI
Three presses committed to publishing diverse, under-represented voices will launch in the UK this year, with each looking to satisfy what they perceive to be an increased appetite from readers for new and challenging literature. In the wake of the inauguration of President
Trump and UK MPs’ vote to trigger Article 50, a UK arm of US publisher Seven Stories Press, literary and speculative fiction list Cloud Lodge Books and feminist collective Silver Press have launched with the goal of stymieing and challenging attitudes of sexism, xenophobia and discrimination with their publishing output. New York-based Seven Stories is renowned in the US for championing “uncompromising” political books, as well as fiction and poetry. Founded by Dan Simon in 1995, the press has published titles by the likes of US historian Howard Zinn and African-American author and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Octavia Butler, as well as works from Kurt Vonnegut Jr, Noam Chomsky and Barry Gifford. Committed to publishing “voices
of conscience” and literature in translation, Simon explains that the original Seven Stories Press began
life reprinting novels and short-story collections from Nelson Algren, an author who believed that writing “existed to stand up for those who otherwise were voiceless”. Simon adds: “We take that very seriously. It’s the tradition we’re most closely aligned with.” More than 20 years on, Simon says the
appetite for books that tackle contentious issues is “incredible”, and that increased demand for such literature is “one of the most heartening signs” that readers are open and willing to engage with new and challenging discourse, and also to re-examine classic works. “We’re living in the most exciting time you could possibly imagine. That’s true of politics and life, and of publishing also. People are urgently looking to books to help them make sense of the sudden political moment we’re in. “As I’m sure you have heard, the great
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is currently the number one book on Amazon in the US. People read the newspapers—which have seen a surge in subscriptions and readers since the election—and they are looking to books in order to feel, to self-identify. Many of the books that are surging [in sales], by the way, are about living in totalitarian states; books written as dystopian fantasies that I suspect are
being read now almost as non-fiction”, he says. “There’s a terrific [independent] publishing
scene in the UK. The British Council supports it in a way the US government does not [support its indies], and they range from larger, trend-setting companies, such as Profile and Oneworld, to very new, scrappy ones that seem in some ways even sharper than their American counterparts.” The press will launch its UK arm this month with
Dan Simon
Kia Corthron’s The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter, a “sweeping and majestic” novel of race played out through two working-class families in the Deep South, one black, one white. It recently won the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize in the US. The press will publish six books in the UK a year, with the 2017 tranche to include Hotel Tito by Ivana Simić Bodrožić, Vonnegut’s Complete Stories and Chomsky’s Requiem for the American Dream. Cloud Lodge Books was founded by William
William Campos
Campos, a newcomer to the publishing business who has spent most of his career working for law firms. The list seeks to publish “original, risk-taking and imaginative novels that do not shy away from difficult or controversial topics”. Campos agrees with Simon that there is “absolutely” an appetite for such books: “These days both traditional media and social media are brimming with difficult and controversial topics and everyone seems to want to weigh in with their views. This signals to us that there is a ready audience for novels that tackle such issues head- on in a well-written and unflinching manner.” While Campos does not feel that the industry
has “deliberately” neglected certain groups, he acknowledges publishing is a “risky venture even in the best of circumstances”, adding: “So it is understandable that publishers would
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