The press I want to discuss next is the newest so far, just a few months old, in fact: Negative Press. The name does not denote English diffidence — its founder, Roelof Bakker, is Dutch, although resident in London since the Eighties. It derives from the fact that Bakker is a photographer, with a reel…

I want to include in my independent-press roundup a small, one-man press — Welbeck Press — one-man in both senses, being run by Stephen Benatar to publish his own books. ‘Vanity publishing’, you will immediately cry, and you’d be right. But it is more complicated and more interesting than that. It would be more accurate…

I live a few miles from Twickenham, ‘Home of English Rugby’, now ‘Home of Honest Publishing’. I was visiting a small independent bookshop there a couple of years ago, checking on any possible sales of Vault. The assistant bookseller, whom I knew from his previous job in Staines, pointed me to a small display by…

Unthank Books is still a relatively new publisher, but has already established a strong identity, not least by its beautifully designed covers. It’s a short list so far but uniformly excellent in its choice of authors as much as its covers. And it is growing apace: this week sees the publication of its latest title,…

I have taken the title from T.S. Eliot, whose collected letters I have been reading avidly. Eliot in the Twenties wrote a column under that heading for The Dial, until it became too much with his other commitments. It’s both reassuring and depressing to find that, apart from a few changes, the situation here is…

I confess I felt both flattered and honoured, not to say surprised, at Steve Himmer’s invitation to be a writer-in-residence here; even more so on finding that Lee Rourke is among my predecessors. I was then even more flattered by the eulogistic introduction Steve posted up earlier this week. It is certainly very encouraging to…

This week I’ll wrap up my series on socially-conscious fiction. To that end, here’s a meditation on Ann Pancake and social justice from a writer, Ellen Meeropol, who is interested in work that is explicitly socially conscious. “This is the kind of fiction I try to write,” she says. In Ellen’s Words: My favorite novels…

When I embarked upon this socially-conscious series, I not only wanted to show the relationship between writers and their ideas, but also the relationship between fiction and readers. That second part — the way a work of fiction affects a reader — strikes me as a critical component of the literary exchange. So we writers…

As per my previous posts, one of the aspects of socially-conscious fiction I want to explore is the relationship between writers and their social views. Does one bring it to the page, and if so, how? What about writers with overtly socially-conscious day jobs? What does the wrestling and balancing act feel like? Melissa Mills-Dick…

The instruction we find in books is like fire, we fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all. — Voltaire First of all — thanks for giving me an opportunity to guest edit Necessary Fiction for January. I hope the New Year finds…

Well, shucks, this month raced by and I thoroughly enjoyed being the W-I-R for Necessary Fiction. I want to thank Steve Himmer for being a super host and fixer of all things technical AND for being the author of The Bee-Loud Glade, a novel I continue to cherish and mention in classes. And, a huge…