Please find attached the latest newsletter for my followers to peruse:
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Welcome to the latest instalment of production lines, as we look ahead to our autumn titles and event programme. Last month’s instalment was replaced by the announcement of our summer sale (thank you to everyone who bought books!), so we’ve tried to summarise two months’-worth of news here, though will undoubtedly have missed a few things. We have lots of events coming up, and there has been some fantastic review coverage, all of which you can read about below.
As ever, this newsletter includes our choice for this month’s ‘back catalogue book of the month’, updates about things we’ve been working on, an overview of recent events and press coverage, and a list of upcoming events. Thank you for reading.
(back catalogue book of the month)
This month’s back catalogue book of the month is Hasib Hourani’s rock flight, a book-length poem that follows a personal and historical narrative as an allegory of Palestine’s occupation. The book was a Poetry Book Society Choice last year, was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Prize for a First Collection, the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize, and won both the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry and the Mary Gilmore Award in Australia, where it was originally published by Giramondo.
The poem uses refrains of suffocation, rubble, and migratory bird patterns to address the realities of forced displacement, economic restrictions and surveillance technology that Palestinians face both within and outside Palestine. It depicts a restlessness brought about by dispossession, and a determination to find significance in fleeting objects and fragments. It looks to the literary form as an interactive experience, and the book as an object in flux, inviting the reader to embark on an exploration of space, while limited by the box-like confines of the page. Formally claustrophobic, the poem morphs into irony, declaring everything a box while refusing to exist within one.
Don Mee Choi described the collection as ‘relentlessly potent. Merging resistance and poetry, Hasib Hourani writes back—against the “suffocating state” and imperial forces’, and Alison Whittaker proclaimed it ‘a must-read for all of us who yearn and stretch and reach for a world beyond colonies, and an even more urgent read for those who don’t.’
Click on the here below to read more and use the code sept2025 to receive a 50% discount if you order a copy before the end of this month.
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(behind the scenes at prototype hq)
July saw the publication of three new titles: PROTOTYPE 7, the latest edition of our annual anthology, Girlbeast by Cecilie Lind, translated from Danish by Hazel Evans, and Diary of an Ending by Lina Scheynius, with translations from Swedish by Saskia Vogel. Thanks to the support of Stories from Sweden, funded by the Swedish Arts Council, both Lina and Saskia were able to come to the UK for a series of events, starting with a wonderful launch at Tenderbooks, followed by a sold-out event at East Bristol Books, and then an appearance at the West Cork Literary Festival.
We haven’t yet been able to programme any events for Girlbeast but the book has been one of our most popular titles for some time, and was selected as a summer fiction highlight by The Bookseller. Our friends at Tenement Press published an extract from the novel on their Rehearsal blog, which will give you a great taste of Lind’s remarkable writing, so brilliantly translated by Hazel Evans.
It was recently announced that production has started on a film adaption of the novel, with a cast of Danish stars including Trine Dyrholm, backed by the Danish Film Institute’s New Danish Screen initiative for emerging talent. The film is being directed by Danish filmmaker Selma Sunniva, who said: ‘Through this film, I hope to shed light on how female sexuality, and specifically the sexualization of young girls, is internalized in a person, and deeply rooted in society.’ ‘My novel couldn’t be in better hands than Selma’s,’ said Lind. ‘She’s a wild filmmaker, I admire her greatly, and I can’t wait to see what girl beast she sets loose in the world.’
Girlbeast is the first of a number of Danish novels we have lined up, and we are delighted that another of these titles – Lamento by Madame Nielsen, translated by Gaye Kynoch – was recently announced as the recipient of an English PEN Translates award. Madame Nielsen is a multi-gendered novelist, artist, performer, world history enactor, composer and chanteuse. Born as Claus Beck-Nielsen, she is the author of numerous literary works. A pioneer of ‘performative biographies’ and ‘Scandinavian autofiction’, the artist declared the death of Claus Beck-Nielsen in 2001, published Claus Beck-Nielsen (1963–2001): A Biography, followed by The Suicide Mission and continues to work as Madame Nielsen. Her work has been translated into nine languages, but not yet in to English, and we are very excited to be introducing her work to an English readership for the first time.
Lamento, which we will publish next year, is an artist’s novel which tells the story of a doomed love affair, lamenting the impossibility of reconciling the magic of infatuation with everyday life. The narrator – a writer – meets a playwright and theatre producer. They fall in love, spend every minute together, completely untouched by the outside world. But when they finally have a child and everyday life stifles the passion, the love turns destructive. The novel offers a fascinating perspective on the author’s marriage before her transition, told from the woman’s perspective but exposing the artistically narcissistic behaviour of the male protagonist, based on Nielsen herself.
Back in the office, our work has been focused on the final stages of Caleb Klaces’ forthcoming novel Mr Outside, which publishes on 16 October, and is now being printed. The book can now be pre-ordered, and we will announce Caleb’s UK tour dates very soon, including a London launch at Burley Fisher Books with Will Harris, plus events in Edinburgh, Manchester, York and Birmingham. We’ve received some wonderful early praise for the book including this from novelist Martin MacInnes, who will be in conversation with Caleb at the Edinburgh event (date tbc): ‘I was utterly absorbed by this riveting, wonderful book, and thought about little else during the days I read it. The prose is unsparing – clear yet enigmatic, clipped yet voluminous. Every page carries a startling moment or detail. By the end of it, you’re left with a sense of the turbulence and bewildering beauty of a whole life. Mr Outside is a major achievement.’
We’ve been working hard on our other autumn title, the winner of the inaugural Prototype Prize: Significant Others by frank r. jagoe, which publishes in November. This singular, radical book presents a different means of describing the existing world, offering an opposition to the reductive logic of Western capitalism which views other-than-humans as only resources for extraction. Other beings feature as metaphors, or omens, but also as fleshly, agential creatures. Often the encounters are erotically charged, using Audre Lorde’s definition of the erotic as an intentionality that can permeate all aspects of life.
In one story, the protagonist attempts to figure out how to have sex with a bathroom mirror; in another, a catfish drags itself through Piccadilly Circus tube station with an uncomfortable level of intimacy with all the surfaces they come into contact with; a person births a stone from their rectum; a lump of topaz in someone’s brain triggers their depression; a human tries to talk to a limestone cliff using touch; a swan drinks the bathwater of their human lover. The book is a collection of different fictionalised narratives, but across them they chart, somewhat anachronistically, a journey from total withdrawal to reimmersion in the ebb and flow of living, alongside a growing recognition that isolation is never truly possible. We really cannot wait for people to read it.
Alongside editorial work, and planning events for our autumn titles, we’ve also been finalising the second leg of Jen Calleja’s Fair tour, with events now confirmed at Brick Lane Books in London, Voce Books in Birmingham, Collected Books in Durham, and the recently opened Veranda Books in London. Details and booking links in the events section below. Jen took part in two events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August, and is now taking a short break before getting going again!
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Finally, some book fair news, both past and future. On the weekend of the 19/20 July, we took part in the first Stems book fair, hosted by our author Helen Marten at her wonderful studio in Hackney. It was a brilliant few days, culminating in a memorable evening of readings on the Sunday, including Imogen Cassels reading from Silk Work.
In September, we’ll be taking part in GLUE, the ICA’s new artist book fair, bringing together over 70 publishers for a weekend of exhibitions, talks and workshops. Then in October, we’ll be back at the Small Publishers Fair at Conway Hall in London, which is always a highlight. And in November we’ll be going to Bath for a new Independent Publisher’s Fair organised by Peirene Press, which we’re really looking forward to. Further details to follow very soon.
(in case you missed it)
There have been lots of nice reviews and other bits of news about some of our recent books over the past few weeks. rock flight has been continuing to gain lots of attention and feature on various prize lists, and Hasib was recently announced as the winner of the Mary Gilmore Prize for Poetry, a prize awarded by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature for the best debut collection. The book was also shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing at the NSW Literary Awards. Closer to home, the book is currently on the longlist for the Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize – the first time one of our books has made it onto this list. This is a biennial prize for a ‘distinctive first book of poetry in English’, established by colleagues at Nottingham Trent University in honour of the Liverpool-born poet Michael Murphy, after his death aged 43 in 2009.
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Imogen Cassels’ Silk Work has continued to receive rave reviews, most recently in The TLS and The Alchemy Spoon (with reviews in The Poetry Review and Poetry Salzburg coming soon). Jeremy Noel-Tod, writing in The TLS, said: ‘It’s hard to think of an English poet who has gone so deep into the possibilities of drawing new lyric music from luxurious textures and mercurial humours since the louche poems of London written by Rosemary Tonks in the 1960s… Ragged and sumptuous, the beauty of Silk Work lies in its commitment to the unfinished vision: “the art of losing tracing / its cognac band about Life”.’ You can read the full review here.
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SK Grout, writing in Issue 16 of The Alchemy Spoon, describes it as ‘a collection that pushes and prods the boundaries of what the lyric can do; how form and texture and sentence structure shape meaning.’ Discussing Imogen’s investigation of and playing with lyric form, and her ability to transform ‘the everyday’ into something ‘complex and revelatory’, Grout concludes that this ‘generous, outward-looking collection’ embodies a ‘careful consideration of the smallness of life – an insect, a moment, a noun – and expands outwards into something revelatory and renewed.’
Lina Scheynius’s Diary of an Ending was the subject of a feature by Orla Brennan in AnOther Magazine. The article introduces the book as Lina’s ‘most personal work to date’: ‘While this may be her first foray into writing in a formal sense, Scheynius has religiously kept a journal since she was ten... But her camera has been her most enduring mode of self-documentation. Known for the vulnerability with which she has captured the intimacies of her life, body and relationships since the mid-2000s, her luminous images have filled 11 self-published books and appeared on gallery walls in Zurich, Tokyo, Oslo, Berlin and London.’ Interviewing Lina about the process of putting the book together, Brennan focuses in particular on the essays which punctuate the diary extracts, noting that they ‘balance the immediacy of heartbreak – often penned with a fractured urgency – with powerful reflections on how the relationship affected her, from a place of hindsight.’
Lina was also interviewed by Saffron Swire for The New World (formerly The New European). They discuss the art of diary-making, Lina’s ‘intimate, vulnerable approach to photography’, the importance of anonymity, the processes of translation, and Lina’s ‘frank reckonings with motherhood’ which run throughout the book. Swire concludes: ‘When reflecting on relationships nostalgia can sand out the rough edges. In Diary of an Ending, Scheynius makes space for both the sweet memories and the sour. Her writing doesn’t rush to resolution or force clarity. Instead, she captures the confusion. Her diary isn’t just about moving on – it’s about sitting with the tangled truths of a love that no longer fits, and learning to trust the uncertain work of letting go.’ You can read the full interview here.
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And finally, Jen Calleja’s Fair: The Life-Art of Translation, continues to be widely reviewed and was, to our surprise and delight, the Guardian’s Book of the Day on 25 July. Alex Clark’s wonderful review concludes by considering the multifaceted nature of the book’s title: ‘Fair is so titled in part to reflect its qualities as a manifesto – not only an improvement in pay and working conditions, but a demand that literary translation as a practice and profession should be a viable aspiration for a far greater number and type of people. It also describes the book’s puckish structure, in which we wander the stands, stalls and hallways of a notional trade fair, and where the illusion of cosy intimacy and friendliness – the decorated cubicles for meetings, the drinks receptions, the musical performances – are at odds with the corporate reality of such gatherings, which are essentially transactional rather than poetic. It can be a somewhat distracting and disorientating mechanism, which is perhaps the point. Stripping away the industrial structures of creating art is far easier said than done, but as she repeatedly tells us, you have to start somewhere.’
Jen was also interviewed by Dale Shaw for The New World (again). This is one of our favourite pieces about the book so far, and Shaw’s focus on the ‘essential’ yet ‘continually overlooked, undervalued and underpaid’ art of translation shapes the conversation – exactly the kind of conversation this book is encouraging. Describing Jen as a ‘punk-rock translator’, and ‘part of a new, very different generation of translators’, he highlights the worrying ease with which ‘big publishers are employing AI as a cost-cutting measure’, noting that ‘it’s the fact that translation can change its mind’ which is offering ‘a frontier waiting to be conquered’ for this exciting ‘new vanguard of translators’. You can read the interview here.
Jen’s work as both publisher of Maltese literature and translator of German literature have also brought attention to the book. Fair was reviewed in The Times of Malta, with the byline describing it as ‘a bonkers rollercoaster of a read which sheds a light on the secrets of literary translation, its wonders and woes’. It celebrates the book for being ‘skittish, innovative and unapologetically wacky’. It goes on: ‘With a flavour of a young Caitlin Moran, she’s sassy, perhaps brash yet likeable, and – importantly – vocal about the work of translators and their added value. It’s a message that all readers should understand and the publishing industry should promote, and Fair is a great first base on this important quest.’
Jen was also interviewed by Gemma Craig-Sharples for New Books in German, where she used to work, discussing the background to writing Fair, the importance of hybridity across all of her books, the ways in which translation theory and practice are connected and inform the book, and the importance of demystifying translation as a profession. It’s a fascinating conversation which you can read in full here.
(upcoming events)
Fair: Jen Calleja in conversation with Katharina Volckmer
Wednesday 10 September, 7pm
Brick Lane Bookshop, 166 Brick Lane, London E1 6RU
Special Edition at the National Poetry Library: Drawn Poems
with Chiara Ambrosio, Sascha Aurora Akhtar & Stephen Watts
Wednesday 24 September, 8.00–9.30pm
National Poetry Library, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX
Fair: Jen Calleja in conversation with Sana Goyal
Thursday 2 October, 7pm
Voce Books, 54–57 Allison Street, Birmingham B5 5TH
October Book Club at Collected, Durham
Fair by Jen Calleja, with Ruth Clarke
Wednesday 8 October, 6.30pm
Collected Books, 44 The Riverwalk, Durham DH1 4SL
Save the date (details to follow here)
GLUE: Book Fair & Creative Programme
Saturday 13 & Sunday 14 September, 12–7pm
The Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH
Fair: special event with Jen Calleja at Veranda Books
Thursday 16 October, 6.30pm
Veranda Books, 7 Seymour Place, London W1H 5BA
Save the date (details to follow here)
Meet the BÃ rd: Gary Younge and Sulaima Addonia
Wednesday 15 October, 7.00–9.00pm
BÃ rd Books, 341–343 Roman Road, Bow, London E3 5QR
The Small Publishers Fair at Conway Hall
Friday 24 & Saturday 25 October, 11am–7pm
Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL
Independent Publisher’s Fair at Bath Central Library
Saturday 8 November, 10.30am–4.00pm
Bath Central Library, 19–23 The Podium, Northgate Street, Bath BA1 5AN
Save the date (details to follow)
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