Arachne Press
10th Anniversary
Catalogue Spring 2023
Arachne Press is a small, independent publisher of award-winning short fiction, poetry and (very) select non-fiction, for adults and children. Our first ever YA title was nominated for the Carnegie Medal. In 2022 we have been Regional Finalists for Small Publisher of the Year, had books short-listed for the Saboteur awards, and we had books win in their categories for Wales Book of the Year 2022 and the Holyer An Gof Award 2022.
We are committed to showcasing talented writing, and treating writers as they would wish to be treated. This includes our approach to inclusive publishing (and events), with BSL interpretation and translation; working with Welsh language poets, moving into Audiobooks, and actively seeking out as wide a range of authors and poets as possible, including those living in geographically isolated areas. We have a particular interest in writing from LGBT and disabled authors and poets.
We are continuing our ambitious publishing plans for our tenth year, September 2022-23, with four new books for the spring, three more audiobooks, and live and online workshops, readings and panel discussions.
Readers:
All our books are available as print* and ebooks, and some are available as audiobooks.
order via our webshop https://arachnepress.com
We or our distributors, IPS, will post books direct to you.
If you prefer eBooks (ePub) or audiobooks we now sell them direct at https://arachnepress.com/audio-and-ebook-store/
Bookshops:
our sales partners are Inpress, our distributors are IPS, and our books are available through Gardners.
We are back doing live events and want to hear from anyone who would like to host us, but can also offer online readings and Q&As tailored especially for you.
Authors:
Submit poetry or short fiction to one of our anthology submission calls so we can get to know each other and for an opportunity to be invited to submit further. Current open call is for UK based LGBTQ+ poets only, via https://arachnepress.submittable.com/submit
*except Hiatus which is currently eBook only
New Poetry for 2023 February
Saved to Cloud Kate Foley
ISBN 978-1-913665-76-0 £9.99 POETRY/LGBT
Kate Foley looks back on almost nine decades of life – a life characterised by curiosity, resistance and a strong connection with the natural world.
Appreciationandconcernfortheplanetruns through this frank and moving collection, which muses on the notions of faith and belief, ultimately rejecting both Whitehall politicsandtraditionalreligionasinadequate todealwithenvironmentalcrisis.
Simultaneously nostalgic and highly concerned with the future, Kate Foley ask us to consider life’s big questions: What’s it all for? How will we be remembered?
March
More Patina than Gleam Jane Aldous
ISBN 978-1-913665-78-4 £9.99 POETRY/LGBT
In her 70th year, Jane Aldous decided to write 70 poems, exploring a fictionalised version of a life she almost lived. These poems, based in post war Edinburgh, tell the story of Linda, fleeing with her daughter from England and an abusive relationship. In hiding in one of the city’s suburbs, mother and daughter settle into their new life and encounter a variety of characterswhowillchangetheirlivesforever. More Patina than Gleam celebrates outsiders getting by in hard times – the day to day grindof cleaning,periods,prejudice,ageing, sexuality and falling in and out of love.
From Saved to Cloud, Kate Foley
REPEATING PATTERNS
Will it build again, our earth?
Will it be nest with rambling, seeded stems and breast curved feathers –or den?
Will the first new atom know who to marry?
Will creatures glide, elide through air or water?
Will they click and pick on legs or fins or flick their way on wings?
Will there be eyes and ears and tongues when memories lie millennia below the fears we’d long forgotten before we let them happen?
From Unmothered, A J Akoto
Gorgon Certain things should be approached side-on, with a darting gaze, as you look at a bright goddess from the corner of your eye.
My mother is a gure ablaze at the edge of sight; I cannot bear her head on. I need a sickled blade. I need a shield, mirror-bright.
New Poetry for 2023
April
The Arctic Diaries Melissa Davies
ISBN 978-1-913665-74-6 £9.99 POETRY
When the fisherman dies Fleinvær stories spill out silver strings, like guts from a spring catch. But between these pages they survive.
The Arctic Diaries chart generations of thecharacters,mythsandmisremembered details that make up the oral traditions of a windswept archipelago in Norway’s far north. Created over a single arctic winter, using stories gathered from the last surviving fisherman of Langholmen, this collection of poems are part history, part field notes, exploring what role the outsiderplaysinpreservingtheexperience of another.
May
Unmothered A J Akoto
ISBN 978-1-913665-74-6 £9.99 POETRY
When does a mother stray from myth into monster?
In an intimate and unflinching collection, A J Akoto tracks the complex bind of mother-daughter relationships. Through separationandattemptstomend,longing, and the fluidity of myth/story-telling in defining histories and identities, she collapsestheelisionbetweenwomanhood andmotherhood/daughterhood,bringing totheforefrontthatwhichusuallyremains unspoken.
New Audio Books for JUNE 2023
Paper Crusade Michelle Penn
ISBN 978-1-91366583-8 POETRY £10
Read bySophie Aldred, NigelPilkington and Saul Reichlin
A bold reinvention of Shakespeare’s play, e Tempest.
On a wasted island in perpetual sun, the Father practices magic, laments his lost kingdom and commands a ragtag army of three: the passionate and damaged Daughter, the winged Spirit and an indigenous being known only as C.
In the Blood Anna Fodorova
ISBN 978-1-913665-84-5 NOVEL £15
Read by Lisa Rose
Agata lives in London with her husband and daughter, but she grew up in Prague and she believes that her mother is the only one of her family who survived the Holocaust. Against a background of revolutions in Eastern Europe, Agata discovers that not everyone died. Her subsequent search for her lost family, threatens to tear apart not only the family she already has, but her own identity.
Routes Rhiya Pau
ISBN 978-1-913665-85-2 POETRY £10
read by Farhana Khalique
Poetry exploring the routes taken by Rhiya
Pau’sparentsandgrandparentsacrossmultiple countries, to arrive in the UK. Speci cally linked to the 50th anniversary of the arrival of Ugandan Asian in the UK.
Recent Poetry
Our best seller!
A470 Poems for the Road Cerddi’r Ffordd
ISBN 978-1-913665-55-5 £9.99 POETRY
A fully bilingual collection of original poems by Welsh poets,all written in response to the 186 mile road which runsthelengthofWales–fromshoretoshoreandnorth to south.
Mae A470: Cerddi’r Ffordd, a fydd yn cael ei gyhoeddi fel llyfr clawr meddal ac fel e-lyfr, yn gasgliad o gerddi gwreiddiol gan feirdd o Gymru, pob un ohonynt yn ymatebi’r ffordd186milltir ohydaredardraws Cymru o arfordir y gogledd i arfordir y de.
ISBN 978-1-913665-67-8 £9.99 POETRY
A bold reinvention of Shakespeare’s play, eTempest. Ona wastedisland inperpetualsun,the Father practices magic,lamentshislostkingdomandcommandsaragtag army of three: the passionate and damaged Daughter, the winged Spirit and an indigenous being known only as C. Behind their uniforms the soldiers seethe with rebellion.
A Pocketful of Chalk Claire Booker
ISBN 978-1-913665-69-2 £9.99 POETRY
e South Downs lie at the heart of this collection –the sunsets and huge skies, cliffs and fossils, shing vessels and windmills, people and sheep. Past, present and future collide within geological and emotional landscapes.ClaireBookeroffersmovingandmemorable poetry from an iconic corner of England.
Paper Crusade Michelle Penn
Recent anthologies
Words From the Brink: stories and poems from the Solstice Shorts Festival 2021
ISBN: 978-1-913665-51-7 £9.99 ANTHOLOGY/poems and short stories. Also available as Audiobook
Poems and stories responding to the floods, droughts and fires all around the globe with tenderness, compassion, fear, grief and rage. Gaia is represented in all her power and glory, butterflies and plants sow seeds of hope, while writers ask: How do we stop it? Are we heading for recovery or extinction?
What Meets the Eye? The Deaf Perspective
ISBN: 978-1-913665-48-7 £9.99 ANTHOLOGY/poems and short stories. BSL videos also available.
Poems, short fiction and scripts from UK Deaf, deaf and Hard of Hearing writers on the theme of Movement. They have interpreted this in many ways:movementascommunication,asconnection, mobility, and stillness, being moved emotionally, movementwithinandafterLockdown,freedomof movement,andbeingpartof apoliticalmovement, and even getting lost!
Where We Find Ourselves: Stories and Poems of MapsandMappingfromUKWritersof theGlobalMajority
ISBN: 978-1-913665-44-9 £9.99 ANTHOLOGY/poems and short stories also available as Audiobook
From UK writers from African, Asian, Middle Eastern, Caribbean, South American, Chinese and Malay communities, writing about maps and mapping. Stories and poems of finding oneself and getting lost, colonialism and diaspora, childhood exploration and adult homecoming.
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Short Stories
100nehundred by Laura Besley
FLASH/FANTASY 978-1-913665-27-2 £9.99
A man carries his girlfriend in the left-hand breast pocket of hisshirt.DuringWorldWarII,ayoungsoldiersearches the houses and barns of the families with whom he grew up. An astronaut wonders whether she can adapt to life back on earth. Laura Besley explores a kaleidoscope of emotions through 100 stories of exactly 100 words. Shortlisted for Saboteur2022 best short story collection.
Incorcisms by David Hartley
SHORT/FLASH 978-1-913665-24-1 £9.99
Strange stories about strange things for strange people. Tales of possession and obsession. Of destruction and restoration. Of the demons we hold inside us, and those we leave behind in others.
Accidental Flowers Lily Peters
NOVEL IN SHORT STORIES/SF 978-1-913665-33-3 £9.99
In a near future, women march together. Sea levels rise, toxicrain fallsandtheearth poisons the foodthatgrows in it.eelite,andwinnersofthelifelottery,areevacuatedto giant towers. For many, a decision has to be made between living safe or living free.
Strange Waters by JackieTaylor
SHORT STORIES 978-1-913665-36-4 £9.99
Set in Cornwall, coastal erosion and ooding take on a near mythical power as the short stories in this collection weave in and out of the recent past and near future, as lives and relationships ebb and ow with the tide. ree generations of women from the same family, struggle with their over-close affinity for the sea.
Short Stories
Happy Ending NOT Guaranteed Liam Hogan
SHORTSTORIES/Fantasy ISBN:978-1-909208-36-0 £9.99
Often humorous, often dark, (often both) fantasy stories. Described as ‘Deliciously Twisted’, a happy ending might beroundthenextturninthatdarkpaththroughtheforest, or beyond that twist in the tale, but then, perhaps not.
Mosaic of Air Cherry Potts
SHORT STORIES/SF/Fantasy/LGBT ISBN: 978-1-909208-03-2
£11.99 £5
Sixteen short stories from a lesbian perspective: from Helen of Troy right through to Space Opera.
Stations: Short Stories Inspired by the Overground Line
ANTHOLOGY/Fiction ISBN: 978-1-909208-01-8 £10.99 £5
A story for every station from New Cross, Crystal Palace, and West Croydon at the Southern extremes of the East London line all the way to Highbury & Islington.
Story Cities
Ed. Ram Kehal, Rosamund Davies and Cherry Potts
ANTHOLOGY/ ash ISBN: 978-1-909208-78-0 £9.99
A guide book to the ctional city, all cities, any city: its markets, squares, cafés, hotels, parks, stations and ports; the main streets, side streets, back alleys, dead ends and the crossroads. Never identi ed, the city has a voice of its own.
Anthologies
London Lies
ISBN: 978-1-909208-00-1 ANTHOLOGY/Fiction £9.99 £5
Our rst Liars’ League showcase, featuring unlikely tales set in London.
Lovers’ Lies
ISBN: 978-1-909208-02-5 ANTHOLOGY/Fiction £9.99 £5
Our second collaboration with Liars’ League, bringing the freshness, wit, imagination and passion of their authors to stories of love.
Weird Lies
ISBN: 978-1-909208-10-0 ANTHOLOGY/SF/Fantasy £9.99 £5
WINNER of the Saboteur2014 Best Anthology Award.
Our third Liars’ League collaboration – more than twenty stories varying in style from tales not out of place in One ousand and One Nights to the completely bemusing.
We/She
ISBN: 978-1-909208-62-9 ANTHOLOGY/ ction £9.99
In collaboration with Liars’ League. Acelebrationofthecentenaryofwomen intheUKgettingthe vote. Stories by women, performed at one of Liars’ League’s events in London, Hong Kong or New York: everything from broken plates to dragons.
Anthologies
Solstice Shorts: Sixteen Stories about Time
ISBN: 978-1-909208-23-0 £9.99 ANTHOLOGY/Fiction
Winning stories that chart the meaning of time, exploring what it can do to us, and for us, from the rst Solstice Shorts Festival competition, plus stories from judges Alison Moore, Imogen Robertson, Robert Shearman, and Anita Sethi, who all edited the book.
Shortest Day, Longest Night:Poems&StoriesfromtheSolstice Shorts Festival 2015 & 2016 ed Cherry Potts
ISBN: 978-1-909208-28-5 ANTHOLOGY £9.99
Celebrating the shortest day of the year, with stories, poems and songs to an appropriate theme. 23 stories and 34 poems featuring old gods, bitter weather, darkness, light, neighbourliness, looping days, birth, death and if not the meaning of the universe, possibly the end of it.
DUSK: Stories and poems from Solstice Shorts Festival 2017 ed Cherry Potts
ISBN: 978-1-909208-54-4 ANTHOLOGY £9.99
On21stDecember2017,theshortestdayoftheyear,18stories and 28 poems celebrating DUSK were read live on 12 sites, from pubs to woodlands, in a wave of words across the UK.
No Spider Harmed in the Making of this Book AnAnthology of Spiderlit for Arachne’s Eighth Anniversary
ISBN: 978-1-909208-93-3 ANTHOLOGY/poems and short stories £9.99
Inspired by Lady Hale and her spider brooch, we realised we werecominguptoour8thAnniversaryinAugust2020.What better way to celebrate than with a book of Spider related stories and poems?
Anthologies
Noon: StoriesandPoemsfromSolsticeShortsFestival2018 ed Cherry Potts
ISBN: 978-1-909208-69-8 ANTHOLOGY STORIES & POEMS £8.99
A ash of inspiration in the winter darkness. In keeping with the transitory nature of the theme, ideas as diverse as momentary mistakes, cataclysmic change, promptness, celebration, chance meetings, and serendipity.
Time and Tide stories and poems from the Solstice Shorts Festival 2019 ed Cherry Potts
ISBN: 978-1-909208-83-4 ANTHOLOGY/Historical stories & poems
£9.99
Stories and poems of immigration/emigration and working on and beside the water, set in the past. Performed at the Solstice shorts festival 2019 in seven port towns in four countries. Clydebank, Greenwich, Hastings, Holyhead, Maryport, Oeiras and Peterhead.
Tymes Goes By Turnes: stories and poems from the Solstice Shorts Festival 2020 ed Cherry Potts
ISBN: 978-1-913665-18-0 £9.99
A Corona virus in uenced anthology; stories and poems in response to the poem TYMES GOE BY TURNES by sixteenth century poet, Robert Southwell – the poem observes the ebb and ow of fortune, nothing stays bad for ever, nor anything good – so get on with it while you can. As with Southwell’s poem there is a ne balance between dread and hope.
Anthologies
An Outbreak of Peace ed Cherry Potts
ISBN: 978-1-909208-66-7 ANTHOLOGY £9.99
Stories and poems as a commemoration of the ending of WWI, re ecting on what comes after – and what that meant. is wide-ranging collection brings together stories and poems frommanycountries, on both sides of the 191418 con ict, nding their inspiration in many wars and their endings; together with work which is not about war at all, which is as it should be.
Liberty Tales: Stories and Poems inspired by Magna Carta ed Cherry Potts
ISBN: 978-1-909208-31-5 ANTHOLOGY £9.99
Liberty, personal and legal, is the starting point of this wide-ranging collection of responses to the Magna Carta, some directly relating to speci c clauses of the document signed by King John, others more concerned with how we experience and search after freedom in the 21st century, because Freedom never goes out of fashion.
Five by Five ed Cherry Potts
ISBN: 978-1-909208-59-9 ANTHOLOGY/ ction £9.99
A showcase for authors we have published previously in anthologies, giving a wider perspective on their writing. CassandraPassarelli, Katy Darby, JoanTaylor-Rowan,Sarah James, Helen Morris.
Departures: from e Story Sessions ed Cherry Potts
ISBN: 978-1-909208-74-2 ANTHOLOGY £9.99
Stories and poemsabout leaving, or that take an unexpected turn, going completely off piste. From authors featured at e Story Sessions, the South London live literature evening.
A Voice Coming From en Jeremy Dixon
ISBN: 978-1-913665-40-1 POETRY/LGBT £9.99
[CONTENT WARNING]
Starts from Jeremy’s teenage suicide attempt and expands toencompassthemesof bullying,queerphobia,acceptance and support. Includes unexpected typography, collage, humour, magic, discotheques and frequent appearances from the Victorian demon, Spring-heeled Jack.
Winner Wales Book of the Year - Poetry 2022
This Poem Here Rob Walton
ISBN: 978-1-913665-30-2 POETRY £8.99
When Rob Walton went into lockdown, he didn’t know that he would also go into mourning. Here he writes about the life and death of his dad, and how sadness seeped into various aspects of his life.
He also manages to find cheap laughs, digs at the government, celebrations of the young and old, unashamed sentimentality and suddenly disarming moments of tenderness.
e Signi cance of a Dress Emma Lee
ISBN: 978-1-909208-82-7 POETRY £8.99
Poems informed by and immersed in politics. Beautiful, hair-raising words and form, utterly from the heart. Nothing is unimportant in The Significance of a Dress, where each poem’s narrative is personal and individual, yet simultaneously universal in its reach and significance. Emma Lee’s evocative imagery is reinforced by taut lines, striking juxtapositions and intimate, moving details that pack emotional punch. The Significance of a Dress is a beautiful haunting collection. S.A. Leavesey
poetry
Poetry
Let out the Djinn Jane Aldous
ISBN: 978-1-909208-81-0 POETRY/LGBT £8.99
ere is a double meaning in the title to this debut collection from Jane Aldous – Jinn was her family nickname, and writing poetry feels like letting out her wild, mischievous spirit. Jane invites us to listen to the imagined worlds of hunter-gatherers,star-gazers, mythical beings, wild creatures, the living and the dead, and the real world of a gay woman growing up in the 70s.
A Gift of Rivers Kate Foley
ISBN: 978-1-909208-53-7 POETRY/LGBT £8.99
Kate Foley is a much published and respected poet with many awards to her name. is, her 8th collection is made from meeting, migration and marriage: poems re ecting the journey of one poet and her wife, across linguistic and geographical boundaries.
In Retail Jeremy Dixon
ISBN: 978-1-909208-72-8 POETRY/LGBT £8.99
While working in a well-known pharmacy chain, Jeremy Dixon’s poems were written on the ends of till rolls and smuggled out in his socks.
Recognisable retail characters and situations, and management-speak absurdities; brought to witty and wicked life by Jeremy’s perspective as a queer writer.
Poetry
e Knotsman Math Jones
ISBN: 978-1-909208-73-5 POETRY £9.99
e Knotsman goes from house to house, village to village, poem to poem, battle eld to gallows, unravelling knots and problems, physical, emotional and psychological; a new kind of cunning man, not always welcome, not always quite as clever as his ngers and picks would have him believe.
Mamiaith Ness Owen
ISBN: 978-1-909208-77-3 POETRY £8.99
Bilingual English/Welsh
ese are poems of family and motherhood, politics, place and belonging: a determination to write in the Mamiaith (mother tongue) that she speaks, but did not learn to write uently.einterplayoflanguagesandtheshiftsofmeaning from one to the other feed the musicality of the poems.
Erratics Cathy Bryant
ISBN: 978-1-909208-56-8 POETRY/LGBT £8.99
A wide-ranging collection of poems political and fantastical, leaping from humour to anger with equal passion, and bounding with energy and sassiness whether considering Cathy Bryant’s own experience of disability, or an imagined future for cleaners... of stars.
Vindication
ISBN: 978-1-909208-65-0 ANTHOLOGY/poetry £9.99
Ashowcaseforpoetswehavepublishedsinglyinanthologies, giving a wider perspective on their writing. Sarah James, Elinor Brooks, Jill Sharp, Sarah Lawson, Anne Macaulay and Adrienne Silcock.
Poetry
With Paper for Feet Jennifer A McGowan
ISBN: 978-1-909208-35-3 POETRY £9.99
Jennifer A McGowan delves into myth and magic, legend and folklore, from Africa, China, Greece, Brittany and Britain to give new voices to both familiar and forgotten characters through complex narrative poems.
Foraging Joy Howard
ISBN: 978-1-909208-39-1 POETRY/LGBT £8.99
Joy Howard has something to say about the environment, and grief,andtime,andmemory.Hercombinationoftenderbutacute observation and mordantwit is reminiscentof U.A. Fanthorpe.
e Don’t Touch Garden Kate Foley
ISBN: 978-1-909208-19-3 POETRY/LGBT £9.99 Also available as an audiobook
Born in 1938 and adopted soon after, Kate Foley grew up in London during WWII.
e Don’t Touch Garden explores what it is to be adopted, both for the child and the adoptive parents, through a wide range of poetic styles and complex emotions.
e Other Side of Sleep: Narrative Poems
ISBN: 978-1-909208-18-6 ANTHOLOGY/poetry £9.99 £5 Long, narrative poems by contemporary voices, including Inua Elams, Brian Johnstone, and Kate Foley, whose title poem for the anthology was the winner of the 2014 Second Light Long Poem competition.
Children’s books
Zed and the Cormorants Clare Owen
ISBN: 978-1-909208-86-5 YA/CHILDREN/NOVEL
(illustrated) £9.99
also available as an Audiobook
Zed and her family move unwillingly from London to Cornwall, in an attempt to support her mother’s mentalhealth.Graduallythefamilyfallapart,andit is only when Zed realises that the local cormorants are playing a part in the disasters that consume them, in revenge for an ancient wrong, that she and her sister, Amy, start working together to nd a solution and call a truce.
Winner YA Category Holyer An Gof Award 2022
Devilskein & Dearlove Alex Smith
ISBN: 978-1-909208-15-5 YA FANTASY £10.99
Young Erin Dearlove has lost everything, and is living in a run-down apartment block in Cape Town. en she has tea with Mr Devilskein, the demon who lives on the top oor, and opens a door into another world.
Nominated for the 2015 CILIP Carnegie Medal.
e Old Woman from Friuli
Ghillian Potts, illustrated by Ed Boxall
ISBN: 978-1-909208-40-7 £6.99
CHILDREN’S FICTION,
illustrated
Everything the Duke can see belongs to him. Everything, except one small, strong house. at belong to the old woman from Friuli. e Duke wants that house, but the old woman, she won’t sell.
Children’s books
Brat: e Naming of Brook Storyteller Book One
Ghillian Potts
ISBN: 978-1-909208-41-4 YA FANTASY £9.99
On her 12th birthday Brat’s father disappears. She waits,buthenevercomesback.Brat ndthatnothing is simple, nowhere is safe, and being reunited with her family must wait, as more pressing tasks fall into her path.
Spellbinder: e Naming of Brook Storyteller BookTwo
Ghillian Potts
ISBN: 978-1-909208-46-9 YA FANTASY£9.99
Brook, now called Spellbinder, is working as Remembrancer to the Young Overlord, when Storytellers start disappearing. Spellbinder is forced to summon the Elder Dragons, but when she cannot control them, she must break her Storyteller vow and forfeit her most precious possession – her name.
Wolftalker e Naming of Brook Storyteller Book ree
Ghillian Potts
ISBN: 978-1-909208-49-0 YA FANTASY £9.99
e third and nal book in the Brook Storyteller Series. Brook is sent by the Storytellers to right a wrong, and in the process takes on an apprentice, Cricket. Far more important to her is her ‘cousin’
Drinks-the-wind, a Wildron wolf.Together the three of them discover a plot that puts all their friends, and even the Overlord, in danger.
