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ADAM LOWEPEEPAL TREE PRESS, PUBLICITY & SOCIAL MEDIAMeet Adam Lowe, Social Media & Publicity Officer at Peepal Tree Press!
A writer, performer, and publisher from Leeds, now based in Manchester, Adam’s passion for amplifying underrepresented writers, along with his own career as a poet and editor, makes him a vital part of the indie publishing world and a champion of diverse voices in the North. For our latest Press of the Month interview, Adam shared insights into Peepal Tree Press’ history, their founding ethos, and some of their latest books – including works from Caribbean literary legends, Black British writers, and fresh new voices – as well as their recent partnership with HopeRoad Publishing and its Small Axe imprint. |
JR: Thanks for finding the time to chat, Adam. I really appreciate it. So, is today a work from home day?
AL: I've actually been working from home since about 2015, I think.
JR: Oh, right. Okay.
AL: I used to commute three days a week from Manchester. When I lived in the city centre, that was kind of okay, but it became a lot harder once I moved out to Salford, into the sticks. We've got quite a few people who work remotely anyway and have done for quite a while. Because I mainly do online work, it wasn’t really essential for me to be in the office.
Now, since lockdown, everybody’s kind of like that. We realised we didn’t actually need anyone in the office. It saves a lot on the heating bill! The only thing we need someone there for is sending out and receiving books.
JR: Yeah, they can take over a bit.
AL: Those are important tasks, of course, but beyond that, that’s really it. Hannah [Bannister], our operations director, is in most days, mainly to handle book collections since we receive a lot of them at the office. Then there’s Lucy [Kent], who’s relatively new—she’s managing a lot of the admin and handling orders, helping Hannah with that. I think Lucy only works a couple of days a week, and one of those is specifically for processing orders.
Everyone else, including Jeremy [Poynting], our publisher, just works from home because it’s more efficient, more effective, and saves a lot of time.
JR: I’ve always been in bookshops, so working from home was never really on the cards for me. When I ended up leaving the bookshop over a year ago, adjusting to remote work has been a little weird. I always felt like I used to bring work home with me before — but now we’re literally tripping over it. It’s been a bit of a shock to the system.
I’d love to hear about your experiences working with a publisher, particularly with a small press. We might touch on how you got into publishing in the first place, as well as your likes and dislikes—especially since I know you’re a writer as well. Maybe we’ll explore how that shapes your perspective on publishing.
But let’s start with broad strokes. The publisher has been going for nearly 40 years now. Can you tell us a bit about its origins and mission?
AL: Yeah, so Peepal Tree is the same age as me. It was December 1985 when they published their first book, Backdam People.
Jeremy had been to Guyana visiting his friend Rooplall Monar, a writer. At the time, they were struggling to get books printed in the country. People weren’t smuggling in paper—they were smuggling in more practical things like cheese—so publishing books in Guyana was practically impossible.
Jeremy, naively, suggested, "Well, maybe I can go back to England and get this book printed for you." And that’s how it all started—a life of toil for poor Jeremy! What began as a small favour ended up taking over his life. First, it took over his garage, then an entire building in Leeds.
He soon realised there wasn’t much publishing infrastructure in the Caribbean. Back in the day, publishers like Longman and Heinemann had Caribbean imprints, but they closed down over time. By the 1980s, when Jeremy was starting Peepal Tree Press, those imprints were already fading away.
He saw a gap in the market and began distributing the books himself while working a day job at a Further Education College in Leeds. At first, he tried using a printer at the college but eventually bought his own from Sweden. It was literally held together with a rubber band, and he and Hannah had to stand on it to get it to work!
For a long time, it was just Jeremy. Then, in the '90s, Hannah joined through an employment scheme. Funnily enough, that’s exactly how I would get involved too! She’s been with the press for over 30 years now.
Then, in 2005, they launched Inscribe—we’re celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. Initially, it was just for Black and Asian writers in Yorkshire. We worked with people like Khadijah Ibrahiim, who I keep seeing on Steph’s Packed Lunch. There was Rommi Smith, who became parliamentary writer-in-residence, and Seni Seneviratne, a long-time poet of ours, who is Sri Lankan and queer and writes really interesting books.
At the time, Inscribe was led by Kadija George, who had run an arts organisation in London called Centreprise [Literature Development Project]. When that lost funding, she joined Inscribe to set up the project.
AL: I've actually been working from home since about 2015, I think.
JR: Oh, right. Okay.
AL: I used to commute three days a week from Manchester. When I lived in the city centre, that was kind of okay, but it became a lot harder once I moved out to Salford, into the sticks. We've got quite a few people who work remotely anyway and have done for quite a while. Because I mainly do online work, it wasn’t really essential for me to be in the office.
Now, since lockdown, everybody’s kind of like that. We realised we didn’t actually need anyone in the office. It saves a lot on the heating bill! The only thing we need someone there for is sending out and receiving books.
JR: Yeah, they can take over a bit.
AL: Those are important tasks, of course, but beyond that, that’s really it. Hannah [Bannister], our operations director, is in most days, mainly to handle book collections since we receive a lot of them at the office. Then there’s Lucy [Kent], who’s relatively new—she’s managing a lot of the admin and handling orders, helping Hannah with that. I think Lucy only works a couple of days a week, and one of those is specifically for processing orders.
Everyone else, including Jeremy [Poynting], our publisher, just works from home because it’s more efficient, more effective, and saves a lot of time.
JR: I’ve always been in bookshops, so working from home was never really on the cards for me. When I ended up leaving the bookshop over a year ago, adjusting to remote work has been a little weird. I always felt like I used to bring work home with me before — but now we’re literally tripping over it. It’s been a bit of a shock to the system.
I’d love to hear about your experiences working with a publisher, particularly with a small press. We might touch on how you got into publishing in the first place, as well as your likes and dislikes—especially since I know you’re a writer as well. Maybe we’ll explore how that shapes your perspective on publishing.
But let’s start with broad strokes. The publisher has been going for nearly 40 years now. Can you tell us a bit about its origins and mission?
AL: Yeah, so Peepal Tree is the same age as me. It was December 1985 when they published their first book, Backdam People.
Jeremy had been to Guyana visiting his friend Rooplall Monar, a writer. At the time, they were struggling to get books printed in the country. People weren’t smuggling in paper—they were smuggling in more practical things like cheese—so publishing books in Guyana was practically impossible.
Jeremy, naively, suggested, "Well, maybe I can go back to England and get this book printed for you." And that’s how it all started—a life of toil for poor Jeremy! What began as a small favour ended up taking over his life. First, it took over his garage, then an entire building in Leeds.
He soon realised there wasn’t much publishing infrastructure in the Caribbean. Back in the day, publishers like Longman and Heinemann had Caribbean imprints, but they closed down over time. By the 1980s, when Jeremy was starting Peepal Tree Press, those imprints were already fading away.
He saw a gap in the market and began distributing the books himself while working a day job at a Further Education College in Leeds. At first, he tried using a printer at the college but eventually bought his own from Sweden. It was literally held together with a rubber band, and he and Hannah had to stand on it to get it to work!
For a long time, it was just Jeremy. Then, in the '90s, Hannah joined through an employment scheme. Funnily enough, that’s exactly how I would get involved too! She’s been with the press for over 30 years now.
Then, in 2005, they launched Inscribe—we’re celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. Initially, it was just for Black and Asian writers in Yorkshire. We worked with people like Khadijah Ibrahiim, who I keep seeing on Steph’s Packed Lunch. There was Rommi Smith, who became parliamentary writer-in-residence, and Seni Seneviratne, a long-time poet of ours, who is Sri Lankan and queer and writes really interesting books.
At the time, Inscribe was led by Kadija George, who had run an arts organisation in London called Centreprise [Literature Development Project]. When that lost funding, she joined Inscribe to set up the project.
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I got involved with Peepal Tree around 2007–2008. I had just finished my masters degree in creative writing at Leeds. Someone forwarded me an email from Peepal Tree about their Young Inscribe programme for Black and Asian writers in West Yorkshire, so I applied and got in, along with Zodwa Nyoni, who’s now an award-winning playwright. That was run by Dorothea Smartt, who had joined Inscribe around that time.
I think I was on their radar because, back in 2005–2006, I had sent Kadija a novel I was working on. She politely declined, saying it wasn’t the kind of thing Peepal Tree published. Looking back, it was 500 pages of very overwrought prose that wanted to be poetry! At some point during Young Inscribe, I emailed them saying, "If you have any jobs, let me know—I’m looking for work in publishing." And around the end of 2007, there was a local author who had published her own book. I was interested in getting published, so I contacted her, and she said, "Well, you know, I self-published it. I set up this publishing company, but actually, that was a bit of a misadventure for me because I just wanted to focus on the writing, and the publishing has kind of taken over my life." She said, "But if you want to, I can transfer the publishing company over to you." And I was like, "Oh yeah, that sounds like a great idea"—completely oblivious to the part where she said it had been a misadventure because she didn’t get any time to write. |
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I think I paid about 900 quid for her computer and the last bits of equipment she had, and I literally took over her publishing company, kept the name, and just did my own thing with it.
I also had a literary magazine called Polluto. For the first issue, we had Jeff VanderMeer—I don’t know if you ever saw the film Annihilation?
JR: Yeah, it’s remarkable to get Jeff on board.
AL: Yeah, yeah. So he wrote for us. I got him involved just by adding him on Facebook. I was like, "Oh, I’m a huge fan of yours," and then I said, "I’m doing my own magazine now—do you want to write a story for us? I’ll pay you the pro rate." So I paid him what the pro rate was at the time—five cents per word, about $300 or so for this short story—and put it in the magazine.
I was really excited because I had this icon. I also remember speaking to Michael Moorcock, an email correspondent of mine, and he was keen to write something, too. But at that point, he was very ill, so he never actually managed to do it.
Anyway, I ran the magazine for ten issues, with Victoria Hooper doing most of the magazine’s editing from about halfway through; and published a load of books and other things on my own. Mostly science fiction and fantasy, with a lot of cross-genre stuff. And about three years later, in 2010, Peepal Tree Press was looking for a marketing associate. It was part of an arts management training scheme funded by the Arts Council, which placed Black and Asian professionals with different organisations across Yorkshire. I applied for Peepal Tree, and they were very pleased with my publishing background.
I’d essentially taught myself everything from scratch—I didn’t know what I was doing properly, just kind of bumbling along, driven by a love of books. But they were impressed with what I’d managed on my own, so I got the placement—originally for nine months from May 2010—and I’ve been there almost 15 years now. And the rest, as they say, is history.
So I took a circuitous route, but it’s nice that I started off in their writing development project, then began working for Peepal Tree. Of course, that distracted me from my own writing, so I only managed to get my own collection published with them in 2023.
JR: Yeah, Patterflash, I was going to ask about that.
AL: After having promised them it for, you know, a decade or something. It was a nice full-circle moment—the Inscribe connection and then the Peepal Tree connection coming together.
JR: Over that time, you’ve seen it evolve and change. And I think the message, certainly from an outsider’s perspective, has always stayed quite true to its origins, right from the beginning.
But as an insider, how do you feel it’s changed in the time you’ve been there?
AL: Oh, it’s changed loads. When I first started, Hannah and Jeremy were the only full-time staff members. The two people running Inscribe were part-time, working three or four days between them. There was Paulette Morris, who came in one day a week to handle orders, and a postgrad, Emma Smith, doing some copy editing and proofing on an ad hoc basis—very temporary, essentially zero hours. So it was quite a small operation.
I also had a literary magazine called Polluto. For the first issue, we had Jeff VanderMeer—I don’t know if you ever saw the film Annihilation?
JR: Yeah, it’s remarkable to get Jeff on board.
AL: Yeah, yeah. So he wrote for us. I got him involved just by adding him on Facebook. I was like, "Oh, I’m a huge fan of yours," and then I said, "I’m doing my own magazine now—do you want to write a story for us? I’ll pay you the pro rate." So I paid him what the pro rate was at the time—five cents per word, about $300 or so for this short story—and put it in the magazine.
I was really excited because I had this icon. I also remember speaking to Michael Moorcock, an email correspondent of mine, and he was keen to write something, too. But at that point, he was very ill, so he never actually managed to do it.
Anyway, I ran the magazine for ten issues, with Victoria Hooper doing most of the magazine’s editing from about halfway through; and published a load of books and other things on my own. Mostly science fiction and fantasy, with a lot of cross-genre stuff. And about three years later, in 2010, Peepal Tree Press was looking for a marketing associate. It was part of an arts management training scheme funded by the Arts Council, which placed Black and Asian professionals with different organisations across Yorkshire. I applied for Peepal Tree, and they were very pleased with my publishing background.
I’d essentially taught myself everything from scratch—I didn’t know what I was doing properly, just kind of bumbling along, driven by a love of books. But they were impressed with what I’d managed on my own, so I got the placement—originally for nine months from May 2010—and I’ve been there almost 15 years now. And the rest, as they say, is history.
So I took a circuitous route, but it’s nice that I started off in their writing development project, then began working for Peepal Tree. Of course, that distracted me from my own writing, so I only managed to get my own collection published with them in 2023.
JR: Yeah, Patterflash, I was going to ask about that.
AL: After having promised them it for, you know, a decade or something. It was a nice full-circle moment—the Inscribe connection and then the Peepal Tree connection coming together.
JR: Over that time, you’ve seen it evolve and change. And I think the message, certainly from an outsider’s perspective, has always stayed quite true to its origins, right from the beginning.
But as an insider, how do you feel it’s changed in the time you’ve been there?
AL: Oh, it’s changed loads. When I first started, Hannah and Jeremy were the only full-time staff members. The two people running Inscribe were part-time, working three or four days between them. There was Paulette Morris, who came in one day a week to handle orders, and a postgrad, Emma Smith, doing some copy editing and proofing on an ad hoc basis—very temporary, essentially zero hours. So it was quite a small operation.
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But within a short time, we grew. We were lucky to convince the Arts Council to increase our funding shortly after. When the coalition government brought in austerity, budgets started getting cut left, right, and centre. I think the Arts Council saw us as one they wanted to keep because of the work we were doing, and we actually got a bit of an uplift in funding, which helped.
Kwame Dawes was already our associate poetry editor when I joined in 2010. Then, a couple of years later, we brought in Jacob Ross as our associate fiction editor. Inscribe also expanded beyond Yorkshire to cover the whole UK. We’ve done several conferences over the years—the last big one was for our 25th anniversary, which was also the year I joined. We helped set up the SI Leeds Literary Prize after the Soroptimists International of Leeds approached us, partnering with Ilkley Literature Festival, and then several other organisations as well. The Soroptomists wanted to create a prize but weren’t sure exactly what the focus would be. We suggested a literary prize for Black and Asian women writing fiction, who at that point weren’t well represented in literary awards or bestseller lists, and that was that. I did the initial research and rationale for it, and it took off. Fiona Goh manages it excellently. So yes, it has grown and changed. When I first started, we were publishing nearly 30 books a year, which was probably a bit overambitious. Now we’re at a more sustainable 18 to 20 books annually. But our sales, reach, and media coverage have increased massively. We’ve also had some big milestones in terms of awards. We were already winning smaller prizes, and lots of Caribbean prizes, but over time it snowballed. A lot of the writers we’ve worked with had spent decades on their careers without the recognition they deserved—at least outside the Caribbean—so it felt like we were all winning together when some of the big awards came in. |
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We published Bernardine Evaristo’s first book, Islands of Abraham, in 1994, so we were all cheering her on when she won the Booker—even though Girl, Woman, Other was with an entirely different publisher, and came years after Islands of Abraham. Roger Robinson—who, like Bernardine, has spent decades supporting other writers—won the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Ondaatje Prize with A Portable Paradise. Those were really special moments—it felt like a collective celebration, because everyone at Peepal Tree feels like family.
JR: Looking at your backlist, it’s incredible. If someone hadn’t been following you online or seeing your books in shops, they might not realise the calibre of authors who started with you and have since become huge.
How do you feel the UK publishing landscape has changed in your time at Peepal Tree? There’s a lot of talk about a growing push for diversity in publishing, particularly in commercial fiction. Do you find that’s helping you as a small press, or do you feel like the larger publishers are taking some of that shine?
AL: Well, I don't think they've taken the shine because I don't think they really could. I mean, I think they've tried, obviously, but they have different drivers, and that’s fine. I think the publishing landscape has definitely changed, though. I remember when I first joined Peepal Tree, a bunch of people were saying, "Oh, e-books are going to completely get rid of print books." And we were just like, "Nah, it's not going to happen."
When I first came onboard, one of the early things we did was a survey on e-books to see whether people were interested in them. My gut instinct—and what I knew from having done my own publishing—was that some people really like e-books, but they seem to work better for certain genres than others. A lot of people still really like print, and you can have an emotional attachment to a print book, as an object, in a way you just don’t have with an e-book. So we were really pleased when the results of that survey came back and showed that our readers weren’t actually that interested in e-books. We do publish e-books, but while some people were making out that print books were going to disappear completely—dead ink, if you will—that just hasn’t happened.
I do think there has been more acceptance of indie presses, and they’re getting a lot more love, especially from smaller booksellers. That’s great because the market is no longer quite so dominated by a handful of major publishers. Of course, the big publishers have tried to get in on that a little. Sometimes they think, "Can we poach authors from these smaller presses?" or even, "Can we just buy out these little publishers and make them imprints?" But Jeremy has always had a strong vision for what publishers should be and wants to resist that kind of corporate takeover.
JR: Looking at your backlist, it’s incredible. If someone hadn’t been following you online or seeing your books in shops, they might not realise the calibre of authors who started with you and have since become huge.
How do you feel the UK publishing landscape has changed in your time at Peepal Tree? There’s a lot of talk about a growing push for diversity in publishing, particularly in commercial fiction. Do you find that’s helping you as a small press, or do you feel like the larger publishers are taking some of that shine?
AL: Well, I don't think they've taken the shine because I don't think they really could. I mean, I think they've tried, obviously, but they have different drivers, and that’s fine. I think the publishing landscape has definitely changed, though. I remember when I first joined Peepal Tree, a bunch of people were saying, "Oh, e-books are going to completely get rid of print books." And we were just like, "Nah, it's not going to happen."
When I first came onboard, one of the early things we did was a survey on e-books to see whether people were interested in them. My gut instinct—and what I knew from having done my own publishing—was that some people really like e-books, but they seem to work better for certain genres than others. A lot of people still really like print, and you can have an emotional attachment to a print book, as an object, in a way you just don’t have with an e-book. So we were really pleased when the results of that survey came back and showed that our readers weren’t actually that interested in e-books. We do publish e-books, but while some people were making out that print books were going to disappear completely—dead ink, if you will—that just hasn’t happened.
I do think there has been more acceptance of indie presses, and they’re getting a lot more love, especially from smaller booksellers. That’s great because the market is no longer quite so dominated by a handful of major publishers. Of course, the big publishers have tried to get in on that a little. Sometimes they think, "Can we poach authors from these smaller presses?" or even, "Can we just buy out these little publishers and make them imprints?" But Jeremy has always had a strong vision for what publishers should be and wants to resist that kind of corporate takeover.
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Then there are the diversity schemes, which tend to go in cycles. As people have pointed out to me, there was something called Decibel around the turn of the millennium. It was a big push to get more Black and Asian writers into publishing because, even back then, it was clear that representation was lacking. Decibel was funded for a few years, and then it ended, so the benefits quickly tailed off. There were several subsequent reports into Black and Asian writers which concluded not enough was being done, still, and then that led to Bernardine Evaristo’s The Complete Works programme, which I took part in, alongside writers such as Kayo Chingonyi, Warsan Shire and Jay Bernard. If the work isn’t ongoing, it often goes backwards.
So, while diversity in publishing is a hot topic right now, in a few years, the industry might move on to the next big thing. And as you rightly point out, a lot of the focus is on commercial fiction. If you write literary fiction or anything experimental that doesn’t fit neatly into a commercial category, you’ll struggle. We’ve seen it time and time again—authors come to us, do well with a book, maybe get some success, and then get picked up by a bigger publisher. But if their next book doesn’t sell as much, they get dropped and come back to us. The same thing has happened with midlist authors. Publishers used to be happy if an author sold a few thousand copies a year—but now they want those books to sell ten times as many copies, and if an author doesn’t hit those numbers, they get dropped. That shift really started happening in the early 2000s through the 2010s. We had a lot of authors in that position who then came over to us—and many of them stayed, because they appreciated what we could offer. It is nice to see the big publishers now making moves to have a presence in the North—opening small offices and showing interest in regional publishing. |
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But I think publishing should move out of London more broadly. It can be a very cliquey industry—people go to cocktail parties after work in London because they’re all close to each other, but that means they have very little awareness of what’s happening in the rest of the country.
Hopefully, things will continue to evolve, but I’m under no illusions—commercial publishing will always be driven by commercial considerations, and for that reason, it will always be quite fickle.
JR: You made a really good point about this strange North-South divide within small presses. The Northern Fiction Alliance and the Inpress Books group are good examples of how some of these small presses have come together to create more of an industry presence—especially online.
How has being part of those kinds of organisations helped over the last few years? Do you think they help make publishers more visible to readers, or is it more of an internal industry thing?
AL: Yeah, I think it has genuinely been helpful. There were similar initiatives trying to get off the ground even when I first got into the industry with Dog Horn Publishing.
Comma Press, who really drive a lot of the Northern Fiction Alliance, originally also ran Literature Northwest and Publishing Northwest—online platforms listing publishers and events. In many ways, the Northern Fiction Alliance is an outgrowth of those efforts, which have been around for decades.
Back when I was running Dog Horn, Wes Brown was doing Dead Ink, and Nathan Connelly—who now runs Dead Ink—was editing an online platform called The Night Light. At the time, we were all planning to launch something called The Rusty Knuckle, a joint marketing and publicity platform for indie presses. That name didn’t last—we later found out it had a slightly rude connotation—but those conversations were ongoing for a while. At one point, someone suggested calling it "The Coalition," but politically, that felt awkward at the time because of its association with the Lib Dem-Conservative coalition government.
So, when the Northern Fiction Alliance was eventually set up, it wasn’t a surprise—it was a logical next step. Ra Page [Comma Press] and others had already been having those conversations, and they brought together some of the existing initiatives to create something that worked.
This time around, though, it’s been more organised. Indie presses themselves are more organised now, which has helped. Being part of Inpress, for example, allows publishers to collectively advocate for themselves, and that’s been really beneficial.
It’s also practical—I still run Dog Horn Publishing, but I only put out one or two books a year now. And those tend to be small projects—things where someone comes to me with a plan for a specific book, and we devise a funding plan, whether that’s crowdfunding or project grants, and then I help them produce it. It’s great knowing that, through Inpress, our books are listed in catalogues and distributed effectively, even though I’m just a sole trader doing it in my free time. Even if you can’t afford to do all the marketing yourself, there’s a passive benefit to being part of that network.
There’s real strength in working as a collective. For example, as part of Inpress, we get better deals with trade terms, including on Amazon Advantage. I could never have secured the distribution I have for Dog Horn on my own, given how few books I publish. But as part of Inpress, I can. The fact that the Arts Council supports it and that booksellers take it seriously has also helped.
People outside the industry might not know what the Northern Fiction Alliance is, but that doesn’t matter. If someone attends an event without knowing the name of the organisation behind it, the important thing is that they showed up. That’s where we see the impact.
Hopefully, things will continue to evolve, but I’m under no illusions—commercial publishing will always be driven by commercial considerations, and for that reason, it will always be quite fickle.
JR: You made a really good point about this strange North-South divide within small presses. The Northern Fiction Alliance and the Inpress Books group are good examples of how some of these small presses have come together to create more of an industry presence—especially online.
How has being part of those kinds of organisations helped over the last few years? Do you think they help make publishers more visible to readers, or is it more of an internal industry thing?
AL: Yeah, I think it has genuinely been helpful. There were similar initiatives trying to get off the ground even when I first got into the industry with Dog Horn Publishing.
Comma Press, who really drive a lot of the Northern Fiction Alliance, originally also ran Literature Northwest and Publishing Northwest—online platforms listing publishers and events. In many ways, the Northern Fiction Alliance is an outgrowth of those efforts, which have been around for decades.
Back when I was running Dog Horn, Wes Brown was doing Dead Ink, and Nathan Connelly—who now runs Dead Ink—was editing an online platform called The Night Light. At the time, we were all planning to launch something called The Rusty Knuckle, a joint marketing and publicity platform for indie presses. That name didn’t last—we later found out it had a slightly rude connotation—but those conversations were ongoing for a while. At one point, someone suggested calling it "The Coalition," but politically, that felt awkward at the time because of its association with the Lib Dem-Conservative coalition government.
So, when the Northern Fiction Alliance was eventually set up, it wasn’t a surprise—it was a logical next step. Ra Page [Comma Press] and others had already been having those conversations, and they brought together some of the existing initiatives to create something that worked.
This time around, though, it’s been more organised. Indie presses themselves are more organised now, which has helped. Being part of Inpress, for example, allows publishers to collectively advocate for themselves, and that’s been really beneficial.
It’s also practical—I still run Dog Horn Publishing, but I only put out one or two books a year now. And those tend to be small projects—things where someone comes to me with a plan for a specific book, and we devise a funding plan, whether that’s crowdfunding or project grants, and then I help them produce it. It’s great knowing that, through Inpress, our books are listed in catalogues and distributed effectively, even though I’m just a sole trader doing it in my free time. Even if you can’t afford to do all the marketing yourself, there’s a passive benefit to being part of that network.
There’s real strength in working as a collective. For example, as part of Inpress, we get better deals with trade terms, including on Amazon Advantage. I could never have secured the distribution I have for Dog Horn on my own, given how few books I publish. But as part of Inpress, I can. The fact that the Arts Council supports it and that booksellers take it seriously has also helped.
People outside the industry might not know what the Northern Fiction Alliance is, but that doesn’t matter. If someone attends an event without knowing the name of the organisation behind it, the important thing is that they showed up. That’s where we see the impact.
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JR: Yeah, I hosted a Northern Fiction Alliance event before Christmas, and it was very much like that. We tried to get representatives from different small presses to talk about their experiences. Individuals like Isabelle Kenyon—just amazing to talk to. The enthusiasm and energy that go into these often one-person publishing companies are just remarkable.
I want to get back to the publishing process for a bit, particularly the editorial process. When you're looking for submissions, what kind of things are you looking for? How do you flag the kinds of books people are particularly interested in? Because it’s quite a broad scope, I’d say. AL: Well, I always say we should actually close our submission windows because we get so many submissions. And we can’t publish most of them, just because of the sheer number. But as well as Jeremy, our managing editor, we have Jacob Ross and Kwame Dawes who help with the volume. Mainly, we’re looking for books that have a clear perspective and a strong voice, that tell us something about Black British lives, Caribbean lives, South Asian lives—those kinds of things. Jeremy, and all of us really, are quite political. We signed up to Publishers for Palestine, for example, and we’ve always been politically active and conscious. That’s reflected in the work we publish—we have quite a few writers who tackle political themes, though it’s not a requirement. |
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We’re also really interested in poetry. A lot of publishers don’t publish poetry, or if they do, they don’t publish much alongside it, whereas we have a good mix of fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry. Jeremy travels to the Caribbean a lot—he goes to most of the festivals every year, scouting new writers. He’ll find people who are new to us and to publishing in general, and we try to get them to send in their work. When I went a couple of years ago to launch my book, he jokingly told me, “Everyone will try to give you their book to read, so just tell them you can’t accept books in person.” And it’s true—people will just turn up with copies of their book and say, “Here you go, please read it.” But that’s a great way to find new writers.
We’re also doing more translations now, especially in poetry. We’ve published a few bilingual editions, and even trilingual ones, which is nice. But I wouldn’t say we’re looking for anything in particular. We used to joke about how commercial publishers always wanted books with titles like Black Girl Gone on a Train—because everything was Gone Girl, Girl on a Train, that sort of thing. We’d say, “We should just do one like that, but Black.”
We’re not driven by trends. Unlike other publishers who say, “Wouldn’t it be great if we had a book about drag and rugby?”—which is something someone actually asked me to write once—we’re more likely to be led by what people are already writing.
That said, we do initiate some projects or get involved in projects that involve commissioning specific pieces of writing. For example, the Colonial Countryside project was something we wanted to support and invest in. Corinne Fowler, who wrote Green Unpleasant Land, also edited the Colonial Countryside anthology, which included stories from the children involved in the project, as well as from 10 commissioned writers.
So yeah, it’s a broad scope. But essentially, we know what we’re looking for when we see it. If it’s good writing with promise, that’s usually enough for us.
We’re also willing to work with authors for a long time to get a book up to scratch. If we receive something and think, “This is really interesting; it could be great with a little work,” we won’t just reject it outright. We’ll get it done. We can do that partly because of the Inscribe program, but also because Jeremy has always been very hands-on with editing. That’s just how we operate. The fact we have time and capacity to do that is very much thanks to the Arts Council’s continued funding—if that stopped, we’d survive, but we’d have to cut back on a lot of the writer development work we do.
JR: Before we started talking, I was scrolling back through even just the last year—Time Cleaves Itself [Jeda Pearl], Godzilla and the Songbirds [Manzu Islam], Mortality [Kwame Dawes]— which was amazing. And Children of the Ghetto [Kevin le Grande] — these books are so vastly different. Some of them were real highlights of my year.
Even going back further, I think one of the first that really stood out to me—this must have been the start of lockdown—was The Mermaid of Black Conch [Monique Roffey].
Some of these books are just so striking and unique. Do you have any particular favourites that stand out from your time working there?
AL: Well, obviously, I'm going to say my own book, but you know, we've had so many really good books. I really liked The Mermaid of Black Conch. I really liked A Portable Paradise. I also liked Pepper Seed by Malika Booker. That's a really good book. Dorothea Smart has some really great books that we've published, such as Ship Shape. As has Seni [Seneviratne] with Unknown Soldier, as has Khadijah Ibrahiim with Another Crossing. So I'm mainly into poetry, I think. I really loved Rommi Smith's Poems from Mornings and Midnights—that was a pamphlet that we did, but there’s going to be a full-length version coming out at some point. It’s been in the works for over 15 years, and apparently it’s nearly, nearly done, so we'll see.
We’re also doing more translations now, especially in poetry. We’ve published a few bilingual editions, and even trilingual ones, which is nice. But I wouldn’t say we’re looking for anything in particular. We used to joke about how commercial publishers always wanted books with titles like Black Girl Gone on a Train—because everything was Gone Girl, Girl on a Train, that sort of thing. We’d say, “We should just do one like that, but Black.”
We’re not driven by trends. Unlike other publishers who say, “Wouldn’t it be great if we had a book about drag and rugby?”—which is something someone actually asked me to write once—we’re more likely to be led by what people are already writing.
That said, we do initiate some projects or get involved in projects that involve commissioning specific pieces of writing. For example, the Colonial Countryside project was something we wanted to support and invest in. Corinne Fowler, who wrote Green Unpleasant Land, also edited the Colonial Countryside anthology, which included stories from the children involved in the project, as well as from 10 commissioned writers.
So yeah, it’s a broad scope. But essentially, we know what we’re looking for when we see it. If it’s good writing with promise, that’s usually enough for us.
We’re also willing to work with authors for a long time to get a book up to scratch. If we receive something and think, “This is really interesting; it could be great with a little work,” we won’t just reject it outright. We’ll get it done. We can do that partly because of the Inscribe program, but also because Jeremy has always been very hands-on with editing. That’s just how we operate. The fact we have time and capacity to do that is very much thanks to the Arts Council’s continued funding—if that stopped, we’d survive, but we’d have to cut back on a lot of the writer development work we do.
JR: Before we started talking, I was scrolling back through even just the last year—Time Cleaves Itself [Jeda Pearl], Godzilla and the Songbirds [Manzu Islam], Mortality [Kwame Dawes]— which was amazing. And Children of the Ghetto [Kevin le Grande] — these books are so vastly different. Some of them were real highlights of my year.
Even going back further, I think one of the first that really stood out to me—this must have been the start of lockdown—was The Mermaid of Black Conch [Monique Roffey].
Some of these books are just so striking and unique. Do you have any particular favourites that stand out from your time working there?
AL: Well, obviously, I'm going to say my own book, but you know, we've had so many really good books. I really liked The Mermaid of Black Conch. I really liked A Portable Paradise. I also liked Pepper Seed by Malika Booker. That's a really good book. Dorothea Smart has some really great books that we've published, such as Ship Shape. As has Seni [Seneviratne] with Unknown Soldier, as has Khadijah Ibrahiim with Another Crossing. So I'm mainly into poetry, I think. I really loved Rommi Smith's Poems from Mornings and Midnights—that was a pamphlet that we did, but there’s going to be a full-length version coming out at some point. It’s been in the works for over 15 years, and apparently it’s nearly, nearly done, so we'll see.
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But also, I really liked Valma Pollard's essays that we republished in Considering Woman I & II, which we knew would be really, really popular. I’ve enjoyed loads of great books over the years. Probably less so the ones that win the awards, really, because, you know, I’m just drawn to things that speak to me personally.
Our Inscribe anthologies are also a strong point--Red, Closure, Filigree, and Glimpse have all had a very high standard. And what I like about something like Filigree is it has such a really broad range of poets in it. So you've got Raymond Antrobus, you’ve got Zena Edwards, you’ve got a whole range of people in there, as well as some of our older writers who engaged with us over the years, and that’s quite nice, I think. Red has got Jackie Kay in there, and Jack Mapanje, and Daljit Nagra, and Lemn Sissay, and a bunch of other luminaries in there. That was the first Inscribe anthology we did, and the second poetry one we did, which was Filigree, therefore has a mix between all those people and then some of the people who did the Young Inscribe stuff. I really like that kind of diversity of perspective and experience—it gives a real richness. JR: You started off by telling us a bit about some of the major milestones that the press has had over the years, and certainly the ones that you've been present for, as well as the prize-winning and shortlisting and all that kind of stuff. Let’s try and look ahead to the next set of major milestones. Is there anything you're looking forward to, or anything you really just want to tick off your own personal career boxes in the next few years? |
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AL: Yeah, well, Jeremy was eligible for retirement around the time I joined Peepal Tree, but he's continued working full-time throughout. So, you know, he'll be about ready to call it a day eventually. But we've been saying that for ages.
JR: Wow, okay.
AL: Of course, it’s his baby, it’s his child, and he cares about it a great deal—and of course he should do. So what we've been talking about in the last few years is what we do afterwards. And, you know, Jeremy’s very clear that when he stands down—because, you know, he’s a white guy and he is aware of the irony of him running a Caribbean press—but now he’s like, well, when I stand down, it really needs to be somebody who’s Black or Asian who takes over, you know, where I left off.
So we’re thinking that there will be maybe a scheme we launch in the next few years, specifically to train up Black and Asian editors from the UK. We’ve spoken to the Arts Council about that, and they seem to think it’s a good idea. There have been a lot of schemes for poets or writers in general, but very few for publishers. The scheme I got onto was supposed to get more Black and Asian people into arts management back in 2010, and if we look across the board, there are still very, very few of those people. I’ve been very lucky.
So, there are lots of people that I know like me, who have the experience and the skill, but there aren't the routes for them, essentially. There’s nowhere for them to go. Quite often, a lot of people of colour who end up working for the big presses end up being siloed into marketing and publicity and struggle to get into editorial.
I think that will be a game changer, and that's probably the big thing we’ll end up working on because it will do so much for us and also for publishing in general. I know there are lots of editors out there that could do with that skill and need a bit of development, and so I think that would be really important.
JR: And what’s the next chapter for Peepal Tree Press? I mean, what are the next few titles you’re particularly excited about?
AL: We've got quite a few coming out, as always. A few titles from last year also deserve a mention, like Children of the Ghetto, which I think doesn’t get enough attention. It's part two of Kevin Le Gendre's series on Black music in Britain, here covering the '60s through the '80s. He released the first volume a few years ago, and he's very methodical in his work. It's a very rich and interesting read.
Another one from last year that we think should be grabbed by everyone is Kipling Plass by Berkley Wendell Semple. It’s a coming-of-age novel set in 1970s Guyana during a time of political turmoil. It's about teenage friends navigating their emotional and physical survival in that context, and the relationships they form. I think it’s got some really interesting elements.
For the year ahead, we have another Earl Lovelace coming out in April 2025 [The Beginning of a Journey]. It’s going to be a new collection of his poems, including work from the early part of his career. This will give readers a bit of context on how he became the writer he is today.
We also have Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, which is about migrant crossings across the channel. Very topical, though we don’t pick books just because they’re topical. Writers often write about what's going on in the world, though. I think it has a really gorgeous cover, and it’s going to be an interesting book. I’m interested to see how Small Boat will be received.
JR: When is that one coming out?
AL: It’s out on April 23rd. It’s translated by Helen Stevenson and part of our Small Axe imprint. HopeRoad Publishing, and its Small Axe imprint, are now part of our portfolio. HopeRoad joined us almost a year ago, on February 1st, 2024. They publish a mix of commercial and literary books, and their scope is a bit broader than ours as they focus on books from across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. They approached us with a proposition to become part of the Peepal Tree family. They’re now housed within Peepal Tree, but they still operate independently with their own editorial team. We handle the production and marketing, but Rosemarie Hudson still acquires and edits all the HopeRoad titles. Pete Ayrton, formerly of Serpent’s Tail, oversees the Small Axe imprint, which includes a number of classics, and so complements our own Caribbean Classics series.
We’ve also got Velma Pollard’s Karl and Other Stories, a Caribbean Modern Classics reissue, which has been out of print for a long time. I think it’s going to sell really well. And then there’s another book from Seepersad Naipaul, the father of V.S. Naipaul. It’s called Gurudeva and Other Indian Tales. This was a very early work, originally published in 1943 and republished in 1976. A lot of the stories were removed or edited for the 70s edition, but now we’ve restored the original text, including some new additions. Hopefully, this will be the most comprehensive edition of the book. We also have a book of poems coming out from John Robert Lee, a brilliant poet and very generous man, who’s always popular.
JR: Amazing. Well, Adam, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. It’s been great chatting with you.
JR: Wow, okay.
AL: Of course, it’s his baby, it’s his child, and he cares about it a great deal—and of course he should do. So what we've been talking about in the last few years is what we do afterwards. And, you know, Jeremy’s very clear that when he stands down—because, you know, he’s a white guy and he is aware of the irony of him running a Caribbean press—but now he’s like, well, when I stand down, it really needs to be somebody who’s Black or Asian who takes over, you know, where I left off.
So we’re thinking that there will be maybe a scheme we launch in the next few years, specifically to train up Black and Asian editors from the UK. We’ve spoken to the Arts Council about that, and they seem to think it’s a good idea. There have been a lot of schemes for poets or writers in general, but very few for publishers. The scheme I got onto was supposed to get more Black and Asian people into arts management back in 2010, and if we look across the board, there are still very, very few of those people. I’ve been very lucky.
So, there are lots of people that I know like me, who have the experience and the skill, but there aren't the routes for them, essentially. There’s nowhere for them to go. Quite often, a lot of people of colour who end up working for the big presses end up being siloed into marketing and publicity and struggle to get into editorial.
I think that will be a game changer, and that's probably the big thing we’ll end up working on because it will do so much for us and also for publishing in general. I know there are lots of editors out there that could do with that skill and need a bit of development, and so I think that would be really important.
JR: And what’s the next chapter for Peepal Tree Press? I mean, what are the next few titles you’re particularly excited about?
AL: We've got quite a few coming out, as always. A few titles from last year also deserve a mention, like Children of the Ghetto, which I think doesn’t get enough attention. It's part two of Kevin Le Gendre's series on Black music in Britain, here covering the '60s through the '80s. He released the first volume a few years ago, and he's very methodical in his work. It's a very rich and interesting read.
Another one from last year that we think should be grabbed by everyone is Kipling Plass by Berkley Wendell Semple. It’s a coming-of-age novel set in 1970s Guyana during a time of political turmoil. It's about teenage friends navigating their emotional and physical survival in that context, and the relationships they form. I think it’s got some really interesting elements.
For the year ahead, we have another Earl Lovelace coming out in April 2025 [The Beginning of a Journey]. It’s going to be a new collection of his poems, including work from the early part of his career. This will give readers a bit of context on how he became the writer he is today.
We also have Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, which is about migrant crossings across the channel. Very topical, though we don’t pick books just because they’re topical. Writers often write about what's going on in the world, though. I think it has a really gorgeous cover, and it’s going to be an interesting book. I’m interested to see how Small Boat will be received.
JR: When is that one coming out?
AL: It’s out on April 23rd. It’s translated by Helen Stevenson and part of our Small Axe imprint. HopeRoad Publishing, and its Small Axe imprint, are now part of our portfolio. HopeRoad joined us almost a year ago, on February 1st, 2024. They publish a mix of commercial and literary books, and their scope is a bit broader than ours as they focus on books from across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. They approached us with a proposition to become part of the Peepal Tree family. They’re now housed within Peepal Tree, but they still operate independently with their own editorial team. We handle the production and marketing, but Rosemarie Hudson still acquires and edits all the HopeRoad titles. Pete Ayrton, formerly of Serpent’s Tail, oversees the Small Axe imprint, which includes a number of classics, and so complements our own Caribbean Classics series.
We’ve also got Velma Pollard’s Karl and Other Stories, a Caribbean Modern Classics reissue, which has been out of print for a long time. I think it’s going to sell really well. And then there’s another book from Seepersad Naipaul, the father of V.S. Naipaul. It’s called Gurudeva and Other Indian Tales. This was a very early work, originally published in 1943 and republished in 1976. A lot of the stories were removed or edited for the 70s edition, but now we’ve restored the original text, including some new additions. Hopefully, this will be the most comprehensive edition of the book. We also have a book of poems coming out from John Robert Lee, a brilliant poet and very generous man, who’s always popular.
JR: Amazing. Well, Adam, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. It’s been great chatting with you.
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