At flipped eye we don’t believe in hashtag activism. We hold as sacred the idea that your activism must be woven into the fabric of the work you do. Because we have witnessed the difference that a pound of disposable income can make to the accessibility of literature, we price our books as low as we possibly can; because we advocate the recognition of the value of the oral in the development of storytelling talent, we edit with our ears to the ground; because we understand how class, colonial ideas and privilege skew notions of quality, and blind gatekeepers to the urgency and importance of work from the margins, we recruit our editorial staff differently – and we edit with the humility of constant learners. Our list reflects what happens naturally when you actively work to ease out the biases of the publishing industry: our writers are majority women and our list blooms with writers who identify as Latinx, Queer, Intersex, Black, Gay, Asian, Straight and everything in-between.
We fight injustice wherever we see it, as you can see this archive post from our senior editor Nii Ayikwei Parkes, when he railed at the management of the Michael Marks pamphlet award when our author Warsan Shire’s début pamphlet was disqualified from entry on the most fickle of technicalities. Of course, the #FECrew had the last laugh because the book that was disqualified went on to sell thousands of copies and become one of the most quoted poetry pamphlets ever!
One of the persistent imbalances in the publishing industry that we have been working to help relieve is the underrepresentation of Black and working class people in editorial roles. We have been offering short internships during our manuscript reading periods, but we are working on a more substantial scheme that we will launch very soon. In the meantime, we continue our vital work of bringing you the finest literature at street prices.