Founded in 2001 by Nii Ayikwei Parkes, an editor and award-winning writer, flipped eye publishing has won global critical acclaim, playing a key role in developing poets such as Inua Ellams, Malika Booker, Miriam Nash, Nick Makoha and Warsan Shire. Our writers are Latinx, Queer, White, school dropouts, Intersex, degree holders, Black, Gay, old, young, Asian, Straight… and they all feel heard and at home with flipped eye publishing, expressing themselves with freedom, creating affirming and challenging work.
Always at the forefront of innovation in the publishing world, we were one of the first publishers in the world to have a regular subscription mailing list (in 2005) as well as a regular podcast – the hugely popular Poem of the Week Redux, with readings from the likes of Roger Robinson, Warsan Shire, Inua Ellams and Malika Booker – in 2010. Our small staff has meant that we have been unable to maintain many of these initiatives, but we believe in constant experimentation, always pushing boundaries.
Our audiences recognise our diversity and commitment and that is why we have been one of the most imitated small presses in the UK for years. Our mouthmark series – a groundbreaking, goal-focussed, poetry pamphlet series – revolutionised pamphlet publishing in the UK. Launched in 2004 with the first book released in 2005, it was the first time that a series was dedicated to developing writers with a slant towards transposing the energy of the stage to the page. The goal-focussed approach has since been imitated by the likes of Tall Lighthouse and Faber, but what remains unique about the mouthmark series, which unveiled the likes of Inua Ellams, Warsan Shire, Nick Makoha and Malika Booker, is that it was run on an incredible budget of £300 per title.
flipped eye publishing is a lean, reader-focussed, writer-loving, boat-rocking support system for culture that matters. History is just a beginning for us. Here’s to the next eighteen years.