Announcing the Shortlisted and Longlisted Proposals: February 2025 Call for Submissions

August 26, 2025

Announcing the Shortlisted and Longlisted Proposals: February 2025 Call for Submissions

In February 2025 we invited proposals for essay collections, novellas, poetry collections for adults, and poetry and fiction for children. This was the first time that we included full poetry collections in our open call, and we felt quite overwhelmed by the quality and range of the proposals submitted in response!

We received a total of 467 proposals, and after some tough decisions, we are delighted to announce here the shortlisted and longlisted authors. We hope to take 1-2 proposals from this shortlist forward to publication in 2027. In the meantime, you can find out more about the proposals which had us in thrall this round.

With grateful thanks to all the writers who submitted proposals for trusting us with your work.

Shortlisted Authors

Cath Drake with Atlas of Human Endeavour

Grounded in the author’s experiences as an environmental scientist and journalist, Atlas of Human Endeavour hooked us with its crisp and lively treatment of ecological concerns.

Craig Barker with A Welcome Party of Cicadas

A compelling and expansive proposal which examines language learning, proximity and distance, in poems overseen by a shadowy figure known only as ‘The Director’.

Instagram: @cregfromengland

Elleke Boehmer with The Boy in The Cave

An arresting novella exploring contemporary migration to Europe. Borderlines, loss and remaking are tackled here with a distinct and intriguing narrative voice.

Bluesky: @ellekeboehmer.bsky.social‬

Emily Spivey with My Body Is An OS Map

Themes of personal memory, mythmaking and ‘how we hold maps in our bodies’ make for compulsive reading in this sharp and highly original collection of lyric essays.

Instagram: @emilyaspivey

Jane Wilkinson with Household Ghosts

A luminous collection of poems navigating loss and seeking solace in the natural world; Wilkinson’s turns of phrase are consistently surprising and immensely satisfying.

Prea Kaur with my heart an aquarium

Tracking the migration and transgenerational trauma of the Sikh diaspora from Punjab to England, Kaur’s poetry collection brings to bear an impressive formal range on an obscured, powerfully resonant narrative.

Instagram: @preakaur

Rachel Jeffcoat with There Is No Word Alive For What I Am

Weirdness, wildness and ‘stepping off the given path’ are all celebrated in this tender and uplifting collection of poems, which blends a deft use of form with a close eye to the opportunities for enlightenment hidden within mundane encounters.

Instagram: @rachel__jeffcoat

Bluesky: @racheljeffcoat.bsky.social‬

Rachel Rankin with a translation of Karoline Brændjord’s I Want to Wake Up to the World

A sparse, devastating and innovative ecological poetry collection charting grief in the aftermath of a mother’s suicide, translated from the Norwegian. We were particularly struck by ‘Elm’.

Instagram: @rakelrank

Bluesky: @rakelrank.bsky.social‬

Rakhshan Rizwan with Why is it called a strawberry if it doesn’t have a straw?

Fern leaves, Nutella, and ponytails: capturing the whole range of a child’s contagious curiosity, this energetic and playful middle-grade poetry collection delights in the wonders, mysteries and contradictions of the everyday.

Melanie Han with No Way of Returning Home

A mesmeric and haunting poetry collection which probes displacement, resilience, trauma and silence in the context of Korean ‘comfort women’ during World War II to trouble notions of past and present, collective and personal.

Instagram: @melhan