Flipped eye launches non-fiction imprint and young editor search

Flipped eye is launching a new non-fiction imprint, phipl, and is also looking for an editorial intern from an underrepresented background, with no experience required.

Phipl will launch with a collection of essays by International Dublin Literary Award-winning author José Eduardo Agualusa. Agualusa's collection, Paradise and Other Hells, is described as an "irreverent, intelligent and near impish essay collection — fizzing with his trademark humour and proboscis-sharp observation". It will be released on 10th June, inaugurating the imprint.

It has been translated from Portuguese by a team including Rahul Bery, Andrew McDougall, Robin Patterson, Francisco Vilhena and Agualusa’s long-time translator, Daniel Hahn. The essays include: observations on a mugging foiled by laughter; the power of a gesture; the world’s oldest tree; Bob Dylan; “Africa’s estrangement from itself”; and aspects of Rio, Lisbon, Luanda and Berlin.

The indie has also launched a separate nationwide search for a young editor from a background underrepresented in the UK’s publishing industry. With no previous experience required, applicants need to be UK residents, not in education, able to commit to two days of work a week for a duration of six months. As a paid intern, the successful candidate will receive hands-on editorial training at flipped eye’s offices in London or remotely.

Applications for the new editorial internship open today, with a two-week submission window closing 31st May. Applicants should express their interest online, submitting a short bio and a cover note explaining why they're interested in the internship. There is no requiirement for a CV and  flipped eye will be selecting the candidate based on their passion and drive to become an editor, not on any qualification or what they achieved at school.

Nii Ayikwei Parkes, director and senior editor at flipped eye, said: “At flipped eye, we work extensively with our authors to try to understand their unique influences and norms; rather than send instructions, we send questions and more questions and we listen and listen some more as we help writers hone their voices and their craft. We approach our work with a humility that we feel comes not just from our non-traditional backgrounds, but also our working class roots. The working class is massively underrepresented in publishing and much of it is due to the inability of working class persons to forfeit a living wage for long enough to get on the ladder in publishing. We'd like to help change that.”

The launch comes as the press, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, prepares to publish poetry collections by Eleanor Penny, Louisa Adjoa Parker and Maia Elsner this summer, in addition to a play by Gabriel Gbadamosi.

Gbadamosi's play "Abolition" is set in 1792, and reframes Britain's role in the abolition of slavery. It follows the journey of the "Blackamoor Jenny" out of Liverpool, through its sixth voyage to Africa. Meanwhile, in the ship of state, the radical abolitionist William Fox and William Wilberforce debate the urgency of ending the slave trade. It will be published on 17th June.

Parker's collection, She Can Still Sing, will also be released on 17th June, following a virtual bookshop event organised with the Bookbag Bookshop in Exeter, in partnership with Africa Writes. The collection was written while Parker grieved the loss of a friend who took her life after a long struggle with mental illness. The collection is summarised as: "A eulogy that projects from light — one part love letter to the mundane, three parts hymn to the departed, four parts ride of wonderment, these poems celebrate the bonds of friendship and family even as they leave love notes to the departed stuffed into surprising images." 

Eleanor Penny has been nominated for the Forward Prize for Poetry and twice shortlisted for Young People’s Poet Laureate for London. She is the founder of the poetry podcast Bedtime Stories for the End of the World, asking some of the UK’s top poets to re-imagine their favourite myths, fairytales and legends. Her début collection, Mercy, out on 24th June includes poems on cruelty, love and obsession, and how familial and community memory warps and blooms over time. 

Finally, Overrun by Wild Boars by Maia Elsner, out 15th July, is billed as a "search for intimacy and survival in the face of persecution and trauma", and is inspired by her family history that brings together two faiths, multiple languages, as well as Polish and Mexican mythologies.