Penned in the Margins to take ‘indefinite hiatus’

Award-winning independent publisher Penned in the Margins is to stop producing new work in January 2023, due to a change in the director’s personal circumstances, after a “very challenging” year.

The indie arts company, which also serves as a production house, will continue trading as a limited company, and its backlist will continue to be available through pennedinthemargins.co.uk and via its distributor IPS. Inpress Books will continue representing its backlist sales to the trade, and it will maintain a workspace at Toynbee Studios for storage and distribution of stock.

The decision was a result of changes in director Tom Chivers’ personal circumstances. He emphasised it was not a response to loss of funding from Arts Council England, as its bid for 2023-26 National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) status was withdrawn in September.

“It’s been 18 years since I started Penned in the Margins as a small poetry reading series in south London,” Chivers said. “Since then we’ve published more than 90 books, produced hundreds of events, and created a wide range of theatrical productions and projects. I have recently had a change in my personal life that makes it financially impossible to continue producing new work. The company will take an indefinite hiatus from January 2023, but our books will still be available in bookshops and through our website. It has been a very challenging year and I recognise the impact this news has had on our authors, especially those with books scheduled for the next 12 months.”

He added: “The greatest pleasure and privilege of building this company has been working with talented, risk-taking and committed artists, many of whom I now count as friends. I would like to offer my deepest thanks to the hundreds of poets, writers, playwrights, musicians, spoken word artists, theatremakers, videographers, designers and illustrators with whom we have collaborated over the past 18 years, as well as the venues, funders and cultural partners who have made our work possible.”

Penned in the Margins began in 2004 as a series of poetry events in a converted railway arch in Herne Hill, south London. Its first book, Generation Txt, was published in 2006 and featured six up-and-coming poets, including future novelist Joe Dunthorne and playwright Inua Ellams. The group subsequently toured a stage show to 14 venues across England.

Since then, the company has published more than 90 titles of poetry, fiction, non-fiction and criticism. Its authors include major names in contemporary poetry such as Raymond Antrobus, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, Luke Kennard and Luke Wright, as well as prose writers such as Justin Hopper, Abi Palmer and  Amber Massie-Blomfield. Penned in the Margins books have won or been shortlisted for more than 50 literary awards, including the Rathbones Folio Award, the Forward Prizes, the TS Eliot Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Costa Book Awards and a British Book Design and Production Award.  

Chivers added: “I would like to express my gratitude for the hard work and talent of our core staff past and present, especially outgoing sales manager and assistant editor Roisin Dunnett, and our two creative associates, Russell Bender and Nick Murray. We have also benefited from the support and wisdom of an outstanding advisory board, consisting of Annette Brook, Jess Chandler, Hannah Hood, Julia Payne, Ben Pygall, Aki Schilz and Doug Wallace.”