Newsletter Signup
Barbican Press Logo

Books with guts & heart

  • Home
  • Books
    • Fiction
      • Historical
      • LGBT+
      • Women’s
      • SciFi
    • Poetry
    • Nonfiction
      • Maritime
    • Children’s
    • Drama
  • Authors
  • News & Happenings
    • Read More!
  • Mentoring
  • About
    • Where in the World?
  • Contact
  • Home
  • Books
    • Fiction
      • Historical
      • LGBT+
      • Women’s
      • SciFi
    • Poetry
    • Nonfiction
      • Maritime
    • Children’s
    • Drama
  • Authors
  • News & Happenings
    • Read More!
  • Mentoring
  • About
    • Where in the World?
  • Contact
Poetry

Books

Petrarch’s Canzoniere: Scattered Rhymes in a fresh verse translation by Peter Thornton

Peter Thornton

Hope Walks By Me

Russ Litten

Pansy Boy

Paul Harfleet

Dante’s Inferno

Peter Thornton

The Feynman Challenge – a debut collection of eco poetry

James Thornton

Notes from a Mountain Village

James Thornton

Stay up to date

Please join the party! We'll ship you news and stories you might like - but not share your details with anyone else.

Follow us on Twitter >
Publishing next year. One of the Best Books of the Publishing next year. One of the Best Books of the Year – a Must Read – Sunday Times In the New Testament, we are told that Jesus resurrected a beloved friend named Lazarus from the dead. Yet the Gospel of John – which contains this episode – does not tell us how Jesus accomplished this miracle or if he had a special purpose for saving his companion. Cover design by Jason Anscomb #barbicanpress #RichardZimler #martingoodman #indiepublisher #bookcoverdesign #coverdesign #coverdesigner #cover #bookstagram #bookdesign #bookcover #bookporn #bookjacket #bookstagram #coverart #jacketdesign #printdesign #print #graphicdesign #booklovers #anscomb #jasonanscomb #rawshock #rawshockdesign In The Gospel According to Lazarus, Richard Zimler narrates this mysterious and influential story from Lazarus’ own point of view. After he is awakened from death, Lazarus has difficulties regaining his previous identity and confidence. His experience of death has left him fragile and disoriented, and his newfound fame is a burden he does not want. Worse, his faith has been shattered because he remembers nothing of any afterlife. In compelling flashbacks, we learn of Lazarus’ initial meeting with Jesus – during their boyhood in Nazareth – and discover how he came to earn his friend’s trust and gratitude. Back in the present time – during the Passion Week – Jesus tells him, however, that their meeting as young boys was no accident and offers a surprising explanation for why he brought them together. After Jesus’s arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, Lazarus concludes that his whole life may have been a test for this chance to save his beloved friend from crucifixion. But will Jesus accept Lazarus’ final sacrifice? In Zimler’s impeccably researched and highly moving novel, Jesus is presented as a mystical healer within the context of ancient Jewish practice and tradition. Indeed, one of the objectives of this novel was to restore to him and the other characters their Judaism.
Cover design for @thepansyproject by Paul Harfleet Cover design for @thepansyproject by Paul Harfleet. A graphic novel in rhymed couplets, in which a young boy tackles homophobia in school by planting flowers at the site of homophobic attacks. Out in the natural world, a boy is in awe of its beauty. Birds in flight amaze him. School squats at the end of summer. He is fey, and bullies aren’t comfortable with that. They attack him. How can he defend himself? In a rhyming poem, the story comes to life in vivid graphic art. The boy takes strength from the flowers he loves. Where bullies pinned his life with their hate, he plants a pansy. The power of his actions empowers his school to value what is delicate and different. The book comes complete with a personal field guide to the flowers that adorn and the birds that fly across its pages. #PansyBoy #LGBT #poetry #childrensbooks #childrensbookillustration
I’ve had a severe anxiety disorder for my whole I’ve had a severe anxiety disorder for my whole life. Growing up, I kept my illness secret, even from my parents. Partly through the shame of the things I thought, the things I was afraid of, my hidden behaviours, but also because it was the 00s and nobody seemed to talk about these things – I had no idea what was up with me. That secrecy, confusion, isolation, avoidance, is what The Fear Talking is all about. I know there are others out there who feel as isolated as I did, so I wrote the book I always wish someone had handed me. This is not a book about getting better, or turning my experiences into something positive. Sometimes, a reader needs a sense of camaraderie above self-help. There are enough success stories out there about an author having a mental illness and then either getting better or turning their experiences into something positive. Not everyone does recover, and I want that position to be better represented. The Fear Talking is written in the confused and terrified voice of the sixteen-year-old me who didn’t know what the hell was wrong with him. It’s a book about breaking through that wall, someone learning about anxiety from the very bottom, learning to communicate it. It’s about the damage it causes to others, but also the moments of real connection that come from finally understanding each other. Cover design by Jason Anscomb #barbicanpress #ChrisWestoby #martingoodman #indiepublisher #bookcoverdesign #coverdesign #coverdesigner #cover #bookstagram #bookdesign #bookcover #bookporn #bookjacket #bookstagram #coverart #jacketdesign #printdesign #print #graphicdesign #booklovers #anscomb #jasonanscomb #rawshock #rawshockdesign
It’s 2096. Scientists work to protect a baking p It’s 2096. Scientists work to protect a baking planet. What a drought-stricken Europe needs is rain. What it gets is a messiah. Eli is born in a suburb of Prague. A rainstorm heralds the birth. Perhaps this messiah is for real. Eli’s father abandons the family to become the dictator’s right-hand man. Eli’s elder brother Marek guides Eli through his short and powerful life. Can tales of a messiah be enough to heal a ravaged planet in which few babies are born? If so, Marek works with the zeal of a prophet. Aged 72, he’s still going strong. A new follower joins Marek’s community, young Natalia. She awakens the old man to the joys of the body. But what’s the worth of a human love when the environment is collapsing? Marek sets out to find his answer. My Brother the Messiah is a story about daring to seed the future of our planet. Book jacket by Jason Anscomb #martinvopenka #Barbicanpress #coverdesign #bookdesign #bookjacketdesign #bookcover #bookstagram #design #graphicdesign #type #typography #bookcoverdesign #bookporn #bookjacket #coverart #anscomb #jasonanscomb #rawshock #rawshockdesign
Exiled from America to be free to live with the ma Exiled from America to be free to live with the man he loves, the Irish-American poet James Thornton returns to the same French Pyrenean village every Spring. Over 25 years he has settled at his desk, the flanks of hillsides beyond his window, and captured in verse the life and nature of this mountain community. James’s poetry conjures the lives of villagers. snakes, turtles, fish, birds, flowers, crops, insects, and hogs who make this valley their home. ‘James Thornton speaks as both a poet who has colonised science and a scientist who speaks a poetic tongue.’ – E.O.Wilson, double Pulitzer prizewinner. Book jacket by Jason Anscomb #Barbicanpress #coverdesign #bookdesign #bookjacketdesign #bookcover #bookstagram #design #graphicdesign #type #typography #bookcoverdesign #bookporn #bookjacket #coverart #anscomb #jasonanscomb #rawshock #rawshockdesign
Barbican Press have a brand new website. We would Barbican Press have a brand new website. We would love you to come and take a look! Barbican Press has an “impressive portfolio of beautifully crafted and utterly transgressive fiction” – The Morning Star. Our list holds poetry, drama, writing for children, and compelling nonfiction too, including vivid tales of maritime communities. The publisher is the writer Martin Goodman. He knew what sort of publisher he would like to find for his own work, and so created it for others. The Press was born in Plymouth – hence the name ‘Barbican Press’ for the Barbican in that city, and a sense that a Barbican is a strong and protective space in which writers with a fighting spirit can take shelter. Many of our titles were written as the creative elements of PhDs in Creative Writing. Universities can offer safe harbour for writers, challenging them with regular and expert feedback, giving them years in which their books achieve full voice without the necessity to compromise. Understandably, mainstream publishers tend to seek work that resembles other books that have made money. Breakout originality is harder to place. Those are the books we give a home to. #barbicanpress #bookcoverdesign #coverdesign #bookstagram #bookdesign #bookcover #bookjacket #martingoodman #independantpublisher #indiepublisher #fictionpublishing #non-fictionpublishing #poetrypublishing #booksofinstagram
What is ‘the secret baby room’? If there was j What is ‘the secret baby room’? If there was just one answer, you wouldn’t have a novel. D.D. Johnston‘s psychological thriller starts off with Claire looking out from the window of her new home on a Manchester estate. Up on the 8th floor of a derelict tower block she spots a woman feeding a baby. Surely she does? Page my page she goes in search of her answer, and uncovers layer after layer of the city. And all that the secret baby room can mean. Cover design by Jason Anscomb #d.d.johnston #thesecretbabyroom #barbicanpress #martingoodman #indiepublisher #bookcoverdesign #coverdesign #coverdesigner #cover #bookstagram #bookdesign #bookcover #bookporn #bookjacket #bookstagram #coverart #jacketdesign #printdesign #print #graphicdesign #booklovers #anscomb #jasonanscomb #rawshock #rawshockdesign
Red Hands is a deeply compelling tale of a woman c Red Hands is a deeply compelling tale of a woman caught inside the destruction of a regime. Iordana is a normal girl, brought up with all the perks of Romania’s corrupt communist regime. Then she falls in love and marries the eldest son of her parents’ arch-rival, Romania’s monstrous dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. They become the in-laws from hell, but she brings them their only grandson. And then there’s the 1989 revolution, when crowds will kill anyone with the Ceausescu name. In all the blood and chaos, can Iordana keep her little son alive? Cover design by Jason Anscomb #ceausescu #barbicanpress #colinw.sargent #martingoodman #indiepublisher #bookcoverdesign #coverdesign #coverdesigner #cover #bookstagram #bookdesign #bookcover #bookporn #bookjacket #bookstagram #coverart #jacketdesign #printdesign #print #graphicdesign #booklovers #anscomb #jasonanscomb #rawshock #rawshockdesign
From the mating of sea slugs to the discovery of g From the mating of sea slugs to the discovery of gravity waves, The Feynman Challenge sees James Thornton focus poetry on the realms of science. Poems are sourced with the scientific articles and papers whose narratives and wonders they explore, to help readers whose interest is spiked to travel further. Complete with an introductory essay that examines the interaction of Science, from Lucretius to now. Cover design by Jason Anscomb. #barbicanpress #peterthornton #Feynmanchallenge #Richard Feynman #poetry #poetrybook #martingoodman #indiepublisher #bookcoverdesign #coverdesign #coverdesigner #cover #bookstagram #bookdesign #bookcover #bookjacket #coverart #jacketdesign #printdesign #print #graphicdesign #booklovers #anscomb #jasonanscomb #rawshock #rawshockdesign
Follow us on Instagram >
© Barbican Press 2021. Privacy Policy
Website by Bookswarm