The North Recommends: Fox & Windmill
Fox & Windmill Books is an independent publisher founded and based in the industrial city of Bradford.
Myself and my co-founder Sara Razzaq met at the Bradford Literature Festival and later discovered we were undergraduates of Huddersfield University studying English Literature and Creative writing respectively. We founded this indie press in March 2021 with a clear goal in mind: to bridge the gap within the publishing industry for British South Asian writers. Our publishing house aims to provide a platform for these writers so their voices and incredible stories can reach bookworms far and wide.
Our favourite and most asked question is, ‘where did you get the name for your company?’ And the story is, I was walking across Penistone Moors in Haworth. We were really struggling for a quirky and unique name for our company and toyed with many ideas. Our mentor, Kevin Duffy of Bluemoose Books, told us it’d come to us. Little did I know that on my walk, I’d come across a house with a fox prancing on a weathervane. I’d clean forgotten the name for weathervane and called Sara, saying there was a fox on a windmill. It stuck and it was pretty perfect too as Haworth and the Bradford-based Brontës mean so much to us.
We’ve launched a writing competition as a pre-launch to Fox & Windmill. We are calling for short stories and poetry by British South Asian writers to include in an anthology. Our award-winning judging panel will select six short stories and six poems to publish. The anthology will also feature already established award-winning writers, such as Zaffar Kunial and Sairish Hussain and will be reviewed by Suhaymiah Manzoor-Khan, Amit Dhand and Andrew McMillan. The submission period closes on 30 October!
We’ll be opening for full manuscripts in Autumn 2022, though we have received some brilliantly written and gripping manuscripts already for our publication line-up next year. We have a real diverse of genres from science fiction, mythology and a moving love story, all written by British South Asians. We are so excited to share these incredible stories with the world and we are so proud to have created a platform for these writers to be published.
We are dedicated to making the process of publishing as accessible and inclusive as possible so no writer from backgrounds like ours, struggle in reaching their goals of publishing their book. Our ambition for Fox & Windmill Books, aside from the inclusivity, is to become a hub for aspiring writers where they can voice their questions and where we can lend support and encouragement.
If we can publish a story that resonates with you, then we have succeeded in our goal.
Visit Fox & Windmill’s website, and follow them on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.