Books | Poems | News | About

sidekickBOOKS

Submissions Call: &Friends Series!

Send us your ideas for a collaborative, combinatory masterpiece!

Do you have an obsession? A subject that you think would make an incredible Sidekick-style book? If so, read on.

In a break from our normal Sidekick practice, we’re handing over the curatorial reins to you. We’re seeking proposals for the &Friends series, an experimental new series of amalgamatic poetry books, in which individual author-editors collate, curate, adapt and remix, combining original composition with work they’ve solicited or borrowed from elsewhere.

Please note: This call is not for single-author collections, but hybrid books, in the spirit of our Headbooks and Hipflasks.

We’re inviting 200-word proposals, along with a sample of 10-20 pages (not full manuscripts). In your submission, we’ll ask you to discuss the amalgamatic elements in your proposal and share your vision for the book.

You can view examples of two amalgamatic works in progress on the call page, and we suggest checking out the sample pages for our other titles to get a feel for what we’re looking for, as well as subjects we’ve already covered in depth.

Please read the full call for submissions and ask us any questions before sending proposals. We look forward to reading your work!

Deadline: 15 August 2026

You Again: A Book of Love-Hate Stories

I conclude that I am pretending to impress myself. I conclude that I only grew a personality to make someone like you love me. — Lotte Mitchell Reford

You Again: A Book of Love-Hate Stories

Price range: £4.00 through £8.00

edited by Kirsten Irving and Jon Stone

What are the things you can’t live with or without? What can we expect from relationships that refuse to resolve themselves one way or the other? You Again collects together accounts of ruinous tension and blighted passion, mixing extracts and cut-ups from famous works with fresh slivers of contemporary writing.

90pp, ISBN 978-1-909560-30-7

Please note: Due to customs issues, we can no longer ship directly to Europe. European friends, please order from our distributors at Inpress or through your local bookshop.

Description

The Hipflask Series is an improvised dance of unusual forms and genres, played out across four collaborative, pocket-sized collections. Each book comprises a selection of written works that skirt close to (or cross the border into) poetic composition, revealing the dynamic relationship between poetry and other written forms.

The major theme of each Hipflask is extrapolated from one or other of these key aspects of modern poetry – play, appropriation, subtext and conflict – but the result is a series that occupies its own strange niche: mutant miscellanies, oddball assortments. Good for a nip or a shot or a long, deep swig.

What are the things you can’t live with or without? What can we expect from relationships that refuse to resolve themselves one way or the other? You Again collects together accounts of ruinous tension and blighted passion, mixing extracts and cut-ups from famous works with fresh slivers of contemporary writing. There’s romance, of course – but other kinds of entanglement as well, all awash with delight and frustration, rage and joy, hope and perplexity.

Contributors

Emily Brontë, G. K. Chesterton, Claire Crowther, Lara Frankena, Caroline Gilfillan, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ramona Herdman, Wes Lee, Julia Rose Lewis, A. A. Milne, Claire Orchard, Ovid, Lotte Mitchell Reford, Henry T. Riley, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sappho, Mary Shelley, Paul Stephenson.

You may also like…

Look Again: a Book of Hidden Messages

If his cypher was discovered too soon, his life would be the forfeit. If never, his labour would be in vain …

Look Again: A Book of Hidden Messages

Price range: £4.00 through £8.00

edited by Kirsten Irving and Jon Stone

We invite you to reflect on all the ways messages can be hidden – and uncovered – in other messages. More than that, we invite you to think about the relationship between the within and the without, and what it tells us about ourselves. Look Again is a compilation of curious poems, short texts and extracts from longer works that all have something to hide or reveal, taking their cues from riddles, cyphers and imaginary languages.

98pp, ISBN 978-1-909560-31-4

Please note: Due to customs issues, we can no longer ship directly to Europe. European friends, please order from our distributors at Inpress or through your local bookshop.

Description

Cryptic symbols, secret languages, riddles and warnings hidden in plain sight. Look Again is a pocket cipher, full of double meanings and linguistic secret passageways. Carry it with you. Read and re-read it. You won’t want to miss a thing.

The Hipflask Series is an improvised dance of unusual forms and genres, played out across four collaborative, pocket-sized collections. Each book comprises a selection of written works that skirt close to (or cross the border into) poetic composition, revealing the dynamic relationship between poetry and other written forms.

The major theme of each is extrapolated from one or other of these key aspects of modern poetry – play, appropriation, subtext and conflict – but the result is a series that occupies its own strange niche: mutant miscellanies, oddball assortments. Good for a nip or a shot or a long, deep swig.

Contributors

Eve Bishop, Charles Carroll Bombaugh, Adam Crothers, James Kearns, Vika Gusak, Harry North, Jason Johnson, Paul Kavanagh, Claire Orchard, Belle Roach, Patrick Davidson Roberts, Imogen Ruth, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Elizabeth Wells Gallup

CONTACT:

contact [a] sidekickbooks.com

Sidekick Books Site assembled by Jon.
Wordpress TwentySixteen theme used to power the news and books sections.