We’ve just started stocking short story chapbooks from Nightjar Press. If you, like us, are fans of the gothic, the weird, the surreal, and the supernatural, we recommend you check them out here in the shop or online...
Founded by author Nicholas Royle in 2009, Nightjar Press gives great short stories the release they deserve. These are short stories not lost in multi-story collections, but single short stories by great writers in standalone affordable chapbooks. Liam Nolan spoke to Nicholas Royle to find out more…
Nicholas, you're a well published author. How does being an independent publisher fit with being a writer?
That’s a good question, because the other night I went to a reading night at Café Blah in Withington in Manchester (I was on the bill) and I was wearing a Nightjar Press T-shirt. A friend and fellow writer clocked it and said, ‘Aha, shameless self-promotion,’ and I was surprised, because of course, while Nightjar is my press, it doesn’t publish my work, so wearing the T-shirt didn't strike me at all as self-promotion. Nightjar is about publishing other writers. To me they’re distinct activities, writing and publishing. I’m not at all being judgemental about other small independent publishers who do publish their own work (there are one or two who come to mind), but I feel uncomfortable enough doing a self-promotional post on Instagram that the idea of using Nightjar to publish my work makes me feel slightly queasy. But perhaps this wasn’t what the question was about. To address the question from another angle, they’re both mostly non-profit activities, so possibly not an ideal combination for most people. Probably, most writers and most small independent publishers combine their activities with an income-generating activity, like a day job, something I am pleased I no longer have.
What inspired you to launch Nightjar Press?
I was inspired by Mark Valentine, another writer and small independent publisher. His chapbook publication of Joel Lane’s short story 'The Foggy, Foggy Dew’ in the mid 1980s must take most of the credit/blame.
I know that physical books are important to you (You've written about collecting books and the personal stories linked to physical books) - what is it you love about chapbooks?
The short story is my favourite literary form and I think short stories deserve their own covers, their own art and maybe even their own ISBN, which means you have to supply copyright libraries with copies.
You publish short stories with Nightjar and have written and edited multiple collections. What makes a good short story in your eyes?
How long have you got? I’ll be brief. I like stories that leave me with more questions than answers. I like a story that I have to read several times and each time I read it I like it more. Sometimes, I read a story, either a published story or a submission, and I start getting excited about it, for whatever reason, and alongside my growing excitement is a sort of anxiety that the author might blow it. Or rather, I feel a separate, growing excitement that they might not blow it, that it might end up being a great story. I’m very interested in the uncanny, as well as in dark stories more generally, and in experimental fiction, and in a largely unexplored grey area that I think might exist, where writers use experimental approaches to try to create uncanny effects.
How do you commission for Nightjar?
I don’t. I read submissions and sometimes I gently suggest to writers I admire that they might have a go at a new story, but there are never any guarantees.
In the spirit of independent businesses supporting each other, what other independent publishers are doing things you’re excited about at the minute?
I like a lot that comes out from CB editions, and of course Dead Ink, Influx Press, Swan River Press and Tartarus Press. I like Prototype and Ma Bibliothèque and I’m interested to see what Scratch Books do next. Obviously I love Confingo Publishing and Salt Publishing and not just because they publish me. There’s a novel due out this September from Confingo, The Garden by Maya Sharp, that I just love. I read an early chapter from The Garden – or possibly I heard Maya read it – several years ago, perhaps during lockdown, or shortly after, and I got that excitement that I was describing earlier.
What was your last great read?
They by Kay Dick. Faber reissued it in 2022, but Oxfam supplied me with a copy of the original Penguin edition from 1977, once owned by ‘Sue’ in 1979. It’s stunning and although I’m usually suspicious of things that you aren’t quite sure whether it’s a novel or a collection of stories, it reads a bit like a collection, and in this case, for some reason, I don’t mind.
Finally, if you were one of our booksellers, what would be your top choices from our website for your 'staff picks'?
Robert Aickman’s The Wine-Dark Sea and Dark Entries, Lucie McKnight Hardy’s Dead Relatives, Leonora Carrington’s The Debutante and Other Stories, Pascal Garnier’s The Front Seat Passenger, Derek Raymond’s I Was Dora Suarez and all the Lynne Tillman and Joel Lane rereleases. During any quiet spells, I’d be catching up on new titles that I haven’t read by Rikki Ducornet and Solvej Balle, and Charles Boyle’s Invisible Dogs, with a view to adding them to the staff picks, too.