Celebrating feminist indie publishing in the UK

Posted on March 9, 2026 in INSIDE, Oxford

Yesterday, the world commemorated International Women’s Day, coming together both to celebrate women’s invaluable contributions to society, and to protest against the various struggles that women across the globe continue to face.

The UK publishing industry is no stranger to social change. Since the first official celebrations of International Women’s Day in the 1910s, we have seen dramatic shifts in the demographics not only of those working within the industry, but also of authors getting published and their voices finally heard.

Publishing as a whole has a majority female workforce (68%, according to the Publishers Association’s 2024 Diversity, inclusion and belonging survey), and the last two decades in particular have seen a spike in romance and romantasy publications, two genres widely considered to have the largest female audience. Brand new romance-only imprints Scarlett Press (Simon & Schuster), Evermore (Penguin) and Afterglow (HarperCollins) are the talk of the town (and the TikTok).

But some publishers are taking this beyond just an imprint. In this article, I’ll take you through some of the UK’s top independent feminist publishers doing the most to boost women’s voices and support female audiences in publishing.

Linen Press

A self-described ‘small independent publisher run by women, for women,’ Linen Press was founded by Lynn Michell in Edinburgh in 2005. Michell’s impetus to start her own publisher was quite a unique one: a published writer herself before she tried her hand at the other end of the craft, Michell regularly ran and attended writing groups. In one group in Edinburgh, 94-year-old Marjorie Wilson shared excerpts of her decades-spanning memoir which, until then, had been summarily rejected by every publisher she had submitted it to. Michell saw potential in Wilson’s work and decided to take a plunge and publish it herself. Childhood’s Hill was a runaway success. Ever since, Michell has been growing her publishing brand to amplify diverse female and non-binary voices from all over the world. Michell also employs a revolving door pool of interns to help out with social media and submissions, offering that much needed experience to those early in their publishing career. Linen Press is definitely one to keep an eye on.

Persephone Books

Perhaps more well-known in the lay world as a beautiful bookshop in Bath, in the publishing world, Persephone Books is also an award-winning publisher in its own right. Nicola Beauman founded Persephone to amplify the voices of women writers, and to this day the company seeks to boost images of what it calls ‘domestic feminism’ in all its publications, which mostly hail from the 1930s-1940s. Persephone also holds regular events in and around its bookshop, housed in a gorgeously preserved Grade II Listed building from 1761. As a publisher, Persephone Books repackages hidden or forgotten gems into fresh releases. Each book comes with a bookmark matching its individual patterned endpaper, all wrapped up in a sleek grey jacket. You can also find Persephone Books in other bookshops around the UK – their distinctive classy design is hard to miss! 

The Indigo Press

I first came across The Indigo Press through a fabulous proof book I recently read, coming out this May, that I cannot recommend enough: Mayfly Season by Matthias Jügler (translated from German by Jo Heinrich). I found the book so moving and articulate that I just had to check out the publisher. It turns out, Indigo is chock-full of great – and, frankly, underrated – publications. Founded by publishing titan Susie Nicklin in 2018, The Indigo Press’ ethos urges readers to keep questioning everything and always ask for better, achieved through publishing contemporary fiction and non-fiction with a focus on social justice, more often than not boosting the strongest female voices out there right now. Elena Fischer’s Paradise Garden, Alina Grabowski’s Women and Children First, and Priya Hein’s Tamarin are just three of Indigo’s books that are getting a lot of attention in publishing circles right now.

Silver Press

Another relatively new company, Silver Press was founded in 2017 by dynamic trio Joanna Biggs, Sarah Shin and Alice Spawls. This publisher’s niche is books with a feminist focus, and their author list boasts some of the biggest foundational names in women’s writing, from Audre Lorde to Leonora Carrington to the Toni Morrison. In 2024, Silver Press launched Spiral House, a new imprint focused on ‘art, poetry, transformation and ways of knowing.’ Silver Press also occasionally runs events with their authors and employees where publishing professionals and hopefuls alike can both enjoy and learn more about particulars of the trade and writing processes. For example, a recent event in London saw translators Sophie Lewis and Susan de Muth discuss the challenges they face in translating experimental work, and in translating from gendered languages into English.

Written by Lucy Riddell