“Art, music, religion, love, demons and climate change”: An Interview with Weatherglass Books

Cold New Climate by Isobel Wohl © Cover Design by Luke Bird for Weatherglass Books

Weatherglass Books, a new small literary press, was established in the summer of 2020 by Neil Griffiths (novelist and founder of the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses) and Damian Lanigan (novelist and playwright). Griffiths and Lanigan’s reading tastes happened to converge on a particular book – Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Blue Flower (1995), which is now proudly featured as part of the press’s publishing ethos and visual identity. Fitzgerald’s novel takes its title and plot from Novalis, 18th-century man of letters and famed patron saint of the German Romantics, and his Bildungsroman, Heinrich von Ofterdingen, in which the image of the blue flower, mystic emblem of the Romanticist movement, originated. As Griffiths and Lanigan’s plans for founding a press started to become increasingly more concrete, Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower became a type of emblem in itself, representing the sort of book that might struggle to find a home in today’s publishing landscape. For this reason, Weatherglass Books has created a space for the next The Blue Flower(s), celebrating ‘core’ literary fiction that fills the gap between the more popular forms of writing favoured by the big publishing houses and the ‘sought-after’ experimental work claimed by the leading independent presses in the UK.

Amidst the flurry of their launch title hitting bookshelves this April, Weatherglass Books co-founder, Damian Lanigan, took the time to answer some questions about the origins of this unique publishing project and what the future holds for Weatherglass readers.

 Interview by Sofia Cumming

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SC: Both yourself and Neil Griffiths have been involved in the UK publishing industry in some capacity in the past. Was there a particular moment which made you decide to set up your own press? 

DL: I came back from the US, where I'd been living for a long time, and re-connected with Neil. I showed him a novel I'd written, and we got talking about books in general. I was interested in his work with the Republic of Consciousness Prize and at the apparent vibrancy of the UK small press world. The barriers to entry are really not that great if you have the will and some expertise. Also, it seemed to me that there was an editorial trick being missed: the big commercial houses were increasingly purely commerce-led, and the small presses were possibly a little abstruse. Crudely put, I had a feeling that there's a market out there for novels that aren't genre and aren't avant garde. Neil was in agreement, thankfully! We got a bit of money together and away we went.

“It has become apparent that [we] share a reverence for writing as a craft, and it’s definitely what we’re responding to in submissions. Writers who really care, at a paragraph, sentence and word level, about what they’re doing.”

SC: Weatherglass Books was launched during the initial throes of the COVID-19 pandemic. In what ways did this impact your work?

DL: It slowed us down, no doubt. We wanted the bookshops to be open for one thing! But actually, we have not been that affected by it in terms of reading submissions, buying books, getting them edited, designed and printed and so on. Also, it looks like the shops will open just as our first book comes out, which is a relief. There are of course more numinous factors: it would have been nice to see more of each other not on Zoom. It would have also been nice to attend some industry events and get to know a few people, go to Frankfurt [Book Fair], that sort of thing. Pandemic life is a bit like The Sims: it's not a bad copy of real life, but it really isn't it.

SC: In your launch release, you claim WB ‘was founded on a shared love of Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Blue Flower and a shared fear that it wouldn’t find a publisher today’. Could you elaborate on this?  

DL: It's quite a remarkable book on a number of levels, but it's 'quiet' (especially for the first third), and it's about a relatively obscure poet a long time ago in a foreign country. These features are not necessarily what agents are currently lusting after. More than this though, The Blue Flower is a tremendous feat of craftsmanship. It has become apparent that Neil and I share a reverence for writing as a craft, and it's definitely what we're responding to in submissions. Writers who really care, at a paragraph, sentence and word level, about what they're doing. I wouldn't say that these are 'old fashioned virtues', but they are perhaps a little bit over-looked at both ends of the market.     

Also, no-one is redeemed in The Blue Flower, which doesn't go down well nowadays.

SC: Since launching last summer, you have now completed your first round of submissions. How was the review process? Did you receive any ‘Blue Flowers’? 

DL: It was pretty good in that we found four great books and we were in complete agreement about them. This is clearly something of a miracle that can never be repeated. Also, the three novels we have all share a Fitzgeraldian painstaking craftsmanship and a concern for character exploration and narrative movement. In other words, the process proved that there are books out there being written that absolutely validate our founding insight - which was a relief! 

SC:  As some other indie presses have done in the past, you have opted for a type of membership subscription model. Your ‘Founder Readers’ are set to receive the first copies of books before anyone else, other perks include regular newsletters and invites to events. Aside from a financial perspective, what do you think involving your readership this closely does for you as a press?

DL: Being small and distinctive has quite a few benefits. We really can start to build relationships with our Founder Readers and bring them along with us. My feeling is that you don't sign up to one of these things unless you love books and are interested in them, people can tell we're doing something of value and (I hope!) are rooting for us. We're also plotting additional subscriber benefits that other places don't do. We're new, we're small, we can try some interesting things out. We hope that in addition to the sense of doing something worthwhile, subscribers will genuinely be getting a great offer from us.

SC: You have several exciting titles set to appear this year, including Isobel Wohl’s debut Cold New Climate. What can readers expect?

DL: We asked Isobel to write a novel on the basis of some short stories of hers that Neil read. We had no idea what would come back and were pretty astonished with what we got. She's obviously a ridiculously talented writer: she has wit, insight, a knack for complex characterisation, seriousness and a deep concern for detail and structure - everything you need to be a really first-rate novelist. A fantastic spot by Neil! 

Our other two upcoming novels could not be more different from Cold New Climate: The Angels of L19 by Jonathan Walker is about a group of teenagers in the Evangelical Christian community in Liverpool in the 80s with a supernatural element, and Blue Woman by Jonathan Page is a fictionalised life of an eminent female artist.

Then, our first non-fiction book, What They Heard, is a brilliant study of how The Beatles, Bob Dylan and The Beach Boys all influenced each other. 

So, I guess readers can expect art, music, religion, love, demons and climate change. An irresistible combination.  

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Cold New Climate and other forthcoming titles can be ordered from the Weatherglass Books website and all good (independent) book stores.

Sofia Cumming is a PhD candidate in Literature at the University of East Anglia. In 2020, she worked as an editorial and acquisitions assistant for Weatherglass Books as part of the CHASE placement scheme.