Fincham Press published its first title, an anthology of work by creative writing students, in 2014. Several collections have appeared since then, and in 2017 the Press expanded into journal publishing.
Books
The Age Between: Personal Reflections on Youth Fiction
This series of essays explores the history and form of classic texts such as J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Anne Frank’s Diary, and Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War. Chambers also examines his own fascinating experiences of reading and writing youth fiction, weaving these together with fresh insights from narrative theory, anthropology and neurology. The book includes a lively discussion between the author and Dr Deborah Cogan Thacker. Chambers is well known for his young adult fiction and critical writings on the craft of fiction, publishing, and young people reading.
The Professor in Children’s Literature: An Anthology
- How are professors depicted in children’s literature? This anthology features twenty-six depictions of the academy in books marketed towards a young audience. Chosen from texts published between 1871 and 1933, when universities and the wider education sector were rapidly expanding, many of the texts featured here reflect societal concerns regarding science, expertise, and these new places of learning.
In this collection of journalism from current and former students of the University of Roehampton, writers tell true tales of disappearance and disaster, rebirth and renewal, life and love, and tell us something about what it means to be a young citizen in the twenty-first century. They are citizens of the world, traversing land and sea, and trying to find a place they can call their own. A place called Nowhere.
The Fincham Press creative writing anthology is an established regular series.
All That Glitters is about the things that go on in private spaces, both tender and toxic. It is also about the aftermath; the complex reckoning that occurs when people count their blessings, even after disappointment. If that is not your bag, there are other choices: some straight-up talk about menopause, a date that lasts fives minutes by design, a bus ride in Hawaii, and a mermaid apocalypse. All that glitters may not be gold. But finding the right response to disappointment is the stuff of life: defiance, tenderness, chances to learn and grow seized, a sense of humour. There’s treasure in these pages.
- The Box
- Our sixth collection of student work, The Box, reveals so much. The square seems to be such a simple shape, but the idea of the box is a complex one. Boxes are a mystery, an opportunity; sometimes what’s hidden inside them is a treat. But we can also be boxed in, by other people’s prejudices, expectations, and assumptions. What happens when we’re freed from a box? Do we want that? Can we handle it? Open up The Box and see what’s inside.
- In Which Dragons Are Real But
- In this, our fifth anniversary collection, writers look impending threat straight in the eye—a woman tends her grandfather’s vegetable patch as the world freezes; bodies are broken and violated; a scientist contemplates a strange blue death; toxic rules for boys are conveyed by tweet; a dragon is deemed more persuasive, in a story plot, than a lesbian couple.
- The Unseen
- Mysteries. Ideas uncovered. Strange creatures. Forbidden words, used anyway. Ideas that scare us, make us angry, wistful, ashamed. The importance of a tiny, electric moment. All this pulled into the light, revealed by the imagination and bravery of our writers.
- Purple Lights
- Writers are often asked: ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ And we always tell our students: it’s not the idea, it’s what you do with it, that counts. So why not ask a different question: How did the writer choose that form, and why? This, our third student anthology, comes up with some responses./p>
- Screams and Silences
- Beside a lake, a boy draws the horoscope charts that determine his fate. Paths cross as immigrants navigate London. Somewhere in rural England, brother and sister share murderous secrets. Work that is as diverse as it is vivid.
- The Trouble with Parallel Universes
- The banker who won’t open his front door, the infertile husband, the letter-writer with a bionic arm, and the essayist existing in several parallel universes: these are some of the characters and situations that we meet in this first collection.
Journals
Fincham Press offers three new open access journals:
International Journal of Young Adult Literature
An academic peer-reviewed journal dedicated to publishing original and serious scholarship on young adult literature from all parts of the world.
- An annual, student-run peer-reviewed journal that promotes original and imaginative work by postgraduate students and early career researchers within the fields of Creative Writing, Children’s Literature, and English Literature.
- The first academic peer-reviewed journal dedicated to interdisciplinary scholarship on all aspects of Ian Fleming’s James Bond franchise across literary, filmic, and cultural history, and its relation to the spy genre.
Fincham Press is committed to innovation in the process of publishing, as well as content and form. The journals provide staff and students with direct experience in the academic peer-review process, through all of its editorial stages – work that is usually well hidden from public view. In the case of the department’s research students, this is part of their doctoral and post-doc training. The journals are produced on a sustainable open access platform and they use metadata and identifiers to enhance the ‘discoverability’ of each contributor’s work. In the process, Fincham Press hopes to support the university’s core mission in tertiary education and public research.