At the end of last year, Ireland’s first children’s LGBTQ+ publishing house was founded in Belfast. With a young queer staff working behind the scenes, Faerie Press is committed to bringing inclusive stories and voices to the homes, schools and families of children all over the island.

GCN caught up with Chair of Faerie Press, Seren, to learn more about the project.

“The publishing industry at the minute is very sectioned. It’s either based in London or Dublin for the UK and Ireland. There are smaller presses, but a lot of those still exist in England,” Seren said.

“We wanted to create something that was inclusive, and enabled people to get published, that was based in Belfast,” they explained. “And we’re a children’s publishing press because that’s the biggest gap in the market. The only other queer-led publishing press that exists at the minute are Cipher Press, who do incredible work, but they publish adult literature.”

Faerie Press is committed to ensuring “that young children have diversity and access as early as possible, because children’s books are so important,” Seren said. “And I think everybody has that one book that they remember reading over and over as a kid, and we want to give other children that experience and to see themselves represented in books.”

 

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The idea for Faerie Press was born from another project called the Rainbow Library, which was a collaboration between Pop-Up, based in London, and Cara Friend, an LGBTQ+ charity in Belfast. The project saw the creation of an anthology similar to a literary journal. As Seren explained, that was the starting point of Faerie Press, which was founded in 2023 as a separate thing. “About 12 of us stayed on the project and made it the company that it is today,” they said.

Faerie Press is not only a project aimed at young people, but also made by young people. “We’re all aged between 20 and 26,” Seren explained. “It means that there’s a lot of creativity and raw ideas that bounce around the room. There’s that kind of ‘just say yes to everything’ attitude that I think you need with a small company like this. You need people that have that relentless belief that it’s going to succeed.”

Speaking about the challenges that the group has faced, Seren said: “It’s the same as working with any group of people. Sometimes we do have different ideas.

“But I think we’ve all been really good at working collaboratively. We have a dedicated group chat that’s just for polls. So we vote on every decision; we’re really democratically run.”

 

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Earlier in August, Faerie Press published its very first book, titled Hide & Seek: An Anthology of the Inner Child. With a mix of poetry, comedy and short shorties, it features writing from 19 authors aged between 16 and 25 from across the island of Ireland. Its goal is both to platform emerging voices across and foster creativity and empathy among young readers.

As the official description of the book reads, “Our inner child is often considered a reflection of our true selves, which we can hide from others as we get older. It’s also a part of us that views the world in a curious way, and acts as a link to connect us to our childhood memories and experiences.”

 

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Speaking about the anthology, Seren shared how the team hopes that with this “first physical book, people can see that what we’re doing is a really good thing. And then we can keep the momentum going.”

Find out more about Faerie Press on its online website and purchase the anthology here.