about

One morning, when I was about fourteen, I woke up - unusually - just before 5am. After breakfast with the sunrise, I was compelled to make a book - something I had never done before - from the cereal box, leaving a naked bag of bran flakes in the cupboard. I foraged around the house for glue, scraps, scissors and a stapler, then scored and cut the cardboard into something that would fit my paper. I wrapped it in a well-used piece of brown parcel paper, stapled and glued my papers inside, then decorated the front cover with squares of offcut cardboard. PLANS, I wrote on one of them.

What I created was a tool for practical magic: anything I wanted, if written in the book, came true. It was not like any notebook I had used before; I must have perspired a small part of my soul into its pages through my fingertips. Handmade objects are often marked in this way, though this knowledge is less and less common.

Now, many years later, I present Rival Press, my little argument for the rediversion of magic into our lives, and against the uniformity of bookshop shelves. The project is centred around small runs of strange and beautiful books, both text and image. First editions coming soon…