The Braag CIC (est. 2020) is a poetry and speculative fiction press that publishes the best in weird. It also supports underrepresented writers in the North East. We publish two poetry pamphlets and one fiction book a year, as well as handmade limited edition books that feature 9-12 pages of poetry or fiction. We host occasional events. We also run the online micro-journal Carmen et Error.
We’re named after the County Durham shapeshifting trickster figure, the braag, who appears variously as a horse, a cow, a naked headless man, and four men under a sheet.
We are queer and disabled-run, with a focus on producing beautiful things sustainably and responsibly.
2025-6 Publishing Schedule
Let’s make one thing clear: polblar tmolkop by Andrew Blair is not an endorsement of the 2009 film Paul Blart: Mall Cop. If anything, it is an explanation. One that defies explanation itself. In a series of experimental, ludic poems Blair takes us through a series of conversations between the actor and writer Kevin James, and an ambiguous disembodied entity called Polblar.
Empirical by Gita Ralleigh explores immigrant life, domesticity and motherhood through a series of lyric poems and narrative fragments, including several ghazals. From Black Star, a voicing of the earliest South Asians in Britain, to abecedarian for maternity ward, postcolonial estrangement, immigrant contingency and tentative instances of love, joy and belonging are illuminated. These poems trace how inherited myths, contested histories and political tides pattern our lives, leaving indelible marks which corral the course of future imaginaries for ourselves and our descendents.
Only Fragments Survive by Carmen Marcus is a collection of speculative hybrid fiction and poetry that imagines the life of paranormal historian, Graine O’Malley. Graine is a researcher who divines the history of objects. Her catalogue contains a splinter of driftwood from Captain James Cook’s Endeavour; a hair from a polar bear that washed up in Orkney; a tale of witches from a dressmaker’s bent pin, an Indie mixtape from 1998 and other tales, taken from the history of broken things.
Andrew Blair is a poet, writer and performer living in Edinburgh. His work has featured in Gutter, Umbrellas of Edinburgh and The Last Song: Words for Frightened Rabbit. His debut collection, An Intense Young Man at an Open Mic Night, was published in 2017 by House of Three press, and his pamphlet The R-Pattz Facttz 2020 was released through Speculative Books.”
Gita Ralleigh is a poet, writer and ex-doctor, born to immigrant parents in London. Her poems have been published by The Rialto and Magma Poetry among others, her books are A Terrible Thing (Bad Betty Press, 2020) and Siren (Broken Sleep Books 2022). She is a member of the Kinara poetry collective and teaches creative writing to under-graduate scientists at Imperial College as well as facilitating poetry workshops in the community.
Carmen Marcus is a published author, poet, playwright, creative facilitator, and mentor. As the daughter of a Yorkshire fisherman and Irish chef her writing brings together the practical and the magical. Her play AND THE EARTH OPENED UP UNDER HER won Faber New Play Award 2023. Her debut novel HOW SAINTS DIE was published by Vintage in 2018, and won New Writing North’s Northern Promise Award and was long listed for the Desmond Elliott Prize.
Micros
Little Book O’Moss by Corinna Board
Toucan by Jessica Boatright
The Annual Convention of Most Gentle and Virtuous Saints by Heather Chapman
Possession by Stevie Ronnie
Lavender Hill by Lauren Thomas
Corinna Board teaches English as an additional language in an Oxford secondary school. She grew up on a farm, and her writing is often inspired by the rural environment. Her work has appeared in And Other Poems, Anthropocene, berlin lit, Propel Magazine, Spelt Magazine, Atrium, Ink Sweat & Tears, Magma and elsewhere. She published her debut pamphlet, Arboreal, in January 2024.
Jessica Boatright writes from a colourful house in Lincolnshire. Her words have recently been spotted in Magma, The Alchemy Spoon, Anthropocene and Poetry Bus, among others. In 2025 she placed third in the Disabled Poets Best Unpublished Pamphlet Prize and was highly commended in the Kathryn Bevis Memorial Poetry Prize. Jessica is founder of “Raising The Fifth,” a creative digital space for writers without children.
Heather Chapman is a Durham University student. She was a 2023 Foyle Young Poet, was shortlisted for the 2024-5 Poetry Wales Award, and won the 2025 Hive Young Writers Competition. Her work is published in The Garlic Press, Bloodletter and Carmen et Error. Heather likes vampires, sestinas, and Edward II. She is on Instagram @heatherchapman4523.
Stevie Ronnie is a writer and artist based in Northumberland. His most recent publication is And For You (love), an artist’s book of love poems rendered in Braille. His poetry films have screened internationally and attracted several awards. Stevie is the recipient of a Northern Writers Award for his poetry and two MacDowell fellowships for his interdisciplinary work.
Lauren Thomas has been published in various places including Poetry Wales, 14 Magazine, The London Magazine, Lighthouse Magazine, The New Welsh Review, Abridged and Magma. She is co-founder and editor of Black Iris magazine https://www.blackirispoetry.com/ she was long listed in The National Poetry competition 2024, commended in the Magma poetry competition 2025 and her work was recently selected to be featured in the Poetry London Presents series. She holds an MA in poetry writing from Newcastle university and the Poetry School.
2024-5 Publishing Schedule
“These stories are both real and unreal, both beautiful and bordering on terrifying, and because of that, Anthony sums up the Black Country’s essence in a way that is poetic and poignant.” — Kerry Hadley-Pryce, author of The Black Country, God’s Country and Gamble.
Necrosmologies is a collection of speculative fiction that reimagines industrial process and the experiences of working-class families, centring on the Black Country in the English
West Midlands.
Set in a series of overlapping realities including worlds dealing with environmental catastrophe; an alternative reality where magical creatures perform the work of industrialisation, the real town of Dudley and its subterranean mirror-world, Yeldud and an alternative political history, where Labour leader Mary Macarthur almost becomes British Prime Minister in the 1920s.
Anthony Cartwright’s five novels centre on the lives of working-class families in the Black Country in the English West Midlands Most recent are Iron Towns (2016) and The Cut (2017). He has been the recipient of a Betty Trask Award and had work shortlisted for The John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, James Tait Black Memorial Award, Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Gordon Burn Prize. Growing up in Dudley, working in East London schools for nearly 20 years, he now lives in Cardiff with his family and teaches on the Creative & Professional Writing Programme at UWE, Bristol.
2024-5 Authors
Poetry
Kirsten Luckins is a poet, performer and creative producer based in Hartlepool, currently artistic director of the Tees Women Poets. she’s has been published widely in magazines such as Butcher’s Dog, Strix, and Magma. Her third collection Passerine (Bad Betty) was longlisted for the Laurel Prize for Ecopoetry. This is her first pamphlet.
Timothy Fox is originally from Texas. He received a Houston Press Theatre Award for his play ‘The Whale; or, Moby-Dick’, and a Vault Festival Spirit Award for his play ‘The Witch’s Mark’. His writing has appeared in, among others, Denver Quarterly, Funicular Magazine, and New Writing Scotland. He is an alumnus of the London Library Emerging Writers Programme.
Speculative Fiction
Sarah Royston’s writing draws inspiration from queer ecologies, plant-lore and the landscapes of southern England. She embraces the Hookland motto: re-enchantment is resistance. Her work is published in Dark Mountain, The Rumpus and Crow & Cross Keys, among others. She lives in Hertfordshire and works at Anglia Ruskin University.
Anthony Cartwright’s five novels centre on the lives of working-class families in the Black Country in the English West Midlands Most recent are Iron Towns (2016) and The Cut (2017). He has been the recipient of a Betty Trask Award and had work shortlisted for The John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, James Tait Black Memorial Award, Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Gordon Burn Prize. Growing up in Dudley, working in East London schools for nearly 20 years, he now lives in Cardiff with his family and teaches on the Creative & Professional Writing Programme at UWE, Bristol.
Please subscribe to our mailing list to get infrequent updates about our publications, launches and submissions opportunities, as well as updates from our journal, Carmen et Error.
If you want to support us in making weird art in the north OR if you miss indulgences and wish to use money to smudge away some of that sin*, you can donate here.
*smudging away sin not guaranteed.
*Note: while we have a North Eastern outlook, fear not, we work with artists and writers from other geographic locations too!
© The Braag CIC 2024