This year, Serpent’s Tail will turn thirty. Since its birth in the ‘80s the indie publisher’s list has grown in size and stature, while never losing its sense of diversity. Its list today has on it Orange-prize winner We Need to Talk About Kevin, two Booker shortlistees including We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and three Nobel Prize winners. Its revamped Classics series includes works by Herta Muller, Nella Larsen and Juan Rulfo.
We asked Serpent’s Tail publisher Hannah Westland how she leads the helm and where she hopes the indie will go after celebrating its big 3-0.
What would you say are Serpent’s Tail’s core themes/values? How do they reflect in the books you publish?
We’re not really corporate enough to talk in terms of core values here at Serpent’s Tail, but I hope anyone looking at our eclectic range of books would be struck by the spirit of curiosity that animates all of them. Because we publish a very international list of authors across literary and crime fiction and a small number of non-fiction books on contemporary and popular culture, it’s hard to identify themes that are particular to us, but we do expect all of our books to have something original to say about the world and how we live in it.
We’ve always been a list that mixes high and low culture. I think the gutter is as interesting and important as the gallery, and it’s really important to us that people don’t think of our books as inaccessible. I think our approach to publishing – how we acquire, package, market and publicise our books – reflects that openness. I don’t mean our publishing lacks seriousness, quite the opposite. I mean that we take all our books seriously, whatever they are about, and trust our readers to have interests as eclectic as ours. But we also approach everything we do with a sense of fun, because working in publishing is a privilege and we should remember to enjoy it.
Tell us a bit about Serpent’s Tail titles to look forward to in 2016
One of the most satisfying aspects of an editor’s job is working with a writer from the beginning of their career, and helping them grow and develop across books.
One of the writers I have had this relationship with is Sarah Perry, whose debut novel After Me Comes The Flood we published in 2014. That book received rapturous reviews and a longlisting for the Guardian First Book Award as well as being selected for the Waterstones Book Club and becoming a hugely popular borrowing choice in libraries across the country. We’re publishing her new novel The Essex Serpent in June, and it both builds on the promise of her first, and also blew away all of my expectations. It’s a big, clever, passionate book about science, religion, friendship and love, set in 1890’s London and Essex and full of the most vivid and irresistible cast of characters. Sarah Waters, John Burnside and Melissa Harrison have given us advance quotes for the book, and we’re sure that anyone who loved The Miniaturist or AS Byatt’s novels will embrace it.
Sarah Perry aside, we really do have an embarrassment of riches on our list this year. Mary Gaitskill’s first novel in a decade, The Mare, which was hailed as a masterpiece when it was published in the US last Autumn and in my view is the best thing she’s ever written. Wendy Jones’s The Sex Lives of English Women, a collection of frank, open interviews which is moving, surprising, and should spark a thousand conversations about female desire. And Constellation, a debut novel by a young French writer called Adrien Bosc which is both a memorial to an air disaster that happened half a century ago, and a profound exploration of the nature of collective tragedy.
Which Serpent’s Tail books would you recommend to reading groups & why?
Although we published We Need To Talk About Kevin over ten years ago, it remains a staunch favourite with reading groups, provoking strong opinions in everyone who reads it.
Karen Joy Fowler’s brilliant, Booker-shortlisted, novel about the most unconventional of families, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, is also a popular choice.
Fifteen Dogs, by Andre Alexis, would also be a great choice – this is a dazzlingly original book about a group of dogs being gifted human consciousness, and the challenges and adventures that ensue. It’s a modern philosophical fable full of fascinating moral questions.
I also think The Essex Serpent and The Mare will prove to be hugely popular reading group choices when they are published in paperback.
What are your top tips for a banging Serpent’s Tail-themed party?
Good parties are all about bad behaviour, and as I hate games (by which I mean organised fun), my favourite parties have followed the simple recipe of having enough booze that it never runs out, and really, really good music. You don’t need anything else.
How did you celebrate your 30th birthday?
I had a joint 30th birthday party with one of my oldest and best friends. We hired a pub in Vauxhall that stayed open very late, had an excellent sound system, and no chance of the booze running out, all of which ensured there was plenty of bad behaviour (see previous answer).
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