Books / Publishing
The Bristol charity publisher championing underrepresented authors
“Building futures. Bridging divides”: these words, plastered on the homepage of Arkbound Publishing’s website, are a fleeting reminder of the publisher and its umbrella charity’s decade-long history and work towards championing underrepresented authors.
Bridget Reaume, a publisher at Arkbound, explained that while they have always emphasised working with people who have lived experiences of the prison system or have been incarcerated, their efforts often extend beyond that.
She said: “That was the major point for the inception of Arkbound, but we blanket out a little beyond that as well and form an umbrella over a general disadvantaged authorship.”
Arkbound often hosts writing workshops and mentoring programmes for people from different walks of life
Founded in 2015, Arkbound was initially a social enterprise aiming to expand people’s access to literature. In 2017, it became a charitable venture and set up its publishing arm, which has since created a pathway for words of underrepresented authors to be read in print.
Other than publishing, the Arkbound charity based in Bristol and Glasgow also offers writing workshops and mentoring, publishing placements and a crowdfunding platform for aspiring underrepresented writers.
One of Arkbound’s main writing workshops and mentoring programmes remains Writing Within Walls for current or former prisoners.
Arkbound’s Writing Within Walls anthology is a collection of 20 short stories, poems and articles from former and current prisoners
“In the programme, there are a bit of creative writing workshops, but the main thing is letter-based mentorships,” said Bridget, talking about the programme which first started in Bristol and has since extended to their Scotland branch.
She continued: “When you’re chatting with someone who is in the prison system, nine times out of ten, it has to be letter-based. That’s just kind of how those communications happen.
“We work with writing mentors, who could be authors or people with lived experiences who are now in creative fields.”
These mentors, Bridget explained, write to a prisoner and together they go through the process of creative writing, prompts and more. As a result, prisoners and mentors often form “wonderful” relationships while also eventually getting their words published in anthologies from the programme.
Arkbound’s latest title is Blood Sky by Sarah Cullen
Since its inception, Arkbound Publishing has published work from over 60 underrepresented authors, including many who have lived experiences of the prison system. Publication costs, cover designs, making sure the titles reach bookshops and everything required to bring the “book to life in its best quality” is enabled through fundraising.
Now, Arkbound publishes about five books every year, mostly from disadvantaged, underrepresented authors. The driving factor behind choosing such authors, Bridget said, was not sales-motivated but more about giving people the opportunity.
To balance costs, Arkbound has recently started publishing one flagship title every year from people who have contributed to their community in substantial ways.
In June, Arkbound published a young adult novel by a Bristol graduate Molly O’Dawd
Bridget explained: “We have the flexibility and can publish books that might not have an incredible amount of sales potential, but it’s what we’re doing and who we’re working with that’s really important.
“Our flagship title means that it comes from someone who is doing really incredible things in their community, and has a really big community behind them. The books they publish then create a really significant social impact, while also having high sales potential.”
Bridget said that even though the founding ideology is always trying to support the underrepresented, at the end of the day, they are a publishing house trying to find “those hidden gems”.
She said: “These are people that should be published, the people that are incredible writers and maybe have a super interesting story, but they haven’t ever put it into a book before.
“There’s so much potential here. But just like any business, publishing can be very elitist. It’s a huge monopoly, where five major publishing houses own most of the publishers.
“For the big publishers, it’s almost guaranteed that you have to have an agent and there’s a lot of tape that you have to go through as a writer to get pulished or you have to have a lot of money, or you have to be famous.”
Bridget added that despite this, if an Arkbound author’s next book got picked up by one of the big publishers, she would be absolutely stoked for them.
“There’s nothing wrong with this because those publishers make people successful,” she said. “They have the money, they have the resources to put a lot of money into these books.”
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In 2026, Bridget hopes to have more volunteer publishing positions for people who want to expand their careers in publishing: “They get assigned one book and one author, and they get to follow the book from start to finish.
“They get to do a little bit of editing, to see if they enjoy that.
“They get to do marketing research, work with authors, research for book awards and start the process of researching events they can go to for publicity, and essentially everything you need to know in a small publishing press.”
All photos: Arkbound
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