Instagram story viewer> @thebraag> Posts

The Braag

@thebraag

825

followers

370

following

The Braag CIC publishes work & supports underrepresented writers in the North of England. Also a Northumbrian trickster spirit. WE SELL BOOKS!

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

I can show you the first of this year's book covers! This is empirical by @gita_ralleigh, which will co-launch with Andrew Blair's 'polblar tmolkop' in March.

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. by @thebraag

161

72

9 months ago

I can now also show you the cover for 'Polblar Tmolkop' by Andrew Blair! Describe by writer and editor Fahad Al-Amoudi as 'Possibly the most important book of our lifetime...'

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.

It'll release alongside Gita Ralleigh's 'empirical' this spring ❤️ by @thebraag

27

0

9 months ago

20

2

7 days ago

TL;DR: 48hrs left to submit to Carmen et Error! ❤️ Kym, you will say, if you know my name—which admittedly most of you don’t. So, in fact what you will say is Hey You, don’t submissions close on the 31st/haven’t they already closed on the 15th? This is a fun phenomenon known as ‘Shrödingers Inbox’, wherein I’ve mucked the date of magazine subs closing back and forth over the last few months as I’ve varied between absolutely scarily inundated and… where have all the writers gone? And now our website says one thing and the submissions aggregators another. This is objectively a good place to be, it means our readership and the popularity of what we do is growing, but it’s also tricky. We’re sitting on almost 700 individual pieces of work right now, competing for between 6-8 spots! That’s a 1% acceptance rate. That’s wild. The best thing for me to do is to give you a final 48hrs (until 21st Aug) for any last submissions and then close for the remainder of August, and we’ll aim to get back to you all by the end of the month. Remember, good work is good work - don’t talk yourself out of submitting. This is all a little messier than I’d like it to be, and I’m sorry for the confusion, folks! But the daily running of The Braag and Carmen et Error comes down to me (my wonderful first readers aside) and while I continue to be excellent and dashing (and very handsome in a cravat) I’m also super chronically ill, so you get what you get. It’s not Carmen Sans Error after all. Full of love and errors, Kym by @thebraag

40

0

2 months ago

A few months ago my poem ‘The Wizard’s Attic’ about Hove Museum featured in the wonderful Carmen et Error (@thebraag) - thank you to editor @shortestwitch! I also read this poem at @thecommonpress for the pamphlet tour of the brilliant @zain.rishi. Here’s to more poems about whimsy and nostalgia and I suppose yearning 🔮 🧙 🧸 🌊

After a very busy first year of the PhD, I am returning to a more consistent poetry practice, but I am taking a break from submitting stuff for publication for a bit while I get back in touch with the things I love about writing (and try to stay off my darn phone). In the meantime, my main bit of news is that I will be reading from Grandmother’s House in Chichester on October 28th! See the last slide for details, though I’ll post about it more nearer the time, and hope to share details of more readings soon 📚 taken in Brighton and Hove by @thebraag

3

0

3 months ago

New reprint of Necrosmologies has arrived in!! With its Rubery Prize graphic @ruberybookaward. A gorgeous, deeply weird (and now prize winning!) book of short fiction. 💚💚 by @thebraag

32

0

3 months ago

These arrived in the post today, my new (handmade limited edition) microchapbook available from @thebraag! Kym has done an amazing job, they are absolutely gorgeous - the perfect shade of mossy green, and look at those endpapers! 💚 by @thebraag

3

36

3 months ago

So delighted to announce that Anthony Cartwright has won the 2026 @ruberybookaward in the poetry & short fiction category for his book, Necrosmologies which was published by the Braag in 2025. by @thebraag

62

4

3 months ago

An Lochan Uaine burning this weekend and being used to try to douse the Ryvoan Bothy wildfire - didn’t think it would be the loch trying to survive when I wrote this poem. First published in Envoi, then in Skin the Rabbit (The Braag, 2025). Thinking of all the habitat and the creatures. And the folk fighting the fires, here and everywhere. A bylaw here, a plan to ban disposable BBQs there, but it’s the big shift we need. We all know that really, I’m sure. How to deal with the discomfort of change before someone personally puts our own feet to the fire? That’s the key I think. How? Photo credit to Ride Scotland. #wildfire🔥 #cairngormsnationalpark #ryvoanbothy #thegreenloch #climatecrisis by @thebraag

37

3

3 months ago

Our summer micro-chapbooks are here! We have Lavender Hill by @lauren_thomas_poems and Little Book O' Moss by @parole_de_reveuse . These are truly gorgeous books, wild and unflinching, and whisperingly green. They're available at thebraag.co/shop

We also have the final copies of Steve Ronnie's gorgeous chapbook, Possession, available. It was our Free Verse Fair exclusive, so our stock is even more limited than usual. by @thebraag

161

26

3 months ago

Necrosmologies is a collection of speculative fiction that 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: 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; an alternative political history, where Labour leader Mary Macarthur almost becomes British Prime Minister in the 1920s and a 1970s Birmingham where workers catch space-ferries to quarries on the moon. by @thebraag

35

0

3 months ago

Reminder that my micro-press The Braag is OPEN FOR SUBMISSIONS through the month of July. If you've got a pamphlet, novella/short story collection/novella-in-flash, you can submit (once you've read the guidelines PLEASE) - full info at thebraag.co! by @thebraag

182

4

4 months ago