Hypatia Publications is a Cornwall based small press of academic, social history and reference books with many duplicate rare books from the Hypatia Trust collection.

From 2019 to 2022 Linda Cleary curated a Literary Fiction department for Hypatia Publications of which there have been four releases; the fourth and final publication, a debut novel, Whistling Jack, by Cornwall based writer Josephine Gardiner, was released end of May 2022.

For more information on our titles take a look below and in our bookshop.

New release! A debut novel set in Cornwall

We are very proud and excited to announce a debut novel, Whistling Jack, by Cornwall based writer Josephine Gardiner, released May 31st 2022!

'A beguiling mystery, and a haunting, beautifully written exploration of friendship, regret and a past that simply won't let go.' NICOLA UPSON

Get your copy now! Click here

Cornwall, summer 1976: eleven-year-old Sally Martins and her new friends - Tracy Pender, Victor Jordan and Kerenza Nankervis - are in retreat from the adult world, spending days and nights at an abandoned house on the subtropical landslip known as the Fall. When they discover the body of a young girl, for various reasons, they do not report it.

Six years later as questions about the dead girl resurface in the local community and the teenagers, as they now are, face an inevitable reckoning, Sally starts reading the journal of James Prideaux, an impoverished curate, who two hundred years earlier witnessed the landslip at the Fall and whose lover’s daughter, Eliza Tabb, went missing the same day.

The crises, though apart by two centuries, echo each other and examine how a moral error in childhood can dictate choices over a lifetime, raising tensions between faith, self-deception, memory and myth. Both stories show that inaction – being the ‘innocent bystander’ – has consequences.

“The point is to be where we aren’t meant to be, and see things no one else sees. And when we leave, nobody knows we were ever there.”

'When you bury your head in the sand, things come back to haunt you. Whistling Jack is a phenomenal read - highly recommended. I loved it.' - JACKIE MALTON, Retired Detective Chief Inspector and the inspiration for TV drama Prime Suspect.

chronicles of entering my body by rupam baoni

chronicles of entering my body is a collection of astonishingly sublime work that lets the reader into quiet intimacies whilst revelling in a poetic expansion of natural force.

These thirty poems erupt and dance into our consciousness, sequenced within five chapters – each with one of the author's own paintings at its mouth.

The title poem, also represented as a chapter title, comes to us with its remarkable lines and questions such as: 'I’m made of fire now and you’re wind; but still, tell me the chronicles of your entering my body, tell me how your entering is silent as non-entering in all its entirety'. Such profound and philosophical inquiries continue through the collection along with explorations of the body and the natural world. One's journey through the work brings encounters with love, death, tightrope walkers, the vulnerability of flesh, dementia, dialogues with trees, the bonds between mothers and daughters, Beethoven's symphonies, prayers to the earth and more.

Rupam Baoni is a poet of eloquent power, delivering her potency into your hands.

“Rupam Baoni's intimate, startling collection 'chronicles of entering my body' burrows deep beneath the surfaces of longing. Her poems and paintings possess a dreamy, subterranean momentum.” — ANITA FELICELLI, author of Love Songs for a Lost Continent and Chimerica: A Novel.

poetry video: anatomy of a flower by rupam baoni

from chronicles of entering my body

Hypatia Publications Signs Natasha Carthew For New Collection of Prose-Poetry

Standing in the place where the crosses borne by working-class women meet, this interconnecting poetry-prose collection is a truthful telling of overlooked rural lives. The book is divided into four sections inspired by fire, water, earth, air and follows Mother Nature, representing the fifth element, space, as a non-linear narrator who drifts between stories and timelines, peeping in on the many female characters that inhabit the stories of coastal villages, market towns and moorland farms over the course of a year. 

Razor-sharp in her exploration of significant feminist issues such as the gender pay gap, harassment and childcare - Natasha Carthew reveals her astute understanding of the daily challenges women face in this intimate portrait of female lives.  

Born Between Crosses is an incisive intersection of working class and nature writing. The lived experiences of women cleaners, care assistants, farm workers, factory workers, housewives and housemaids rendered here in Carthew’s vivid writing reveal what it really means to ‘get by’. 

*Available NOW *


For more information on Natasha: NatashaCarthew-Linktree @natashacarthew

*GOOD NEWS FOR AUDIOBOOK LOVERS!*

The Invisible Borders audiobook is now HERE produced by the incredible @stories.alt, narrated by the wonderful @marieclairewood with guest narrations of their own work from 11 of the 23 contributors 🎧 Here is a delicious 30min podcast! And check out this brilliant 2 minute trailer below 👇🏽

EXCITING DEVELOPMENTS!

Great news at Hypatia Publications! Cultivator Cornwall have awarded us funding to enhance the paperback version of our latest publication by enabling us to engage Daniela Silva, Senior Designer, to do the cover and to bring in some literary industry professionals to guide our process. Philippa Brewster will be advising on many aspects of the publishing process and Emma Dowson will be helping us with book publicity. The funding will also allow us to produce an eBook and an audiobook later in the year!

OUR NEW RELEASE

We are thrilled to announce: Invisible Borders, New Women's Writing from Cornwall is a collection of writing from 23 women writers with poetry and stories that take you on a journey through Cornwall and beyond, inspired by this westernmost wilderness and its coastline, whilst also reaching outward to cities and places far from its shores in a rich map of fresh writing.

Featuring the work of: Jacky Garratt, Vivienne Tregenza, Benigale Richards, Laura Sennen, Lucia Johns, Mary Charnley, Faye Wilson, Diana Dixon, Jude Brickhill, Rupam Baoni, Vicki Morley, Mary Oliver, Lou Sarabadzic, Katrina Naomi, Penelope Shuttle, Abigail Elizabeth Ottley, Alice Kavounas, Pascale Petit, Natasha Carthew, Katherine Stansfield, Linda Cleary, Lesley Hale and Ella Frears.

MEET THE WRITERS