Styx & A Symbol of a Memory - Nightjar Press

In an era of bingeable novels and mega-series, Nightjar Press stands apart, publishing one strange, unsettling short story at a time. These single-story signed chapbooks all fall in the ten to twenty page range that can easily be read in one sitting and are each limited to only 200 signed copies. For those not familiar with chapbooks, a chapbook is a small printed booklet that fits somewhere between a pamphlet and a zine.

Nicholas Royle is the publisher/editor of Nightjar Press. Eagle-eyed readers may remember him from a previous post as the translator of Pharricide. As mentioned in that post, Royle lives in Manchester, has authored seven novels and over 100 short stories, and edited countless novels and anthologies.

John Oakey is responsible for the distinctive cover designs. Royle and Oakey first collaborated in 1994, but it wasn’t until 2009 that they began regularly working together in the form of Nightjar Press. Oakey has designed covers for Salt Publishing, Carrion Press and Serpent’s Tail Publishers. You can check out Oakey’s designs on his website. 

To quote Nicholas, ‘ I think short stories are special. They deserve to be made a fuss of. They deserve their own covers and cover art. Making signed, limited editions seemed the thing to do.’ 

It is a unique way of publishing. Where most publishers bundle short stories into collections which can be mass-produced at a £10-15 price point, Nightjar keeps things short and limited. Each chapbook is sold for just a few quid and is exclusive to a run of 200 copies.

Each copy is hand-numbered, so you know exactly which of the 200 you’re holding. There is a sense of exclusivity, heightened by the author’s signature and the energy and effort put into each chapbook exudes respect for the short story form. 

If you’re a writer and have a few short stories that are a bit weird knocking around, Nightjar Press are always open to submissions. They accept previously unpublished stories that are 2000-5000 words. Submit to this email address: nightjarpress@gmail.com 

Nightjar’s stories are strange, weird, experimental and sometimes horrific. Some will leave you wondering what you have just read (as is the case with Styx), while others stay burned in your mind (like A Symbol of a Memory).

Coming in at about 6 pages, Styx is easily read during a cup of tea. It is a confusing read and you finish it quite unsure of what actually happened. But it is also interesting, well-written and enjoyable. It is experimental, and I’m unsure I’ve ever read anything quite like it.

We are protected from mortality, most of the time, by obliviousness and this is a good thing, because we have work to do and meals to cook and children to look after…

Written by Will Eaves, an author with five novels to his name and is an Associate Professor in the Writing Programme at the University of Warwick. Check out his site.

A Symbol of a Memory is a more straight-forward narrative than Styx. You finish it having known exactly what happened, but this doesn’t provide any comfort at all. It is a nasty short tale of memories of trauma.

The window to the street was huge and drew me over. There was a scene, framed as a grand picture from a museum, only moving.

Written by Jim Gibson, an author from North Nottinghamshire. His work has been described as ‘vanishing boundaries between nostalgia and trauma, work and leisure, reality and fantasy’. He writes in the Nottinghamshire dialect and has most recently published a collection of his short stories called The Bygones. Check him out at his website.

If you’re a reader drawn to the uncanny, the experimental, or the quietly horrific, Nightjar’s chapbooks are a treasure trove. And if you’re a writer with a strange short story burning a hole in your desk drawer, you might just find the perfect home for it here.