Blackwater Press is an independent publisher founded by editors who believe that good books begin with good editorial work.
We publish literary fiction, memoir, essays, history and other non-fiction, working with authors from the UK, the United States and elsewhere. Our list includes both emerging writers and established authors, and ranges from intimate literary fiction to original historical research.
We are deliberately small. This allows us to work closely with our authors and to give each book the editorial attention, design and care it deserves.
Our approach
Three short principles:
Editorial rigour
We publish books we believe in and work closely with authors to make them as strong as possible.
Independent publishing
We choose our books because we believe they deserve readers, not because they fit a commercial formula.
Beautiful books
We care about typography, design, production and the physical experience of reading.
Who We Are
Elizabeth Ford – founder, publisher, and fairy princess
Elizabeth Ford dropped out of law school to pursue a PhD in Scottish music at the University of Glasgow. This research won the National Flute Association Graduate Research Award. She has held (and will hold) research fellowships at the University of Glasgow, the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh, the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, the McGill-Burney Centre, and the Bodleian Libraries. Her writing is widely published in the fields of eighteenth-century Scottish studies and historical musicology and has been called ‘required reading.’ Her work in editing started when she was employed by her family’s physician to assist as he wrote the great American novel. Since then, she has worked with writers of fiction and non-fiction, copyedited for the Legal Studies Forum, worked as the English language editor for Schott Music, and was managing director of a small press in Glasgow. She is currently lead copyeditor of ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830. She has a collie called Sally, a basset hound called Lucy, co-owns a developmentally delayed Highland steer called Beauford, and a fierce cat called Flòraidh, who is an active member of the editorial committee. Elizabeth will read anything that holds still long enough but is partial to big thick books with small print and no pictures. Away from books, she likes to take pointlessly long walks in search of obscure folkloric sites, attempt to translate Gaelic, and get escorted out of libraries.
Vivien Williams – editor and astronaut
In 2010 Vivien Williams moved from southern Italy to Scotland to pursue a PhD at the University of Glasgow on the cultural history of the bagpipe. With several postdocs between Edinburgh and the Warburg Institute in London, bagpipes remain her preferred research – and conversation – topic. She is a Research Associate at the University of Glasgow, working on projects in the digital humanities including Editing Robert Burns for the 21st century; the Hunterian Associates Programme; The Cullen Project; Curious Travellers; Seeking Refugees from Slavery in Sierra Leone; and The Jacobite Officers Database. The freedom afforded by a digital career offered the opportunity to move to a remote Adriatic island, where she currently lives. At the age of seven she wrote and published a little book called Grandi Amici, and in adulthood has won several literary prizes for prose, poetry, and poetic translation. She speaks Italian, English, Spanish, French, a little German, and is currently teaching herself Hindi. She now offers her translation services at Blackwater Press. Vivien can spot a typo in all her known languages from an average distance of 3.6 kilometres, and believes a fairy dies with every grammar mistake. To calm down from exposure to bad spelling and grammar, Vivien became a yoga teacher and is the President of her own sports association, JalApulia a.s.d. Uncharacteristically for fellow Blackwater Press staff, she does not have a pet, but does tend to name insects who find themselves trapped in her home. She joined Blackwater Press in Spring 2021.
Luca Guariento – digital alchemist
Luca wanted to become an astronaut, until he discovered rock music and decided that he’d become the frontman of a famous band; quite unsurprisingly that didn’t happen. For a while he then worked at a software house in Padua as systems administrator. When he was offered a permanent contract he thought it wise to resign and get an MA in Musicology in Bologna. Where to next? Glasgow, for a PhD on Robert Fludd and his philosophy of music (oh, you’re not familiar with him? Lucky you). He is still based in Scotland and works as senior digital humanist for the College of Arts at the University of Glasgow.
Luca gets excited when anything involving technology is mentioned. He joined Blackwater Press out of compassion for his colleagues who think typewriters are avant-garde.
When he’s not complaining about the Scottish weather, he loves listening to music, cooking and baking, getting burned by his home-grown super-hot chillies, training at the gym, hiking and mountain-biking hills and mountains, voluntarily jumping out of aircraft in flight, piloting gliders, and nerding out over random things.
Our Interns
Lilly Morrison
Lilly Morrison grew up in Grayson, Kentucky, a small town nestled between two beautiful state parks, from which she moved to Lexington to attend the University of Kentucky. It was there that Lilly received a Bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in Gender and Women’s Studies. She has an ardent love for all things literature and an appreciation for the seemingly endless and often contradictory rules of English writing. This infatuation undoubtedly spurred on by her beloved nana, a professor of English, Lilly knew her path in life was the one that provided her with the most reading material.
Lilly loves traveling, particularly for the opportunity it brings to find new coffee shops and book stores around the world. But nothing quite beats the comfort of curling up somewhere in her home with her clinically bipolar, but adored kitten called Sable. When she isn’t reading, working, or preventing her cat from spilling things, Lilly enjoys jumping into bodies of water with her friends, joining chaotic phone calls with her geographically spread out family, and catching as many showings at the local theater with her movie buff partner.
Clara Biela
Clara is a current student at Cornell College (the one in Iowa) studying International Relations, Russian, and Spanish. An aspiring polyglot, she has begun travelling to parts of the world most people haven’t heard of to practice speaking in different languages – most recently Kyrgyzstan. While this is her first time dipping her toe into the publishing world, Clara has always been a bibliophile as she spends her spare time reading and partaking in other “Babushka Hobbies” like baking, puzzling, and most recently crocheting.