Linen Press is a small, independent publisher run by women, for women. We are now the only indie women’s press in the UK.

Our policy is to encourage and promote women writers and to give voice to a wide range of perspectives and themes that are relevant to women. We display and rejoice in the differences in female creative voices.

We publish books that are diverse, challenging, and surprising. The collective background of our writers is a multi-coloured patchwork of cultures, countries, ages and writing styles.

Finalist 2015 Women In Publishing Pandora award.
the water all around us

the water all around us

Set on a small Scottish island, The Water All Around Us is a poignant novel about loneliness, roots and belonging. Recently arrived, crofters’ child Fenn is troubled by being different and not fitting in. Incomer and marathon swimmer Jess is running away from personal tragedy. A young whale, separated from his pod, swims in the wrong direction and embarks on an arduous, heart-breaking journey. All three are at home in the water, but when their lives connect in the sea that fringes the white sand beaches, their paths converge and collide with disastrous consequences. read more →
The Silent Women

The Silent Women

In 1875, Simone Gastrell is conveniently committed to Long Meadows Asylum by her adulterous husband. Distraught but not defeated, she meets the silent women whose lives within the institution are ordered and defined by men.  In a powerless world, relieved only by precious hours spent in the Airing Courts and gardens, the three women come together in unvoiced friendship. When life behind the asylum walls grows even more dangerous and brutal, they find their voices and use them to fight for survival. read more →
The Dolphin

The Dolphin

In 1937 Larry Lambert has a vision of a magnificent pub built on frozen fields ‘like a grassy sea’. It is an echo of a single, failed, gay encounter in a fishing boat, and in its construction he invests his energy and his thwarted dreams. He calls it The Dolphin. And so unfolds a moving exploration of the constraining expectations of society on three generations of one family. For Larry, there is the cruel impossibility of being gay in 1930s Britain and his ensuing loveless marriage with the embittered Rosemary. For his daughter, Joanie, there is the crushing weight of duty and respectability during the post-war years. Only granddaughter Lottie pulls free and finds the freedom her grandfather and mother were denied.