Apricot Press

As Apricot Press celebrates its two-year anniversary, I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight and celebrate the amazing work of the charity Arts Emergency, and talk a little about how their manifestos have resonated with me.

Arts Emergency is an award-winning mentoring charity and support network offering opportunities to young people in different areas of the UK (where I’m based). They focus on helping people from underrepresented backgrounds to break into the arts and humanities, both in higher education and in the cultural industries.

While I’ve never used the charity myself, I have been greatly touched by one of their slogans, coined by co-founder and comedian Josie Long:

‘Sometimes if you want something to exist you have to make it yourself.’

I actually have this saying on a pin badge that I keep on a tote bag, and I often think about it whenever I’m working on my own writing. When I first came across this phrase, it immediately made me think of Apricot Press. I set up the Press in 2022 because I knew that I loved the small press publishing community and that I wanted to offer opportunities to emerging writers. At first, I saw the idea of running a press as something distant, far off in the future with an unknown timeline. But eventually, after speaking to loved ones, I realised that it was better just to start—to build this website, put out a call for submissions and see what happened.