The Cipher Subscription

Subscribe to our 2026 list

It’s subscription time!

2026 marks our sixth year of publishing queer and trans literature. We’re beyond excited about next year’s list (scroll down to see!), and we can’t wait to share it with you. We’re renewing our UK subscription model – by subscribing, you can get your mitts on all the books we’re publishing throughout 2026, fresh from the printer.

We’re sorry to say that this time, we can only offer the subscription to UK readers. It’s shit, and, like many small presses right now, we’re truly disappointed not to be able to send books to our readers overseas, but due to Brexit and now Trump Tariffs, the cost of postage is just too expensive and has become really complicated to manage.

 Why we’re doing this

Firstly, because we love queer and trans literature and we know you do too! It’s been great watching this subscription develop into a community of readers and writers championing our authors and the books they write.

And on a heftier note, if you follow any indie publishers on social media, you probably already know that we’re up against some real challenges. Print costs are still rising, review space is scarce, and there is still… Amazon. We’re constantly planning ahead to try and lessen the impact. Buying direct from publishers and pre-ordering our books makes such a huge difference – not only does it help contribute towards future print runs, but we’re able to pay our authors better royalties, and commission more titles for the years ahead. 

How it works

A 2025 Cipher Press Subscription costs £75 for UK readers. For that, you’ll get every book we’re publishing this year, an eBook of each, and any merch we make.

That £75 is less than if you buy our books individually and covers the cost of postage. It’s a one-off cost – we’ll be renewing the subscription each year as a one-time payment, so you can choose whether you want to continue or not. 

 What you’ll get

In 2025 we’re publishing 5 incredible books:

Mirrorstage by Peter Scalpello

A raw and profound novel in verse about mental health, addiction, queerness and shame that explores ideas of hybridity and identity.

Following their discharge from hospital, Mirrorstage follows its narrator on a road trip through the grey, liminal landscapes of modern Britain. As they pass graffitied bus shelters, construction sites and flooded motorways, factories and high-rises, the narrator’s internal and external journeys begin to converge, leading them down paths they have been trying to avoid: the mental illness and substance use that led them to the inpatient ward, the uneasy balance of their own gender identity, their troubled relationship with their estranged father, the perils and pleasures of the queer scene, and the shame that has haunted them throughout their life.

Woven around the psychoanalytic concept of its title, Mirrorstage is an experimental fable exploring the boundaries of selfhood and literary forms, told in fragments of prose and verse that are equal parts heartbreaking, sexy, and witty.

Peter Scalpello is a writer and psychotherapist from Glasgow, based in London. Their work has appeared in Five Dials, Granta, The London Magazine and The New York Times, among other publications. Peter’s book of poetry, Limbic (Cipher Press, 2022), was Highly Commended by the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, shortlisted for the Books Are My Bag Readers Award for Poetry, and adapted into a stage production at the University of Edinburgh. Mirrorstage is their second book.

Little F by Michelle Tea

A gutsy and joyful road trip of a novel by cult favourite author of Black Wave and Valencia.

In Spencer’s fantasies, the breezy, queer streets of Provincetown are utopia, a place where he can be free. And when a violent attack in his suburban Arizona schoolyard sends him to the hospital, he decides queer utopia can’t wait. One night, with the help of his best friend, the teenage witch Joy, he hitches a ride to find it.

What follows is a cross-country road odyssey throughout the USA, taking Spencer from new moon rituals in Arizona canyons to Texas bus stations, from the luxe drag stages of Houston’s Montrose district to the jazz-soaked streets of New Orleans and beyond. This new novel from Michelle Tea tells the story, by turns raw, romantic, and sweet, of a sheltered boy taking his first leap into queer life, among all the complicated queers who live it.

Michelle Tea is the author of over twenty books of fiction, memoir, poetry and children's literature. Her autofiction, Valencia, a cult classic, won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Fiction. Her essay collection Against Memoir was awarded the PEN/America Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for The Art of the Essay. Tea is also the recipient of awards from The Rona Jaffe Foundation, as well as the Guggenheim Foundation. The founder of Drag Queen Story Hour, she has received honours from the American Library Association and Logo Television. Tea curated the Sister Spit Books series at City Lights Publisher, and founded the ongoing imprint Amethyst Editions at The Feminist Press.

A Pizza Hut, A Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut by Hannah Levene

An electric, smart, and boldly playful novel exploring queer suburbia and the radical implications of staying put.

Herb and Lara are busy slinging coffees in their hometown – of Watford! While Herb dreams of leaving to write big gay plays for a big gay world, Lara’s dedication to being in the here and now keeps her firmly rooted. Plus she’s fallen madly in love with Cynthia, a high-femme roboteer here to finish her PhD, teaching her way through robot post-doc hell, stamping on the brains of robo-boys as she goes. Soon Watford will use Cynthia’s inventions to reinvent itself into the communised Watford Underburg, but not yet.

Meanwhile, Lazarus is back at her mum’s. Her attempt at city life didn’t exactly go to plan, and now she spends her days working on a Yiddish translation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle and playing video games. With no capacity to think about her future and trying to forget her past, what will happen? Local football coach Butch Lichenstein, that’s what.

A Pizza Hut, A Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut is a wildly inventive and funny novel that counters the idea of the suburbs as a place queers leave and plays out the radical implications of staying put.

Hannah Levene is a writer living in Norwich, UK. Her novel Greasepaint was published by Nightboat Books in February 2024. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Roehampton University exploring The Composition of New Butch Literature. Various prose, poetry and conversations have been published at Lit Hub, Bomb Mag, Fruit Journal, Hotel, Data Bleed, Blackbox Manifold, and FENWOMEN. She is currently working on a collaborative novel with D Mortimer titled Abraham’s Bosom.

Big Man by Dean Atta

A tender, daring novel which turns a lens on what it means to age as a queer person.

Big Man follows the life of Big, a middle-aged, Black British queer man who lives a gentle life with his boyfriend, Little, in their home in East London. Big and Little enjoy drinks with their friends, holidays, homeware, and running together along the Hackney canals. Big came of age in the club scene under the watchful eye of Mother, an African American trans woman who made both a home and a name for herself in London, her house a refuge for wayward queer youth like Big. When he finds out Mother is releasing a biography, the two reconnect after decades of distance, and Big finds himself having to confront a long-repressed assault that opens old – and new – wounds.

A tender, daring novel full of gentle humour, Big Man explores themes of identity, aging, sex, family, and trauma, turning a lens on what it means to age as a queer person, while being a double-edged love letter to the people and places that make us.

Dean Atta is an award-winning Black British writer from London known for his heartfelt storytelling rooted in his Greek Cypriot and Jamaican heritage. He writes poetry, fiction and nonfiction for all ages. For adult readers, his poetry collection, I Am Nobody’s Nigger, was shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize, and his memoir, Person Unlimited: An Ode to My Black Queer Body, received praise from Michael Rosen as ‘wonderfully original’. His young adult verse novels are The Black Flamingo, Only on the Weekends, and I Can’t Even Think Straight. The Black Flamingo won the Stonewall Book Award and was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and Jhalak Prize. Malorie Blackman praised the book, saying, ‘I loved every word.’ Dean has also contributed to middle-grade anthologies like Happy Here: 10 stories from Black British Authors & Illustrators and the instant no. 1 New York Times bestseller Black Boy Joy: 17 Stories Celebrating Black Boyhood. His picture book, Confetti, illustrated by Alea Marley, is a colourful celebration of love and life. Additionally, Dean is a screenwriter and executive producer of the animated short film Two Black Boys in Paradise, which was selected for the BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival and numerous others worldwide.

IN/OUT by Joe Conroy

A daring, darkly hilarious novel about a young queer on the brink of catastrophe.

IN/OUT follows the morbid mundanity of its narrator’s routine: hiding from responsibility, sliding deeper into substance misuse and being financially supported by a mother who brands mental health an ‘invention of North London hippies’. 

The narrator was ‘normal’ once – he held up a job at a fashion magazine (that his mother got him) and wore nice clothes and showered and cleaned his teeth and bitched about his boss (one of his mother’s clients, Amanda). Now, the only people who visit are his busy, narcissistic mother, his even more irksome stepsister, Olivia, and the men he finds on Grindr to pay for his meals.

Set in the run up to the Brexit Referendum, In/Out is a darkly hilarious and at times harrowing portrait of a young queer on the brink of catastrophe, exploring themes of masculinity, class, family, sexual assault, addiction, and mental health. A daring novel about being completely untethered, by a bold, exciting new literary voice.

Joe Conroy is a writer from Liverpool. A graduate of Drama Studio London, IN/OUT marks his debut novel.

As well as our books, you’ll get any postcards, bookmarks, badges, posters, and any other weird things we make to go with them.

We want to say a big thanks again to everyone who has supported Cipher so far - we’re really looking forward to publishing more amazing queer and trans books!!

 Thanks a million,

Ellis, Jack, Wolf & Liam