Stairwell Books is a Small Press publisher who specialises in poetry anthologies, short stories and novels from new writers.

Stairwell Books was conceived by founder Rose Drew who would sit in the stairwell of her home in Connecticut sharing poems with her upstairs tenant, an accomplished ‘cellist. In 2002 Rose, with her then fauxmari, Alan Gillott, produced poetry booklets to sell when they featured at poetry venues in the USA.

In 2005 Stairwell Books published its first book, an anthology of the poets in their First Tuesday open mic which met monthly in Wilton Connecticut. In 2007 Stairwell Books produced a second anthology, this time of the poets they met in York, England, at their open mic, The Spoken Word. This book, The Exhibitionists, caught sufficient local interest that author Nick David asked if we would publish his short novel, Carol’s Christmas, under our banner: this we were proud to do. The Exhibitionists was named in the top ten list of small press anthologies of 2009 by The Purple Patch; and in 2011 Tim Ellis’ Gringo on the Chickenbus was included in the top 20 Poetry collections.

Since then Stairwell Books has published further anthologies of the best of local poets.

In 2009 in collaboration with Fighting Cock Press, Stairwell Books published Fosdyke and Me by John Gilham to capture for posterity the wonderfully entertaining Fosdyke Stories John had been regaling York audiences with for many years.

Stairwell Books’ most recent Anthology, Along the Iron Veins, was launched at a themed railway night put on as part of the 2010 York 50+ Festival. Stairwell Books has now taken on responsibility for the publication of the international writing journal, Dream Catcher, starting with issue 24 which came out in April 2011: issue 25, the Silver Issue, was published in January 2012. We published our first full length novel, Foul Play, a police procedural by a mother daughter writing team, PJ Quinn; and plans are in place to publish, the second story in this series, Poison Pen. In 2011, we also published three new illustrated collections featuring Yorkshire writers and artists.