🎵 So Fresh and so clean clean 🎶

I am famously agnostic about Christmas; never been one for tinsel and forced seasonal sentimentality. Not enticed by New Year’s Eve; the noise and the performative countdowns; seen it all before. But I still get super-excited by the first working day of each New Year – a motivational springboard of intent. Happy New Year!

So, while most of the rest of the world remains in recovery mode, I have already flipped open this new year like the first page of a brand new notebook (so fresh and so clean clean). Energised by the potential of many unknowable narratives that will be etched into reality over the coming twelve months.

A massive drawer marked “January”, for the past few months, has been a convenient vessel to shove many arduous tasks into. Ambitious ideas, complex manuscripts, and every “we’ll get to that” email, hidden away for a later date. Today (cos it feels like a Monday), that drawer has been tipped onto my desk, set out neatly, ready to be engaged with.

📚 Looking Back – Moving Forward

The final months of 2025 were a whirlwind of activity for M2M Books:

• The Launch: We brought into the world our first multi-community poetry anthology, I Zig and I Zag by Masaka Madeda alongside other diverse poets, and debut novel, Love and Happiness by G.I. James; a pacy narrative exploring adoption and identity that has already begun to resonate.

• The Transition: We bade a fond farewell to Irie’s Bar; a space that fuelled our early energy; and have transitioned our operations to Taliesin. This move represents a shift into a more focused, dedicated environment where we can nurture the next wave of M2M Books’ authors and titles.

• Our Digital Home: We revamped our publishing website m2mbooks.com. We stripped away our necessarily hurried first attempt to create a boutique space that better reflects the quality of our authors.

💪🏾 Hopes for 2026: Publishing beyond the diversity Calendar

Throughout 2026, the M2M Books’ mission is to encourage writers from diverse backgrounds to move beyond the diversity calendar; to compose texts for their own communities; to resist defaulting into explanation and performative suffering for largely disinterested mainstream audiences.

This year is about building permanent internal libraries for a range of marginalised communities. We want to publish more books that uplift communities and refuse to fit into any predictable mainstream box.

The desk is set, the notebook is open, the pen is poised. Let’s get to work.

✍🏾 Join the Journey

If you have a manuscript that belongs on our desk – a story, poetry, or nonfiction written for a marginalised community – our submission window is always open.

Let’s have a great year!

Gareth James – Chief Reader M2M Books