Join the co-founders of the award-winning independent publisher 404 Ink, Heather McDaid and Laura Jones-Rivera, as they discuss running the British Book Awards’ reigning Small Press of the Year in Scotland.

They will be joined by Edwin Morgan Prize-winning author Titilayo Farukuoye and chaired by Polari Prize-listed author Heather Parry, both contributors to 404 Ink’s new Queer Words Anthology Fierce Salvage and 404 ‘inkling’ authors, to discuss the contemporary book world, from both the writer and publisher perspectives.

Heather McDaid is the co-founder and co-publisher of 404 Ink, the reigning Scottish Small Press of the Year at the British Book Awards, and Public Relations Manager at the Estate of Sir Terry Pratchett, managing campaigns across Discworld, and running their fan hub Good Omens HQ. Prior roles have included working with Publishing Scotland, Paisley Book Festival, and many more across the industry.

Titilayo Farukuoye (they/them) is a writer, educator and organiser based in Glasgow. Their work addresses social justice and community care and is informed by dreaming and the radical imagination. Titilayo co-directs the Scottish BPOC Writers Network and is a winner of the 2022 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. Their debut poetry pamphlet In Wolf’s Skin is available with Stewed Rhubarb Press and their non-fiction book But We Did: Dismantling Colonialist Myths Towards Collective Liberation will be published by 404 Ink in September 2025.

Laura Jones-Rivera is the co-founder and co-publisher of the award-winning 404 Ink, most recently named Scotland’s Small Press of the Year by the British Book Awards in 2024. She is Operations Manager at the Latin American publisher Charco Press while also working for numerous other publishers as a freelance production specialist such as Bloomsbury and Cipher Press. She was previously Dead Ink’s Interim Publisher and named a Rising Star by the Bookseller in 2022.

Heather Parry is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her debut novel, Orpheus Builds a Girl, was shortlisted for the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year award and longlisted for the Polari First Book Prize. She writes the Substack General Observations on Eggs and her next novel, Carrion Crow, will be released in February 2025.