Leith Books was founded in 2017 by Lauren Nickodemus and Ellen Desmond.

We are perhaps best known for our nonfiction anthologies, including The Bi-ble: Essays and Narratives About Bisexuality and So Hormonal: A Collection of Essays on Hormones both of which have sold out every print run since they were crowdfunded by over 200 supporters on Kickstarter.

Our first fiction title Duck Feet by Ely Percy was awarded a Scots Language Grant by Scottish Book Trust in 2020. In 2021, Duck Feet won both the Saltire Society’s Scottish Book of the Year and Scottish Fiction Book of the Year prizes. In 2024, it was added to the National 5 English set text list (SQA). Schools can learn more about bulk ordering Duck Feet here.

Our business model is about slow and thoughtful publishing. We’ll never publish books just for the sake of it. We choose to publish brilliant books when we find them, and when we feel the market wants or needs them.

We have both spoken widely at events and book festivals (including at Edinburgh International Book Festival, Scottish Book Week and the London Radical Book Fair) about the power and importance of start-up publishing and the challenges facing the small press publishing scene.

We publish work we really believe in and we voluntarily put our time into producing books that we feel deserve to be shared.

(Please note we are closed to submissions and internships in 2025, apologies!)