‘The Birds Were the Only Ones Singing’ is a diverse anthology of poems that reflects the world around us.

Split into six chapters, the poems are drawn from the poet’s personal experiences and explores nature, community, folk, love, loss, and metamorphosis.

Dolezal details his own personal sense of escapism into nature and where he finds solace. The poems ask readers to question where they feel most at peace. The chapter reveals how elements in nature can be a metaphor for human greed and deception.

Goat Star Books is a UK-based publisher specializing in translations of poetry from and into English. It is a poetic project that is based on the idea that poets are the unrecognized legislators of the world, in the famous words of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Our vocation is to use the translation of poetry as a bridge of understanding between cultures, making known different voices from both the present and the past and both in Spain and the United Kingdom.

Matt Wakefield is a British television writer and novelist. Between 2012 and 2024, he was one of the core writers on the BBC drama Doctors, contributing 70 episodes. Coming Attractions, published in April 2026, is his debut novel, inspired in part by his childhood experiences of making short films on Super 8.

Set in the mid-1980s, the novel follows thirteen-year-old Will Sheridan, who builds a cinema in his bedroom using a Super 8 projector and abridged Hollywood reels. When his father gives him a camera, Will sets out to make a three-minute vampire movie, only to discover that life is far harder to direct than a film.

Witty, bittersweet and sharply observed, Coming Attractions is a coming-of-age story about first love, friendship, family and the consolations of cinema – and about the painful gap between the reassuring worlds we create for ourselves and the complexities of real life.

The novel has received an enthusiastic response from early readers, earning five-star Amazon reviews that praise its humour, emotional depth and evocative portrayal of growing up in the 1980s.

GILLES OF BEC AND THE CAGE FULL OF BIRDS by T D OWEN

An historical novel and mystery set in 12th century Oxfordshire and Berkshire.

The Cage Full of Birds is story of real people who lived and struggled in The Anarchy of twelfth century England; a stirring tale of self-discovery, the triumph of hope over doubt and, ultimately, of good over evil.

REVIEWS

‘I have been devouring A Cage Full of Birds! I love it, truly! The characters are so well drawn,
and Gilles shines through like a Candide.’

‘Such detail, characters, description, pace… brilliantly done.’

‘What a dance you’ve done there, so good. You made the landscape and period integral
to the reading experience, not just the characters and plot.’

‘The descriptive passages are very lyrical and beautifully evocative of their local settings.’

‘Great suspense building and humour too. I have laughed out loud at many places.’

TIM OWEN is an historian, author, public speaker, teacher and battlefield tour guide with a flair for the dramatic.

A Yorkshire Gospel: Search for a Spare Messiah

In the quiet East Yorkshire village of Roos, so flat you could watch a terrier run away for three days, are two men of middling ambition that stumble upon a mystery of biblical proportions.

When Coldog and Trev discover a cryptic message on a beer mat suggesting someone called ‘Helen’ may have found the Grail, they do what any reasonable men would do. They go looking for it.

What follows is a quest involving: a jar with suspicious contents, a dog who is always muddy, at least three Helens, and the worrying possibility that God might have had a second child.

A Yorkshire Gospel is a surreal, irreverent, and thoroughly northern adventure about faith, friendship, and the dangers of thinking too hard after six pints. Somewhere between divine revelation and administrative error lies the truth. And it might just be in Yorkshire.

About the Author
C. R. de Gernon writes comedic fiction from a fortified potting shed, drawing inspiration from the people, buildings, landscapes, and peculiar logic of Yorkshire life. He writes in various persons as he identifies as plural. He explains that “I am one” and “the other is me”; therefore, the two of us are “we”.

It is understood that he currently lives somewhere in East Yorkshire, where rumours continue to circulate with alarming efficiency.

C. R. de Gernon is the 14th heir to a title that no longer exists and a fortune of sprouting vintage grass seeds.

I’m Mira Tosheva, a Bulgarian-born writer and poet whose work delves into what it means to be human – how we navigate our own personal stories, the changes we go through, our vulnerabilities, and the relationships we build with ourselves and others.

My debut poetry book, “Малки истини за Големите хора / Little Truths for Grown-ups”, was first published in 2022, followed by a second edition in 2026. A bilingual collection of poems and reflections, it explores life choices, personal experiences, and the small truths we discover along the way.

My writing also extends to personal essays, which have frequently appeared in a Berlin-based English-language women’s publication.

If you’re visiting the Oxford Indie Book Fair, do stop by to say hello – I’d love to meet you!