Nick Owen Publishing exists to publish work that sits slightly to one side of the obvious. It’s interested in voice, contradiction, humour, discomfort, and the slow business of noticing things properly. Some of what appears here is literary. Some of it is satirical. Some of it is personal, reflective, or quietly argumentative. Much of it refuses to behave like a neat product.
That is deliberate.
NOP was founded on the belief that readers are more patient, more curious, and more emotionally intelligent than most publishing structures assume — and that not everything of value needs to announce what it is for on the first page.
Who’s behind it?
Nick Owen is a writer, publisher, and cultural leader whose work moves between literature, education, satire, and public life.
Alongside a career leading national arts and education organisations, he has written a growing body of work that explores ageing, obsession, sport, failure, institutional absurdity, love, vanity, and the strange theatre of modern professional life. Some of this work is comic. Some of it is quietly serious. Much of it is both at once.
Nick Owen Publishing is the place where that work is gathered — sometimes polished, sometimes experimental, often slightly mischievous — and where collaborations, side projects, and unexpected offshoots are allowed to exist without being forced into a single category.
What you’ll find here
You’ll encounter:
- A series of books following the fictional (and not entirely fictional) adventures of an ageing sportsman
- Essays and blog posts that wander between literature, memory, work, and culture
- Occasional apologies, reflections, and behind-the-scenes explanations
- Projects that don’t quite fit anywhere else, and are happier for it
What you won’t find is a fixed “brand voice”, a publishing formula, or much interest in chasing trends.
How to read NOP
There isn’t a correct order — but if you’re new here, two routes tend to work best.
If you want to understand the tone
Start with a short essay or blog post. They give a good sense of the voice, the humour, and the underlying seriousness of the work.
→ Read an essay from the NOP blog
If you want to understand the heart of the project
Begin with the Ageing Tennis Player books, which sit at the centre of the NOP universe and quietly connect many of the other strands.
→ Start with the Confessions of an Ageing Tennis Player
A final note
NOP is not trying to be everything to everyone.
It is a small publishing space that values attentiveness over scale, continuity over novelty, and readers who stay a little longer than the algorithm expects.
If that sounds like your kind of place, you’re very welcome here.
And if that’s not enough… here’s our team!
NOP is a boutique literary press in Nottingham that believes itself to be more glamorous than it is. Revealing ourselves through diaries, emails, memos, sketches and the haunting illustrations of Paul Warren, our website reveals the fragile egos, misplaced ambitions and occasional moments of grace within a small creative company trying to survive the modern publishing world: all whilst trying to sell a few books into the bargain. Here’s our team!
Julian Pilkington‑Sterne: Marketing Executive
Julian: grandiloquent dreamer and romantic misinterpreter who turns every task into a tragic performance. Believes Helvetica can heal the world.
Educated at Ripon and York St John, Julian is a distant relation to the Pilkington glass family. Joined NOP after a short and catastrophic spell in corporate branding
Eleanor Wheeler: In house Editor
Eleanor: dry, sharp, fiercely intelligent; Eleanor is the emotional anchor of NOP, secretly fond of the chaos she complains about. She is the quiet architect of NOP’s literary output. While Nick supplies the vision and Julian supplies the chaos, Eleanor supplies the coherence. She is the one who actually reads every submission, fixes every contract, and writes the elegant paragraphs that make Nick’s press releases sound sane. She’s a ruthless editor but not an unkind one — her red pen bleeds clarity, not cruelty. Among her colleagues she is nicknamed ‘The Metronome’ for her calm pacing and unnerving ability to bring every meeting back to reality.
Alex Moore: Senior Editor
Alexander: calm, quietly heroic, often caught between management pragmatism and human empathy.
Maja Jović: Intern
Born in Novi Sad, Serbia, Maja holds an MA in Translation and Cultural Studies from the University of Nottingham. She’s a distant relative of tennis player Novak Djokovic, although she avoids the subject. Observant, unimpressed, unexpectedly poetic in her silence.
Clare Thompson: Front‑of‑House Reception
Elegant, articulate, unflappable. Carries herself like a player between points: composed, centred, slightly amused at the chaos around her. Known for immaculate timing, both in speech and action. She never raises her voice; she just looks at the phone and it rings less. She is a former semi‑pro tennis player whose shoulder injury ended a promising career. Transitioned into arts administration before joining NOP.
Paul Warren: Illustrator-in-Residence
Reclusive, perceptive, and unnervingly intuitive. Communicates mostly through sketches pinned to the noticeboard. His work often predicts events before they happen — or reveals truths no one dares to say aloud.
Nick Owen; Founder, Publisher, Author
Charismatic visionary whose bursts of inspiration leave everyone else to clean up the ink. Believes he runs a Renaissance studio, not an office.
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