Our mission statement

Wild Boar Press is an independent publishing press championing the writing of the New Forest and wider south coast of England. Our aim is to publish the very best writing from across the region, which spans the counties of Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, Dorset, Devon and southern Cornwall. These are all areas of outstanding natural beauty, of rich cultural heritage and diverse communities. What is the thread that holds these areas together? It is, of course, the English Channel, the wild and tumultuous arm of the Atlantic Ocean where all these counties border. There is something special about edges: a coastline is the liminal space where reality is suspended and where minds are shaped. This press is a celebration of these places.

Why ‘Wild Boar’ Press?

Wild boars are animals of resilience and defiance who love spending their days rootling in the soil. If left to their own devices, they can change landscapes.  This is what this press aspires to do: to discover new voices and uncover the old, in a bid to change the neglected literary landscape of the south coast. 

The press is based in the heart of the New Forest National Park. Our editor-in-chief is Karen Jane Cannon.

Karen Jane Cannon is a UK poet and author. She has a PhD in English from the University of Southampton. Her novel Powder Monkey was published in 2002 by Weidenfeld and Nicholson, and Phoenix in 2003. She is the author of three poetry pamphlets: The Salterns (Nine Pens Press, 2026), The Curfew Bell (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2021) and Emergency Mints (Paper Swans Press, 2018). She was the winner of The Poetry Society’s Hamish Canham Prize in 2022, shortlisted for The Bridport Prize in 2023 and 2019, commended for the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine in 2021, and a finalist in the Mslexia Poetry Competition, 2017. She has an MA with distinction in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University. She’s also an essayist writing about landscape and visual impairment. You can read more about Karen here.