Welcome to Tartan Moon - books to satisfy diverse tastes
Tartan Moon Publishing was established with a pertinent agenda. There are far more captivating, life-affirming stories waiting to be told than there are outlets for sharing them. Launching in Edinburgh in 2025, we are on a full-throttle mission to share creative writing in a variety of formats. Short story anthologies. Creative non-fiction. Poetry. Biographies. Novels.
Books are golden tickets into the limitless world of the human imagination. Whether you crave journeys into fact, contemporary fiction, or any of many genres, Tartan Moon's literary menu will cater to your reading tastes. We are particularly keen to give a voice to anyone with lived experience of mental health issues, as sharing these stories is a crucial aspect of destigmatising this subject.
Tartan Moon welcomes proposals for new books. Please feel free to drop us a message via the Contact page, outlining your prospective title.
Discover our uplifting collection of books
Our first publication was HEIDS UP, a riveting, thought-provoking anthology by Edinburgh writers, Neil Renton and Mark Fleming. Earning plaudits from Ian Rankin, Alan Bisset, and Tommy Mackay, this contains 50 pieces of life-affirming writing - flash fiction, longer short stories, essays, and mental health memoirs.
Tartan Moon's second publication, due soon, is BAR CODES FOR SPRING, a hardhitting poetry collection by cult spoken-word performer, Rodney Relax. Emerging from the DIY ethos of the late-1970s punk scene in Fife, Relax first made his mark in underground music before turning his focus to the written word. By the early 1990s he was part of the creative force surrounding the influential Scottish countercultural magazine Rebel Inc, alongside a new wave of radical writers transforming the literary landscape.
Often described as “Edinburgh’s punk poet legend”, Relax has delivered innovative performances everywhere from the Bongo Club to Leith Dockers Club, frequently blending poetry with film, music and multimedia. His darkly comic, unvarnished writing—praised by spoken-word pioneer Jem Rolls as work that “punches through the page”—has gained a devoted following. Relax has also performed with the acclaimed Edinburgh arts collective Neu! Reekie!, founded by poets Michael Pedersen and Kevin Williamson, whose live shows and festivals have brought contemporary poetry to international audiences.
Gathering poems shaped by decades of performance and underground publishing, Bar Codes for Spring captures the restless energy, humour and defiant spirit of one of Scotland’s most distinctive poetic voices.
