Indie Press Spotlight: Snakeskin Press and PROMETHEUS: A QUEER FUTURISTIC HORROR ANTHOLOGY
Snakeskin Press is a Queer Indie-owned Publisher focused on uplifting queer voices, publishing diverse work, and giving visibility to smaller and emerging authors.
Snakeskin Press is firmly anti-AI, anti-fascist, anti-genocide and anti-discrimination.
It is run by the two queer non-binary authors Jake Vanguard (they/them) and Ezra Wren (they/them). The Snakeskin mascot is a snake called Preston, who runs all the social media accounts.
PRESS LINKS:
Instagram: @snakeskin.press
Threads: @snakeskin.press
TikTok: @snakeskin.press
Bluesky: @snakeskin-press.bsky.social
Website: snakeskin-press.carrd.co
Backerkit: Snakeskin Press
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PROMETHEUS: A QUEER FUTURISTIC HORROR ANTHOLOGY
Prometheus stole fire and gave it to humanity. To this day, we carry it in our hearts: an innate spirit no machine can replicate. Enter a universe of horrors that will make your heart race and your skin prickle. The future is human.
Tell us about Snakeskin Press: how did you get started, what’s behind the name of the press, and what’s the story behind your first publication, PROMETHEUS: A QUEER FUTURISTIC HORROR ANTHOLOGY?
We’ve always wanted to collaborate on projects like these and we’ve spent hours talking about the kind of representation we want more of in the books we read.
Jake curated an anthology on their own in 2025 and has experience with design, formatting, and publishing.
Jess has editing and publishing experience, and both have worked to some extent in marketing before.
Snakeskin Press felt like the natural way forward for us: an excellent collaborative project that will allow us to make a difference in the way that matters most. The name is interesting.
We spent a lot of time brainstorming it and I think there were several little options we liked, but this one stuck. Not only are we both fans of reptiles and especially snakes, but snakeskin feels like such a beautiful metaphor for queerness, which is all about rebirth and change and beauty at every stage. It’s what we stand for.
The first publication also came about quite naturally! We opened a collab doc, which we both absolutely love doing–I think we’ve stacked nearly a hundred of these now–and we started throwing things at the wall. If memory serves correctly, Jake was the one who first suggested something along the lines of our current theme and Jess ate it up.
Horror is a genre that is beloved and meaningful to the queer community, and we both enjoy sci-fi and futuristic elements. It felt like an appropriate and cool theme to begin with. The ‘queer’ part wasn’t even a question.
Do you have any advice for people starting work on a collaborative project?
Find a community that you feel safe and seen in, and most importantly, a topic you’d like to see more of in the world.
Take inspiration from other creators doing similar projects – there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.
And, of course, find a partner you trust. It’s important to be able to rely on another person and to have a balanced dynamic, plus someone who you know is looking out for you just as much as you’re looking out for them.
From experience – it’s possible to do such a project alone, but the difference is tremendous. Being able to rely on each other and share the workload has helped incredibly much.
Who came up with the idea for PROMETHEUS? What were you looking for from the submissions you received, and which authors & stories can we expect from the collection?
Like we said before, it was a brainstorming document and we went with what stuck. Jake was the one who suggested most of the themes that ended up being in the call for applications and I think Jess is the one who started dabbling with the idea of Prometheus, the one who stole fire and gave it to humans.
As with everything we do, it was a collaboration from start to finish.
With regard to our expectations, we were looking for diverse, creative stories that took the theme we published and ran with it.
We ended up with such a varied and diverse collection. It was better than anything we could have hoped for or imagined. Prometheus has both established authors as well as new faces, with some publishing for the first time through Snakeskin Press. We’re incredibly happy with this mixed line-up and hope it’ll benefit everyone.
How did you arrange the final 16 stories? Did any unexpected themes emerge as you were grouping them? If so, what were they?
Finding a fitting order is one of the biggest struggles. You don’t want to have anyone feeling left out by being last, or even in the middle. Both of us have participated in multiple anthologies where we ended up being placed in several different spots, and we know from personal experience that while there are always feelings about positioning, every single placement can have its pros and cons.
The wonderful thing about our anthology is that we felt every story was strong and could fit literally anywhere, so we decided to organize everything to have a blend of similar themes without having chunks of the same in a row.
We varied representation, prose style, and overarching themes by grouping stories next to one another in ways that we felt maintained a natural reading flow.
Can you tell us about the story you chose to go first, and why that one was picked for the opening, and which one you chose to go last, and why that was chosen to end on?
This was our biggest struggle, because all of our stories are absolutely marvelous and it was so hard to choose. In the end, we decided to start with ‘Teleop’ because it felt particularly imminent as a horror topic that’s not too far from current anxieties within the world we’re living in. As for the ending, well…let’s just say it was an appropriate final line to end a horror anthology on: guess you’re all going to have to read it to find out.
What sort of rep can readers expect across the 16 tales, and as a press, why do you feel it’s important to champion these and other identities?
We have a range of queer representation: more than half of the stories have trans rep, including T4T, as well as sapphic, achillean, and nonbinary characters – and authors. The stories are also diverse in terms of disability, ethnicity, and a good varied spread of gender identities.
What can we expect from Snakeskin in the future – will you be open to submissions later on for other projects, are you open to agented/unagented authors etc, what should we look out for and how can people support you?
We have many plans for future publications! At the moment, our greatest focus is going to be on anthologies: we both love short stories and we feel that as a queer press, we want our brand to be about community. It’s wonderful to see different cohorts of authors come together in a project like this one.
We have a healthy mix of authors who are self-published, others who have published with indie presses, and others who are following a traditional publishing route.
Agented or unagented, there’s always room for authors who use their voices in ways that align with our mission and vision.
So, right now, the focus is on anthologies, but you never know what the future brings.
We’ll never say never, and we’re always open to interesting ideas that align with our values.
People can support us by following us on social media so they can know about our latest projects and crowdfunding campaigns, reading and rating our anthologies, and requesting them at their libraries! PROMETHEUS: A QUEER FUTURISTIC HORROR ANTHOLOGY comes out in just four days. We hope you enjoy these 16 amazing stories and that you’ll join us for the next adventure!
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