Podcast

Founded in 2020, CALACA has developed as a creative production studio and a publisher working between London and Mexico City, committed to interdisciplinary projects led by Latin American practitioners. We approach publishing as social practice giving form to ways of seeing that often remain marginal to dominant visual and institutional languages. We operate across research, editorial practice, visual culture, and public programmes.

Our practice has been shaped by an ongoing attention to the Latin American diaspora and to the many ways in which culture is translated, rearticulated, and reconstructed in foreign contexts. We understand diasporic dialogue as a site in which memory is reworked,identities remain open, and new visual and social languages emerge. Through this understanding, we develop collaborative projects and publications that reflect the depth, contradiction, and vitality of migratory experience across contexts.

We are interested in forms that can carry nuance, and in the capacity of publications as objects that produce relation. We approach publishing, ultimately, as an act of thinking with others.

Jenna Gordon is the Editorial Director at VERVE Books. She graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 2019 and joined the VERVE team in 2020. She is based in Glasgow.

Launched in 2018, VERVE Books is a UK-based independent publisher of page-turning, diverse and original writing from fresh and impactful voices. Led by a small team of passionate book lovers, our list is tightly curated, consisting of 18-24 titles per year. Our books are connected by rich storytelling, vividly imagined settings and unforgettable characters and narrators.

Some of our most notable publications include Chloe Michelle Howarth’s Sunburn, which was shortlisted for the Nero Debut Fiction prize and the British Book Awards’ Discover Award; Seth Insua’s Human, Animal, which was a BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick and was shortlisted for the New Adult Book Prize and the British Book Awards’ Discover Award; and Angela Flournoy’s The Wilderness, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Critics Circle Award, and was one of Barack Obama’s favourite books of 2025.

Gemma Elizabeth Davis is a freelance Sales Director working with a number of independent publishers, including Charco Press, Cassava Republic and Wilton Square Books. She has spent over twenty years in publishing, working across the UK and international markets, and has built her career around helping great books find their readers.

She has worked across sales, rights and business development, and has held senior roles at Unbound, Atlantic Books and Ryland Peters & Small. In 2025, she began working independently, partnering with indie presses to offer in-house sales support in a more flexible way.

Her work focuses on building strong relationships with booksellers, developing clear and effective sales strategies, and supporting publishers as they grow and adapt. She is particularly interested in how independent presses can collaborate, take risks, and continue to shape the wider literary landscape.