The Inklings are pocket sized pop culture books that introduce readers to a wide range of topics they might only have an inkling about!
Within this series of impactful, surprising and exciting books are essays on the radical potential of female friendship, grief and Studio Ghibli, the life and legacy of Prince’s fashion, and other subjects encompassing politics, music, sexuality, and plenty more besides.
Originally conceived by our friends at 404 Ink, with covers designed by Luke Bird, we have begun publishing this series in North America and will be commissioning the next books for worldwide distribution from 2026.
Submissions for the series are currently closed. When the next submission window opens, information will be posted on the Saraband website, social media and Inklings newsletter.
Sign up to the Inklings newsletter here.
On His Royal Badness: The Life and Legacy of Prince’s Fashion
Casci Ritchie
Not only was Prince a musical genius and one of the greatest artists of all time, he was a fashion icon, a trailblazer devoted to the art of dressing. Lifelong fan and fashion historian Casci Ritchie assembles a greatest-hits compilation of the best pieces in Prince’s wardrobe—from ornate ear cuff down to bespoke heel—telling each garment’s incredible origin story and showing how his tastes disrupted hegemonic, heteronormative, and Black masculinities.
On His Royal Badness considers Prince as a visionary artist and fearless provocateur who revered fashion and self-expression, and whose sartorial brilliance continues to shape contemporary culture.
Unaffiliated with the Prince Estate.
All the Violet Tiaras: Queering the Greek Myths
Jean Menzies
Ancient Greece was rich with stories of queer love and genderfluid identity—but what can these ancient stories tell us about our contemporary world?
From explorations of gender and identity across millennia, to celebrating queer love in its many forms, All the Violet Tiaras carves a space for queer stories to be told with all the complexity and tenderness they deserve—and a goddess or two thrown in for good measure.
Happy Death Club: Death, Grief & Bereavement Across Cultures
Naomi Westerman
Anthropologist Naomi Westerman was studying death rituals around the world—when her whole family died.
Happy Death Club examines the many faces of death and grief in Westerman’s own life and in cultures around the world. From expensive coffins and unconventional burials to horror films and true crime, what does our treatment of death and dying have to tell us about how we live our lives? What makes a “good death”? And who owns our bodies before and after we die?
Solemates: A History of Our Fetish for Feet
Adam Zmith
Now available in audiobook!
Listen on Spotify and Audible.
Queer writer and podcaster Adam Zmith dips a toe into the cultural and sexual history of the foot fetish—taking readers from medieval poetry to Renaissance paintings, OnlyFans to Fellow Travelers. Enlightening, erotic, and refreshingly nonjudgmental, Solemates is the rich, messy tale of our obsession with everything below the ankle—and a fascinating expose into what our desires reveal about how we view our bodies and our sexuality.
BFFs: The Radical Potential of Female Friendship
Anahit Behrooz
BFFs shows us that friendships can be the most important, loving, expansive, and emancipatory relationships in our lives—all with the help of our favourite TV, movie, and book besties.
From the joys of shared coming-of-age stories and sisterhood, through the pain of break-ups and parting of ways, the vast significance and intensity of feeling within our friendships is explored through depictions in the work of Toni Morrison and Elena Ferrante, Booksmart and Grey’s Anatomy, Insecure, The Virgin Suicides and beyond.
Hair/Power: Essays on Control and Freedom
Kajal Odedra
Interspersing intimate anecdotes with intersectional commentary, Hair/Power dives into the origins and cultural significance of hair—considering buzz cuts, Mohawks, Afros and the natural hair movement, baldness, and more—exposing the roots of a beauty industry built on discrimination. Ultimately Odedra is able to find joy and strength in hair, and she shows us how hair can be a powerful tool for activism, community building, and bringing about our shared liberation.
The Loki Variations: The Man, The Myth, The Mischief
Karl Johnson
Loki, ever the shapeshifter, is constantly being remade and reinterpreted. A central character in Norse mythology, the trickster god is also a pop culture icon, appearing in countless offshoots and interpretations across media, now most evident as Tom Hiddleston in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films and TV shows. Each iteration offers a new layer to the character we’ve come to know so well.
In The Loki Variations, Johnson invites readers to journey with him as he unpicks his own evolving relationship with Loki, and to ask: Who is your Loki? And what is their glorious purpose?
Now Go: On Grief and Studio Ghibli
Karl Thomas Smith
Grief is all around us. Even at the heart of the vibrant, whimsical films of Studio Ghibli.
In Now Go, Karl Thomas Smith enters the emotional waters to interrogate not only how Studio Ghibli navigates grief but how these works have informed his own understanding of its manifold faces, weaving cornerstone films and characters – including My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, The Boy and the Heron, and more – with his own life and the broader human experience of loss.
Love That Journey For Me: The Queer Revolution of Schitt’s Creek
Emily Garside
Emily Garside unpacks the show’s smart blend of classic sitcom DNA, meta references, and self-aware humor, revealing how Dan Levy and his team reshaped LGBTQ+ storytelling—from the town’s inclusive world-building to the show’s celebratory nods to Cabaret. She shows how Schitt’s Creek subverted expectations, offering a romance and a community rooted in acceptance, optimism, and genuine emotional depth.
Blitzkrieg Bops: A Brief History of Punks at War
Alli Patton
A riotous look at the intersection of politics, protest, and punk—and what it means to turn to art for survival.
Blitzkrieg Bops documents how punk music—with its socially charged lyrics and distorted, cathartic guitar—can ignite movements and be a global source of liberation. Speaking directly to these musicians, journalist Alli Patton shows how they create music to overthrow corrupt governments, stomp out oppressive regimes, fight the establishment and, in turn, fight for their lives.
