Peter Ayrton was an editor at Pluto Press when he set up Serpent's Tail in 1986 with a commitment to publish writing from outside the mainstream. This independent publishing house was the winner  of the Sunday Times Small Publisher of the Year Award in 1994, and has successfully launched writers as diverse as Walter Mosley,  Neil Bartlett,  Patricia Duncker and David Toop. Peter and his staff are keen to discover new voices and have published the first fiction of Colm Toibin, Suzannah Dunn, Richard House, Stella Duffy, Joel Lane, Charlie Williams and Mary Woronov. Crime writers published include David Peace, one of the 2003 Granta Best Young British Writers. Serpent’s Tail also publishes many extraordinary writers in translation including the Nobel Prize for Literature winners Kenzaburo Oe (1994) and Elfriede Jelinek (2004).