[2] The press was founded in 1981 by Cary Archard, a teacher who was then the editor of the quarterly magazine Poetry Wales.
He decided to branch into publishing poetry collections and gained funding from the Arts Council of Wales, initially on an ad hoc basis.
It includes some well-known poets such as Dannie Abse,[2][8] Kathryn Gray, Pascale Petit, Sheenagh Pugh,[8] and Owen Sheers,.
[2][8] Novelists include Richard Collins, whose debut work, The Land as Viewed from the Sea, was shortlisted for a Whitbread Award in 2004; Lloyd Jones, whose novel Mr Cassini won the English-language Wales Book of the Year award in 2007; and Patrick McGuinness, whose debut novel The Last Hundred Days was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2011.
[8] Another project invites authors including Fflur Dafydd, Lloyd Jones and Gwyneth Lewis to recreate the Mabinogion in new settings.
[8] The academic Lisa Sheppard describes Seren, together with Parthian and Cinnamon Press, as "among the foremost publishers of English-language writing in Wales".
[2] The Welsh poet Owen Sheers describes the press in 2011 as "a sign of national and cultural strength" and "a way of allowing a country a voice".