Don LePan

Last updated

Don LePan (born 1954 in Washington, DC) is widely known as a book publisher; he is the founder and CEO of the academic publishing house Broadview Press. He is also a painter and the author or editor of several books, most notably the dystopian novel Animals.

Contents

Biography

LePan grew up in Ontario, living variously in Ottawa, Kingston, and Toronto. He received a BA in English Literature from Carleton University in Ottawa and an MA in Renaissance Studies from the University of Sussex, where he studied under A.D. Nuttall; his research on Shakespeare’s plots became the basis for a monograph (The Birth of Expectation). He worked for some years in the 1970s and 1980s for the Canadian branch of Oxford University Press (where he was manager of the College Department from 1979-1982), and from 1982-1985 as a secondary school teacher in rural Zimbabwe with the development agency WUSC. In 1985 he returned to Canada to found Broadview Press, a book publisher in the humanities and social sciences. By 2020 Broadview had grown to a company with annual revenues of over $4 million and a staff of 30. [1] Though modest in size, the publishing house is held in high regard, particularly as a publisher of anthologies and literary editions; in 2004 LePan was awarded an honorary doctorate by Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario for his contribution to academic publishing. [2]

LePan’s father, Douglas LePan, was well known as a poet and academic; his brother, Nicholas Le Pan, is well known as a Canadian civil servant (he is a former head of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions).

Animals: A Novel

LePan’s Animals: A Novel is set in an indeterminate future in which virtually all the species that humans have used as food have become extinct; it tells the story of a "mongrel" child who is twice abandoned and then comes face to face with the equivalent in this future world of the factory farming of today. The novel was published in 2009 in Canada and in 2010 in the USA, to sparse but generally favorable newspaper reviews [3] [4] —and to widely diverging reactions elsewhere. Notably enthusiastic was a review in the University of Toronto Quarterly ("If you read nothing else from this year's batch of novels, ... read Animals". Few Canadian novels have been as powerful"). [5] Others, however, have criticized the work as being "didactic" or "preachy." On his blog LePan has defended the notion that the aesthetic and moral need not be regarded as mutually exclusive—in his words, "it should not be assumed that a work that tries to do good cannot also be good." [6]

LePan's third novel, Lucy and Bonbon, also concerns the lines that we draw between humans and other animals.

Selected works

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Ondaatje</span> Canadian novelist and poet

Philip Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet, fiction writer, essayist, novelist, editor, and filmmaker.

Hafgan is one of the kings of Annwn, the otherworld in Welsh mythology. He appears in the First Branch of the Mabinogi as the main rival of Arawn, the other king of Annwn. The dominions of the two kings sit side by side, and Hafgan is constantly warring against Arawn. In the story Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed, Pwyll, in order to gain Arawn's friendship, agrees to switch places with him for one year and one day and to battle against Hafgan in order to rid Arawn of his difficulty. Before they exchange places, Arawn gives specific instructions to Pwyll to kill him with one stroke and no more. In the past when Arawn had battled and had struck Hafgan nearly to his death, Hafgan had begged him to give another stroke, and when Arawn had done so, Hafgan recovered from his injuries and was in good health for battle again the next day."

A lai is a lyrical, narrative poem written in octosyllabic couplets that often deals with tales of adventure and romance. Lais were mainly composed in France and Germany, during the 13th and 14th centuries. The English term lay is a 13th-century loan from Old French lai. The origin of the French term itself is unclear; perhaps it is itself a loan from German Leich (reflected in archaic or dialectal English lake, "sport, play" and in modern Swedish. The terms note, nota and notula appear to have been synonyms for lai.

Cleanness is a Middle English alliterative poem written in the late 14th century. Its unknown author, designated the Pearl poet or Gawain poet, also appears, on the basis of dialect and stylistic evidence, to be the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Patience, and may have also composed St. Erkenwald.

Douglas Valentine LePan was a Canadian diplomat, poet, novelist and professor of literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Craig Walker (writer)</span> Canadian writer, theatre director, actor and educator

Craig Stewart Walker is a Canadian writer, theatre director, actor and educator.

<i>A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder</i> 1888 novel by James De Mille

A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder is the most popular book by the Canadian writer James De Mille. It was serialized posthumously and anonymously in Harper's Weekly, and published in book form by Harper and Brothers of New York City during 1888. It was serialized subsequently in the United Kingdom and Australia, and published in book form in the United Kingdom and Canada. Later editions were published from the plates of Harper & Brothers' first edition during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

<i>Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman</i> Biography of Mary Wollstonecraft

Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798) is William Godwin's biography of his late wife Mary Wollstonecraft. Rarely published in the nineteenth century and sparingly even today, Memoirs is most often viewed as a source for information on Wollstonecraft. However, with the rise of interest in biography and autobiography as important genres in and of themselves, scholars are increasingly studying it for its own sake.

A Gathering of Spirit: A Collection of Writing and Art by North American Indian Women was the first published collection of Indigenous women's writing in North America, as well as the first anthology edited by an aboriginal woman.

Guernica Editions is a Canadian independent publisher established in Montreal, Quebec, in 1978, by Antonio D'Alfonso. Guernica specializes in Canadian literature, poetry, fiction and nonfiction.

Fern Alma Rahmel was a Canadian writer and educator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Isaac Eaton</span> English radical author, publisher and activist

Daniel Isaac Eaton (1753–1814) was an English radical author, publisher and activist. He was tried eight times for selling radical literature and convicted in 1812 for selling The Age of Reason.

Broadview Press is an independent academic publisher that focuses on the humanities. Founded in 1985 by Don LePan, the company now employs over 30 people, has over 800 titles in print, and publishes approximately 40 titles each year. Broadview's offices are located across Canada in Calgary, Peterborough, Nanaimo, Guelph and Wolfville.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bibliography of Canada</span>

This is a bibliography of works on Canada.

Maurice Généreux is a Canadian physician who was convicted in 1998 of prescribing medications to two HIV-positive men in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1996—medications that allowed the men, Mark Jewitt and Aaron Mcginn, to commit suicide in 1996. Généreux was the first doctor in North America to be convicted of assisting a suicide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Pivato</span> Canadian writer and academic (born 1946)

Joseph Pivato is a Canadian writer and academic who first established the critical recognition of Italian-Canadian literature and changed perceptions of Canadian writing. From 1977 to 2015 he was professor of Comparative Literature at Athabasca University, Canada. He is now Professor Emeritus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Rappoport</span> Russian and French militant communist politician, journalist and writer

Charles Rappoport was a Russian and French militant communist politician, journalist and writer. A Jewish intellectual, and a multilingual scholar, he's been referred to as "a grand man of French radicalism".

Tydorel is a medieval lai which tells the story of a fairy-knight who visits the childless queen of Brittany. He tells her that if she refuses his sexual advances, she will never again know happiness. Then he proves his supernatural origins by riding his horse across the bottom of an enchanted lake and emerging on the other side. He impregnates the queen and commands that she name their child Tydorel. This child is cursed with chronic insomnia, but he is raised by the king and treated as his heir. The queen arranges nightly entertainment for Tydorel since he cannot sleep.

Cometh Up as a Flower is the second novel by popular Victorian novelist and short story writer Rhoda Broughton. First published in 1867, the novel is often grouped with the sensation novels of the 1860s and 1870s, though Pamela K. Gilbert notes that "her novels were not characterized by the kind of dark secrets and heavily plotted crime stories that were common in the writing of more typical sensation authors such as Wilkie Collins or Mary Elizabeth Braddon".

Ellen Kyle Noel pseud. Mrs. J.V. Noel., was an Irish Canadian writer who published a number of novels through journals and serialization.

References