Founded | 1963 |
---|---|
Founder | David Robinson |
Country of origin | Canada |
Headquarters location | Vancouver, British Columbia |
Distribution | Publishers Group Canada (Canada) Consortium Book Sales & Distribution (US) [1] |
Nonfiction topics | Social issues, environmental, ethnography, literary criticism |
Fiction genres | Poetry, fiction, drama |
Official website | talonbooks |
Talonbooks is an independent publisher of Canadian literature based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Its repertoire features authors writing in the literary genres of poetry, fiction and drama, as well as non-fiction books in the fields of ethnography, environmental and social issues, cultural studies, and literary criticism. Notable Talonbooks authors include Michel Tremblay, George Ryga, bpNichol, George Bowering, bill bissett, Daphne Marlatt, George F. Walker, M.A.C. Farrant and Mary Meigs.
The company started as a magazine called Talon in 1963. It was run by David Robinson and some of his high-school friends. It later incorporated Jim Brown, who acted as both a writer and editor for the publication. Talon later joined with a small local press called Very Stone House and published its first string of poetry books in 1967. The association with Very Stone House ended a year later, and the Talonbooks imprint started appearing by itself.
In 1969, with the addition of Peter Háy as drama editor, Talonbooks published its first drama title, Colours in the Dark , by James Reaney. Its editorial focus began shifting gradually more toward drama until that became the company's area of specialization.
Karl Siegler joined Talonbooks in 1974 and later became its president and publisher. Karl and Christy Siegler ran the press until December 31, 2007, when it was acquired by Kevin and Vicki Williams (though Siegler remained with the company until the end of 2011). [2]
Barrie Phillip Nichol, known as bpNichol, was a Canadian poet, writer, sound poet, editor, creative writing teacher at York University in Toronto and grOnk/Ganglia Press publisher. His body of work encompasses poetry, children's books, television scripts, novels, short fiction, computer texts, and sound poetry. His love of language and writing, evident in his many accomplishments, continues to be carried forward by many.
George Harry Bowering, is a prolific Canadian novelist, poet, historian, and biographer. He was the first Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate.
Brian Fawcett was a Canadian writer and cultural analyst. He was awarded the Pearson Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Prize in 2003 for his book Virtual Clearcut, or The Way Things Are in My Hometown. He was also nominated for the Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence in 2012 for Human Happiness.
Daphne Marlatt, born Buckle, CM, is a Canadian poet and novelist who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Roy Akira Miki, is a Canadian poet, scholar, editor, and activist most known for his social and literary work.
Robin Francis Blaser was an American-born Canadian playwright, poet, and translator
James Crerar Reaney, was a Canadian poet, playwright, librettist, and professor, "whose works transform small-town Ontario life into the realm of dream and symbol." Reaney won Canada's highest literary award, the Governor General's Award, three times and received the Governor General's Awards for Poetry or Drama for both his poetry and his drama.
Derek Alexander Beaulieu is a Canadian poet, publisher and anthologist.
Frederick James Wah, OC, is a Canadian poet, novelist, scholar and former Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate.
Ken Belford (1946–2020) was a Canadian poet.
George Anthony Stanley, is a Canadian poet associated with the San Francisco Renaissance in his early years. In 1971, he became a resident of British Columbia.
Cynthia Flood is a Canadian short-story writer and novelist. The daughter of novelist Luella Creighton and historian Donald Creighton, she grew up primarily in Toronto. After attending the University of Toronto and the University of California, Berkeley she spent some years in the United States, where she married Maurice Flood before moving to Vancouver, British Columbia in 1969.
The BC Book & Yukon Prizes, established in 1985, celebrate the achievements of British Columbia and Yukon writers and publishers.
Arsenal Pulp Press is a Canadian independent book publishing company, based in Vancouver, British Columbia. The company publishes a broad range of titles in both fiction and non-fiction, focusing primarily on underrepresented genres such as underground literature, LGBT literature, multiracial literature, graphic novels, visual arts, progressive and activist non-fiction and works in translation, and is noted for founding the annual Three-Day Novel Contest.
Marion Alice Coburn Farrant is a Canadian short fiction writer and journalist. She lives in North Saanich, British Columbia.
Kenneth Wayne Norris is a poet, editor and professor of Canadian literature, retired from the University of Maine. He was born in New York City to Leroy and Theresa Norris, attended Stony Brook University for his BA from 1968-1972, and then moved to Montreal to pursue his MA in English at Sir George Williams University. He chose Montreal because “Montreal sound like a magical, mystical place” and because of Leonard Cohen. He “was tired of being an anti-American American in the Nixon era, and coming to Quebec gave [him] a positive agenda, gave [him] something positive to be.” After his graduation in 1975, he spent two years in New York before returning to Montreal for his PhD in English at McGill University, supervised by Louis Dudek, who in 1992 described Norris as "the most important poet writing on the North American continent today". He became particularly interested in Canadian modernist literature, with his thesis entitled “The Role of the Little Magazine in the Development of Modernist and Post-Modernism in Canadian Poetry”.
Meredith Quartermain, née Yearsley is a Canadian poet, novelist and story writer who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Alan Twigg, CM has received the Order of Canada, as a prolific journalist, historian, biographer, website-builder, film maker, community-builder and athlete. He created Canada's most-read, independent publication about books, BC Bookworld, a trade newspaper for the British Columbia book publishing industry and served as its publisher and main writer for thirty-three years until he gave the business away in 2020. He also founded or co-founded many of the province's major literary awards. When he was accorded an honorary doctorate by Simon Fraser University in 2022, SFU described him as British Columbia's leading man of letters. He also developed ABCBookWorld, an online encyclopedia of British Columbia authors. He is also a recipient of the Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence in 2016.
Cecily Nicholson is a Canadian poet, arts administrator, independent curator, and activist. Originally from Ontario, she is now based in British Columbia. As a writer and a poet, Nicholson has published collections of poetry, contributed to collected literary works, presented public lectures and readings, and collaborated with numerous community organizations. As an arts administrator, she has worked at the Surrey Art Gallery in Surrey, British Columbia, and the artist-run centre Gallery Gachet in Vancouver.
Stephen Collis is a Canadian poet and professor. Collis is the author of several books of poetry, including On the Material and three parts of the on-going “Barricades Project”: Anarchive, The Commons, and To the Barricades. He is also the author of three books of non-fiction: Almost Islands: Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit of the Unwritten , Dispatches from the Occupation, and Phyllis Webb and the Common Good. In 2011, he won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize for the collection On the Material. In 2019, he won the Latner Writers' Trust Poetry Prize. He wrote Mine in 2001, Anarchive in 2005 and The Commons in 2008, and was previously shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Award in 2006 for Anarchive. He teaches poetry and American literature at Simon Fraser University.
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