"Canadian Literary Festivals: Creating Community in Speculative Fiction Publishing" - Ellen Forget
Channel: Bibliographical Society of Canada
Date: 2021-06-25

Ellen Forget, University of Toronto

The speculative fiction publishing industry in Canada is largely made up of small presses, including those who publish novels, anthologies, and genre-focused literary magazines. Due to ever-increasing literary competition for media attention and shelf space, many of these publishers rely on direct-to-reader sales and engagement at literary festivals and related community events. In her book Literary Festivals and Contemporary Book Culture, Millicent Weber describes literary festivals as a “celebration of literary culture” that “integrate aspects of literary culture into their organisation and events” (p. 7); Canada hosts many of these events, including Calgary’s When Words Collide and Burnaby’s Creative Ink Festival, at which publishing professionals hold workshops, editing sessions, and pitch sessions for authors in various stages of their careers. The Canadian Aurora Awards banquet is held at one of these events every year, inviting award-winning authors and publishers to attend and teach skills to new authors and aspiring publishers. This paper will analyze the relationship between readers, authors, literary agents, and publishers, as seen on the top half of the updated communications circuit from Padmini Ray Murray and Claire Squires (2013) through discussion of Canadian literary festivals. It will explore the community created by independent speculative fiction genre publishers through their involvement in literary festivals, writing conferences, and other community events and the effect that has on their ability to publish new voices and promote learning, engagement, and improvement for new and existing publishing professionals. Speculative fiction in Canada is more than just a genre, it’s a community.