Coach House Books
Encyclopedia
Coach House Books is an independent Canadian
publishing company located in Toronto
, Ontario
. Coach House publishes innovative and experimental poetry, fiction, drama and non-fiction. The press is particularly interested in writing that pushes at the boundaries of convention.
. It is known for publishing early works by writers such as Fred Wah
, Daphne Marlatt
, Margaret Atwood
, Michael Ondaatje
, Ann-Marie MacDonald
, George Bowering
, Nicole Brossard
, Gwendolyn MacEwen
, Christopher Dewdney
, bpNichol
and Anne Michaels
, Darren O'Donnell, Sean Dixon, Greg MacArthur, and Amiel Gladstone
.
Coach House was at the centre of a number of innovations in the use of digital technology in publishing and printing, from computerized phototypesetting to desktop publishing. Notably, the pioneering SGML/XML company, SoftQuad, was founded by Coach House's Stan Bevington and colleagues Yuri Rubinsky and David Slocombe.
In 1991, Coach House was split into two separate companies: the printing house Coach House Printing, headed by Bevington, and the book publisher Coach House Press, headed by Margaret McClintock. Bevington subsequently tried, unsuccessfully, to reacquire the publishing company. Ultimately, the book publisher declared bankruptcy in 1996, and later the same year Bevington moved the printing company back into book publishing.
The company is located in several former coach houses on bpNichol Lane
, near Spadina
and Bloor
, which were rented from Campus Co-operative Residence Incorporated
. In 2004, controversy arose when the media reported that the cooperative would be demolishing the coach house buildings, and politicians and public interest groups campaigned to have the buildings declared a heritage site. In 2009, the company directly acquired the buildings for the first time in its history.
.
The reputation of the new Coach House has been growing steadily since its rebirth in 1997, but it skyrocketed with the publication of Christian Bök
’s Eunoia. This work of experimental poetry won the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize
in 2002 and has sold over 19,000 copies. Coach House books have been the recipients of dozens of other awards and nominations, including the Governor General's Award
, the City of Toronto Book Award
, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize
, the Lambda Literary Award
, the Books in Canada/Amazon.ca First Novel Award
and the Trillium Book Award
.
Its most recent successes have been a series of books of collected essays by Toronto writers on various aspects of their city. The first, uTOpia (2005), about various writers' notions of a perfectible Toronto, was a surprise hit and was followed by The State of the Arts (2006), GreenTOpia (2007) and HtO (2008) about water in the city. Frequent contributors to the volumes include John Lorinc, Shawn Micallef, Derek McCormack
, Dylan Reid, Bert Archer
, Stéphanie Verge, Chris Hardwicke, Mark Fram, Liz Forsberg, Dale Duncan and Darren O'Donnell
.
Recently, Coach House was awarded the Province of Ontario’s inaugural Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts for Arts Organizations.
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
publishing company located in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
. Coach House publishes innovative and experimental poetry, fiction, drama and non-fiction. The press is particularly interested in writing that pushes at the boundaries of convention.
History
The company was founded as Coach House Press in 1965 by artist Stan BevingtonStan Bevington
Stan Bevington, C.M., D.F.A.In 1965, a young typesetter named Stan Bevington, newly transplanted to Toronto from Edmonton, rented an old coach house and installed an antique Challenge Gordon platen press...
. It is known for publishing early works by writers such as Fred Wah
Fred Wah
Frederick James Wah is a Canadian poet, novelist, and scholar.Wah was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, but grew up in the interior of British Columbia. His Canadian-born father was raised in China, the son of a Chinese father and a Scots-Irish mother. Fred Wah's mother was a Swedish-born...
, Daphne Marlatt
Daphne Marlatt
Daphne Marlatt, née Buckle, CM , is a Canadian poet who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia....
, Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C...
, Michael Ondaatje
Michael Ondaatje
Philip Michael Ondaatje , OC, is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian novelist and poet of Burgher origin. He is perhaps best known for his Booker Prize-winning novel, The English Patient, which was adapted into an Academy-Award-winning film.-Life and work:...
, Ann-Marie MacDonald
Ann-Marie MacDonald
Ann-Marie MacDonald is a Canadian playwright, novelist, actor and broadcast journalist who lives in Toronto, Ontario. The daughter of a member of Canada's military, she was born at an air force base near Baden-Baden, West Germany....
, George Bowering
George Bowering
George Harry Bowering, OC, OBC is a prolific Canadian novelist, poet, historian, and biographer. He has served as Canada's Parliamentary Poet Laureate....
, Nicole Brossard
Nicole Brossard
Nicole Brossard, O.C. is a leading French Canadian formalist poet and novelist.She lives in Outremont, a former city in Montreal, Quebec. She wrote her first collection in 1965, Aube à la maison. The collection L'Echo bouge beau marks a break in the evolution of her poetry...
, Gwendolyn MacEwen
Gwendolyn MacEwen
Gwendolyn Margaret MacEwen was a Canadian poet and novelist. A "sophisticated, wide-ranging and thoughtful writer," she published more than 20 books in her brief life. "A sense of magic and mystery from her own interests in the Gnostics, Ancient Egypt and magic itself, and from her wonderment at...
, Christopher Dewdney
Christopher Dewdney
Christopher Dewdney is a Canadian writer and poet.He was born in London, Ontario, and presently lives in Toronto, where he is a professor at York University. He is the long-time partner of writer Barbara Gowdy. Winner of the 2007 Harbourfront Festival Prize, he is the author of four books of...
, bpNichol
BpNichol
Barrie Phillip Nichol , who often went by his lower-case initials and last name, with no spaces , was a Canadian poet. He became widely known for his concrete poetry while living there in the 1960s...
and Anne Michaels
Anne Michaels
-Background:Anne Michaels was born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1958. Michaels attended Vaughan Road Academy and then later the University of Toronto, where she is an adjunct faculty in the Department of English. Her first book, The Weight of Oranges , a volume of poetry, was awarded the Commonwealth...
, Darren O'Donnell, Sean Dixon, Greg MacArthur, and Amiel Gladstone
Amiel Gladstone
Amiel Gladstone is a Canadian playwright and director. A graduate of the University of Victoria, Gladstone is a founder of Theatre Skam, an alternative theatre company in Victoria, BC and is the former Artistic Associate at Caravan Farm Theatre and the Belfry Theatre...
.
Coach House was at the centre of a number of innovations in the use of digital technology in publishing and printing, from computerized phototypesetting to desktop publishing. Notably, the pioneering SGML/XML company, SoftQuad, was founded by Coach House's Stan Bevington and colleagues Yuri Rubinsky and David Slocombe.
In 1991, Coach House was split into two separate companies: the printing house Coach House Printing, headed by Bevington, and the book publisher Coach House Press, headed by Margaret McClintock. Bevington subsequently tried, unsuccessfully, to reacquire the publishing company. Ultimately, the book publisher declared bankruptcy in 1996, and later the same year Bevington moved the printing company back into book publishing.
The company is located in several former coach houses on bpNichol Lane
BpNichol
Barrie Phillip Nichol , who often went by his lower-case initials and last name, with no spaces , was a Canadian poet. He became widely known for his concrete poetry while living there in the 1960s...
, near Spadina
Spadina Avenue
Spadina Avenue is one of the most prominent streets in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Running through the western section of downtown, the road has a very different character in different neighbourhoods....
and Bloor
Bloor Street
Bloor Street is a major east–west residential and commercial thoroughfare in Toronto, in the Canadian province of Ontario. Bloor Street runs from the Prince Edward Viaduct westward into Mississauga, where it ends at Central Parkway. East of the viaduct, Danforth Avenue continues along the same...
, which were rented from Campus Co-operative Residence Incorporated
Campus Co-operative Residence Incorporated
Campus Co-operative Residence Incorporated, often abbreviated to Campus Co-op or CCRI, is a non-profit student housing co-operative located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1936, it is the oldest co-operative residence in Canada.-External links:*...
. In 2004, controversy arose when the media reported that the cooperative would be demolishing the coach house buildings, and politicians and public interest groups campaigned to have the buildings declared a heritage site. In 2009, the company directly acquired the buildings for the first time in its history.
Operations
Coach House is one of the few Canadian publishing companies that prints its own titles; the printing operations also print books for several other small Canadian publishers and literary magazines, including the Hart House ReviewHart House Review
Hart House Review is a Canadian literary magazine managed by student members of Hart House at the University of Toronto and published by Coach House Press. The magazine is best known for prose, poetry, art, and photography contributed by emerging writers and artists in Canada.The inaugural issue...
.
The reputation of the new Coach House has been growing steadily since its rebirth in 1997, but it skyrocketed with the publication of Christian Bök
Christian Bök
Christian Bök is an experimental Canadian poet. He is the author of Eunoia, which won the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize, and which has been said to be "Canada's best-selling poetry book ever."-Life:...
’s Eunoia. This work of experimental poetry won the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize
Griffin Poetry Prize
The Griffin Poetry Prize is Canada's most generous poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin. The awards go to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English language....
in 2002 and has sold over 19,000 copies. Coach House books have been the recipients of dozens of other awards and nominations, including the Governor General's Award
Governor General's Award
The Governor General's Awards are a collection of awards presented by the Governor General of Canada, marking distinction in a number of academic, artistic and social fields. The first was conceived in 1937 by Lord Tweedsmuir, a prolific author of fiction and non-fiction who created the Governor...
, the City of Toronto Book Award
City of Toronto Book Award
The Toronto Book Awards are Canadian literary awards, presented annually by the city of Toronto to the author of the year's best fiction or non-fiction book or books "that are evocative of Toronto"....
, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize
Commonwealth Writers' Prize
Commonwealth Writers is an initiative by the Commonwealth Foundation to unearth, develop and promote the best new fiction from across the Commonwealth. It's flagship are two literary awards and a website...
, the Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Awards are awarded yearly by the US-based Lambda Literary Foundation to published works which celebrate or explore LGBT themes. Categories include Humor, Romance and Biography. To qualify, a book must have been published in the United States in the year current to the award...
, the Books in Canada/Amazon.ca First Novel Award
Books in Canada First Novel Award
The Amazon.ca First Novel Award, formerly the Books in Canada First Novel Award, is a literary award given annually to the best first novel in English published the previous year by a citizen or resident of Canada. It has been awarded since 1976....
and the Trillium Book Award
Trillium Book Award
The Trillium Award is given annually by the government of the Province of Ontario and is open to books in any genre: fiction, non-fiction, drama, children's books, and poetry. Anthologies, new editions, re-issues and translations are not eligible. Three jury members per language judge the...
.
Its most recent successes have been a series of books of collected essays by Toronto writers on various aspects of their city. The first, uTOpia (2005), about various writers' notions of a perfectible Toronto, was a surprise hit and was followed by The State of the Arts (2006), GreenTOpia (2007) and HtO (2008) about water in the city. Frequent contributors to the volumes include John Lorinc, Shawn Micallef, Derek McCormack
Derek McCormack
Derek McCormack, MSc DipTchg, is Vice-Chancellor of the Auckland University of Technology , New Zealand. As such he is the executive head of the newest of the eight New Zealand universities....
, Dylan Reid, Bert Archer
Bert Archer
Bert Archer is a Canadian author, journalist, travel writer, essayist and critic.Archer was born in Montreal and lived in Calgary and Vancouver before attending St. Michael's University School in Victoria, British Columbia, the University of St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto, and...
, Stéphanie Verge, Chris Hardwicke, Mark Fram, Liz Forsberg, Dale Duncan and Darren O'Donnell
Darren O'Donnell
Darren O'Donnell is a Canadian novelist, essayist, performance artist, playwright, director and actor.He is the artistic director of theatre company Mammalian Diving Reflex, has written many plays including A Suicide-Site Guide to the City, White Mice, Who Shot Jacques Lacan?, Radio Rooster Says...
.
Recently, Coach House was awarded the Province of Ontario’s inaugural Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts for Arts Organizations.