So excited about the ottawa small press fair
i wrote a song about it
Image description: in pink and yellow and orange text: the ottawa small press book fair/fall edition: November 16, 2024/ noon to five pm/ Tom Brown Arena/ 141 Bayview Station, 2nd Floor/ free admission.
The fair is held twice a year in the spring and fall and features all kinds of presses from indie comic book makers to zinesters to handsewn chapbook makers to traditional book publishers. It’s an amazing thing. It attracts presses and makers from all over the place.
Charles and I first attended the fair as vendors back in 2002 when we brought Friday Circle chapbooks from the University of Ottawa. We didn’t even know that chapbooks existed until I took a creative writing class in poetry at the University of Ottawa in 2000. My very first chapbook was Blood Orange, published by Friday Circle Press in 2003, more than twenty years ago now.
Image description: chapbook on a table. Cover: black and white photo of oranges and one open blood orange in the middle. TEXT: Blood Orange/Amanda Charlotte Earl
After our first appearance at the fair back in 2002, when it took place at the Glebe Community Centre, we became regulars, getting a table to sell chapbooks published b Bywords.ca starting in 2003 with the Bywords Quarterly Journal, a print magazine we published from 2003 to 2013.
Image description: the final issue of the Bywords Quarterly Journal in 2013. The cover is a collage of the covers for all the issues. Collectors and fans of Ottawa poetry can still purchase the entire set from the Bywords.ca store.
At these small press book fairs, we have chatted with many fellow chapbook enthusiasts, writers and artists. The fair moved to Jack Purcelle Community Centre for many years and in the last few it has been at the Tom Brown Arena in Hintonburg. We have rarely missed a fair. In 2009, the day I was released from the Ottawa General was the day the fair was held. Our dear friends tabled for Bywords in our absence.
I love the Ottawa Small Press Book Fair. I am grateful to rob mclennan for keeping it going all these years. It is inexpensive to have a table: $25 for a full table and $12.50 for a half-table. It is a fair process, no bureaucracy: first come, first chance to get a table; and they are all good tables anyway. After the fair there’s usually a chance to socialize with fellow small pressers at a local pub. Before the fair there is often a reading as well. It’s a good weekend of small press fun!
Here’s the song I wrote to celebrate this year’s 30th anniversary:
There are other small press book fairs happening in Toronto, Montreal and other places. If you get the chance to attend one where you are, whether as a vendor or buyer/reader/curiosity seeker, please do so. You’ll have a great time!
Here’s a map of Canadian small presses created by Kate Siklosi of Gap Riot Press. You’ll be excited and amazed at just how many small presses there are across Canada!