Anvil Press: News

A Canlit milestone

“CanLit marked a milestone this spring, but you could be forgiven if you missed it. In May, Vancouver-based Anvil Press published the last of Quebec writer Nelly Arcan’s books to be translated into English. (Arcan, who died at the age of 36 in 2009, published four novels in her lifetime; Breakneck was her third.) A trenchant writer on sex, gender, and death, Arcan was a great provocateur of French letters. But celebrity itself is a difficult thing to translate. In English Canada, Nelly Arcan remains obscure and misunderstood. That’s a shame, because she’s one of the best writers this country has produced.” —Jade Colbert, The Globe and Mail

The Door Is Open makes CBC Canada Reads longlist!

Congratulations to Bart Campbell, whose book, The Door Is Open: Memoir of a Soup Kitchen Volunteer has been longlisted for the 2015 CBC Canada Reads.

Finalist for People’s Poetry Award

We are pleased to announce that Marita Dachsel’s Glossolalia has been shortlisted for the Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry. Congratulations to Marita and the other finalists!

Anvil authors finalists for BC book prizes!

Congratulations go out to Jennica Harper for her poetry collection, Wood (Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize), Jane Silcott for her debut collection of personal essays, Everything Rustles (Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize), and Jesse Donaldson for his debut book on Vancouver’s history, This Day in Vancouver (Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award). Bravo to three fine authors and three very fine books!

And Mari-Lou Rowley’s latest poetry collection, Unus Mundus for its finalist nomination for three Saskatchewan Book Awards — the University of Regina Book of the Year, the Saskatchewan Arts Board Poetry Award, and the City of Saskatoon and Public Library Saskatoon Book Award.

Publisher of the Year” Award (2013)

Publisher Brian Kaufman, of Anvil Press, received the Jim Douglas Publisher of the Year Award from the Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia (ABPBC) at their awards ceremony on April 18, 2013 in Vancouver. From the ABPBC’s press release, “Abundantly energetic and deeply committed to Canada’s literature, Brian Kaufman is a daring publisher and it is the ABPBC’s honour to present him with the Jim Douglas award for publisher of the year.”

For more information about the award, visit the Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia website.

Congratulations to Madeline Sonik, winner of the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize

The jurors cited Afflictions & Departures as, “a wonderfully generous book that returns us to one of literature’s touchstones: intensely personal revelation rendered universal. Sonik’s tone – cool and wry, manages to be simultaneously humane and funny.”