Metonymy Press is based in Tio’tia:ke
(Montreal), unceded Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) territory. We publish literary
fiction and nonfiction by emerging writers.
We try to reduce barriers to publishing for authors whose perspectives
are underrepresented in order to produce quality materials relevant to queer,
feminist, and social justice communities. We really want to keep gay book
lovers satisfied.
Metonymy
Press is the project of Ashley Fortier
and Oliver Fugler. They met on their
first day of high school and have been writing together and editing for each
other ever since. They are neighbours, too.
1 – When did Metonymy
Press first start? How have your original goals as a publisher shifted since
you started, if at all? And what have you learned through the process?
Metonymy
Press started as an idea between friends Ashley Fortier and Oliver Fugler years
ago. We launched the idea in August 2014, and then we got some start-up funding
and put out our first book in 2015.
Our
primary goal remains to publish good queer writing by underrepresented and
emerging writers. One of our original goals was to publish anthologies, which
we haven’t yet done, but we’re in conversation with a potential editor of a
collection as we speak.
We
both pursued a certificate in publishing through Ryerson University, and
although we’ve been able to operate as a two-person press because of that, a
lot of what we’ve since learned is about how we don’t fit industry standards
(in terms of production schedules, distribution channels, promotional costs
etc.), because we’re so small and queer.
2 – What first brought
you to publishing?
We
have both been actively writing since early high school, where we met in a
creative writing program. Our involvement in organizing Montreal’s longstanding
annual Queer Between the Covers book fair gave us some ideas about queer
publishing and about a potential readership. Finally, our formal training
through Ryerson gave us some of the hard skills to go with the creative
experience we both have, so it was a natural progression for two people who
like organizing and directing things.
3 – What do you
consider the role and responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?
Our
focus is loosely queer content and perspectives underrepresented in the
mainstream. But in general we believe the responsibility of small presses lies
in undermining the status quo and offering a platform, however small, to
emerging and otherwise not-household-name writers who add to conversations that
are happening already but not officially.
4 – What do you see
your press doing that no one else is?
We’re
for the most part publishing work by trans and racialized authors that’s not
autobiographical but also doesn’t cater to the mainstream. We have ended up
publishing this work because it’s what we’re interested in, because it’s good
writing and because it’s largely otherwise unavailable.
5 – What do you see as
the most effective way to get new chapbooks out into the world?
A
lot of our book distribution until this year has been individual orders online,
which works quite well. Wholesale relationships have been based on personal
relationships, cold calls, and the occasional spontaneous request or reluctant
university bookstore order.
6 – How involved an
editor are you? Do you dig deep into line edits, or do you prefer more of a
light touch?
We
are quite involved, but it depends on the text. For Trish Salah’s Lyric
Sexology Vol. 1, a poetry collection that had been previously published, we
didn’t need to edit much because it had been edited by the previous—poetry-specific—press, Roof Books. Beyond poetry, which we have
otherwise avoided due to our anxiety about editing it, we are pretty deeply
involved in substantive, line, and copyediting.
7 – How do your books
get distributed? What are your usual print runs?
Until
this year, we have done all of our own distribution, via individual online
sales, in-person sales at book fairs and direct wholesale relationships. This
year we signed on with Small Press Distribution, so US customers may now order
through them, which is great, because it is very expensive to mail books over
the border.
Our
print runs range from 250-800, and all of our books have moved beyond their
first print run. We work with a very nice Montreal-based printer, Le Caïus du
livre, that has a short turnaround and good rates for small runs.
8 – How many other
people are involved with editing or production? Do you work with other editors,
and if so, how effective do you find it? What are the benefits, drawbacks?
We
have always hired cover designers, different ones for each book, and the
process so far has been collaborative between the designers, authors, and
ourselves. We do the majority of extent design and editorial ourselves, but we
have hired outside editors where necessary, for example, for the Pinyin text in
Small Beauty.
It’s
been really great to work with people outside of Metonymy for the most part, as
they can draw on themes in the work we haven’t focused on, and offer feedback
and skills that support the text and also are instructive for us as editors and
publishers. But ultimately we can’t afford to hire out for most steps, and also
we both like a lot of control and we do things on a tight timeline, so doing a
lot of the work ourselves suits us so far.
9– How has being an
editor/publisher changed the way you think about your own writing?
[Oliver]:
I know you can’t be your own only editor, but I do find that I am able to edit
my own writing as I go in a way that I wasn’t able to before. In general I’ve
gained an appreciation for the editorial and production processes, and what a
piece of writing can become with care and time.
10– How do you approach
the idea of publishing your own writing? Some, such as Gary Geddes when he
still ran Cormorant, refused such, yet various Coach House Press’ editors had
titles during their tenures as editors for the press, including Victor Coleman
and bpNichol. What do you think of the arguments for or against, or do you see
the whole question as irrelevant?
[Oliver]:
I think that self-published work and work published by your own press can be so
great! It’s pretty clear to us that a lot of what doesn’t get formally
published is good writing with a real readership that publishers assume won’t
sell. This belief is one reality that drives zine culture and a lot of small
presses.
But
as I said above, I also value the feedback found in more formal editorial and
production processes, so I like the idea of those steps being a necessary part
of publishing your own writing as well.
11– How do you see
Metonymy Press evolving?
We’re
a primarily print publisher, but are always considering ways to make our books
accessible in multiple formats. We hope to launch ebooks for our first three
titles later this fall and we’re exploring the option of audiobooks.
If
we expand beyond being a two-person operation, we might develop a co-operative
model of some kind, but that’s a longer-term possibility. In the meantime, we’d
like to continue engaging in specific collaborations, like we did with our
externally juried Gay Book Lovers Unite initiative last year.
12– What, as a
publisher, are you most proud of accomplishing? What do you think people have
overlooked about your publications? What is your biggest frustration?
It’s
been extremely rewarding to see the communities we’re a part of provide such
positive feedback and ongoing support for our work. It’s energizing. The award
wins and nominations for our two novels, Small Beauty and Fierce
Femmes and Notorious Liars, were exciting too.
Often
critics put a significant focus on the queer and/or trans identities of our
authors and their characters, while overlooking other intersecting realities as
well as the particularities of their writing craft. This is a frustrating
reality in CanLit when it comes to marginalized writers and how their work gets
taken up.
13– Who were your early
publishing models when starting out?
14– How does Metonymy
Press work to engage with your immediate literary community, and community at
large? What journals or presses do you see Metonymy Press in dialogue with? How
important do you see those dialogues, those conversations?
We’re
a member of the Association of English Language Publishers of Quebec (AELAQ)
and Oliver sits on the organization’s board as an associate member. We
participate in their events alongside other Anglo presses in Quebec, through
professional development, book fairs, etc. We contributed feedback for a piece Linda Leith wrote about the organization’s role and significance for Quill and Quire a couple months ago.
In
terms of the broader conversations happening in CanLit over the past couple
years, from the controversy over the “Appropriation Prize” to accusations of
sexual assault made against high-profile players in the industry, our mandate
makes it pretty clear where we stand. We value writers and writing that
actively undo the conditions that lead to such controversies.
Our
longstanding role in queer literary contexts in Montreal stems from our
involvement in Queer Between the Covers. We were both members of the organizing
collective for years and got a good sense of what readers, writers and micro
presses in this realm were producing and what they were missing, especially
produced in English in Quebec. Queer and feminist publications such as GUTS,
Plenitude, Autostraddle, Bitch and even Teen Vogue have
featured our authors and books in the past couple years. We think these
conversations are as important as those with industry publications, since our
readership is just (if not more) likely to read them. We tend to prioritize
dialogues with queer communities rather than literary-specific ones.
15– Do you hold regular
or occasional readings or launches? How important do you see public readings
and other events?
We
love hosting launches and have done so for all our titles so far, both locally
and in Ontario, Nova Scotia and BC. Our ability to send authors on tour is
limited by their time and our budget, but for closeby events, we often attend
and we really enjoy doing so.
We
hope to host other reading events in Montreal in the future, ideally in
collaboration with other local artists. We see live reading events as important
to community building. We also value the particularities of hearing authors
read aloud from their own work and collaborate with other writers and engage
with audience members in real time.
We
also often meet potential new and emerging authors at public events and it’s a
great way for readership to learn about our broader catalogue and the mandate
behind the work we do.
16– How do you utilize
the internet, if at all, to further your goals?
Social
media, blog posts, e-newsletters and online interviews and reviews are crucial
to reaching wider audiences. Our readership tends to lean young(er), so the
internet plays a major role. We also do a lot of direct sales via our website.
We have received rights requests from as far as Delhi and Melbourne, and this
is thanks in large part to our online presence and how quickly things spread
that way.
17– Do you take
submissions? If so, what aren’t you looking for?
We
have an open submission policy, outlined on our website. What we’re not looking
for is work that replicates—whether in form or content—queer and trans
narratives already out there. We get a disproportionate number of submissions
set in New York City in the 1980s. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that,
but as a Montreal-based small press looking to do something new, it’s not
really our jam.
We
are primarily interested in fiction and creative nonfiction, though we put out
our first poetry collection this summer, so we’re not closed to that either. We
have yet to publish graphic novels or children’s lit, even though we both
really love the genres.
18– Tell me about three
of your most recent titles, and why they’re special.
We’ve
only put out four books so far, total. Instead, maybe we’ll take this
opportunity to talk up our next title, nîtisânak, by Lindsay Nixon.
The manuscript works with the idea of kinship
that derives from the author’s Plains Ojibway, Métis and Cree kinship teachings,
and also how queer kin were some of their first experiences of this reciprocal
relationality and care. The book is a creative nonfiction collection chosen by
our Gay Book Lovers Unite jury. Opening up our acquisitions process like this was a first
for Metonymy and we’re very pleased with the result. nîtisânak is scheduled for publication in early spring 2018.
An initial statement from the jury puts it
thus: “Nixon’s work blends contemporary Indigenous experience within Queer and
2 Spirit spaces to strike at the heart of colonization and Canadian identity.
Along the way, they explore masculinity, patriarchal oppression, racism in
Canada, poverty, and the lingering weight of colonial history within Queer
spaces. Their intersectional writing merges worldviews and deftly reveals the
rotting underbelly of Canadian Queer identity as a space fraught with the
legacy of a colonial past. It is vital and urgent work, expanding what it means
to be both an Indigenous and a Queer writer in Canada today.”
