Giller Power Panel: So You Want to Get Published…

Graham Angus is an aspiring writer, artist and artisan, currently working behind the scenes at Theytus Books, Ltd. in Penticton, BC. A self-described “Misplaced Mohawk-Métis”, Graham was born in Ottawa, Ontario, raised in the confluence of territories in Calgary, Alberta and is privileged to live in the beautiful and inspiring heart of unceded syilx Territory.

Stemming from 16 generations of mixed marriage along the shores of the St. Laurence and Great Lakes, Graham swims in both ends of his gene pool and strives to honour the Métis, Kanienkehaka, Wendat, Ojibwa, Algonquin, Miq’ma, French, Scot, Welsh and Irish ancestors who’ve enabled his existence.

A graduate of the En’owkin Centre International School of Creative Writing in the late ’90s, Graham’s published creative non-fiction works have appeared in various anthologies over the years. While his own stand-alone book remains elusive, Graham is honoured to help bring the vision of Indigenous authors and artists to life and to uphold the Hul’q’umi’num’ meaning of Theytus, “preserving for the sake of handing down“.

Nurjehan Aziz was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and went to university in Shiraz, Iran, and Boston, Massachusetts. She came to Canada in 1980, and in 1981 was one of the founders of a literary magazine, The Toronto South Asian Review, while working in a research lab at the University of Toronto. The magazine was renamed The Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad in 1991. She co-organized a conference on South Asian literature in Canada in 1985, which led to the first publication of TSAR Publications, an off-shoot of the literary magazine. In 1993 she became full-time publisher at TSAR, which was re-branded as Mawenzi House Publishers in 2015. She is publisher and co-director (with MG Vassanji) of Mawenzi, continuing with the same editorial vision and mandate, i.e. to publish mainly writers with backgrounds in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Near East.

She has edited Her Mother’s Ashes: Stories by South Asian Women in Canada and the United States, The Relevance of Islamic Identity in Canada, and more recently Confluences 1 and Confluences 2 (Essays on the New Canadian Literature). She is the recipient of the Ivy Award 2020 in recognition of her contributions to Canadian literature.

Jared Bland is Vice President, Communications and Community at Penguin Random House Canada, and formerly the publisher of McClelland & Stewart. He joined PRHC in 2016 from The Globe and Mail, where he was the paper’s Arts editor. For McClelland & Stewart, he continues to edit a small list of authors, including Omar El Akkad, Anne Michaels, Jordan Abel, Jane Urquhart, Ivan Coyote, and Elamin Abdelmahmoud.

Tori Elliott is the publisher of TouchWood Editions. She grew up on Treaty 2 Territory in southwest Manitoba and completed her Bachelor of Arts in English on Treaty 7 Territory at the University of Lethbridge. She worked as a newspaper reporter in her home communities before relocating to the traditional lands of the Coast Salish Peoples to complete her Master of Publishing at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. She joined TouchWood Editions, which operates on the traditional territories of the Lkwungen Peoples, as a publicity intern in 2014 and has since held the roles of marketing and publicity coordinator, marketing and data manager, and acting publisher before being appointed publisher in 2022.

Brian Lam is president and publisher of Arsenal Pulp Press; he has been with the company since 1984, becoming co-owner in 1992. He is a former president of the Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia, and currently serves on the board of the Association of Canadian Publishers. His work has been recognized with the Community Builder Award from the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop, the Ivy Award from the Toronto International Festival of Authors, and the Publishing Professional Award from Lambda Literary.

Robin Philpot is founder and publisher of Baraka Books, Quebec-based English-language book publisher of fiction and nonfiction. At Baraka, we believe that books are a haven of freedom and the foremost vector for change, and are inspired by the name baraka, a multilingual, cross-cultural word that can mean blessing, wisdom, luck, fulfillment and more. He is also a translator and author of several books in both French and English. In the 1970s, Robin Philpot lived in Burkina Faso where he taught English and History.  He holds a degree in English and History for the University of Toronto.

Alana Wilcox is the Editorial Director of Coach House Books, a press in Toronto that publishes literary fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. She co-founded the uTOpia series of anthologies about Toronto and is the author of a long-out-of-print novel. She was the editor of the Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning novels Fifteen Dogs and The Sleeping Car Porter.