Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A Canadian publisher is in trouble – folding, actually.
Actually, please don’t stop me. Because this is an important story. And you’re probably going to hear a version of it again and again – at a time when Canadian culture is especially crucial.
Word of an organization in the Canadian publishing scene falling on hard times – or falling, completely – is not going to be a huge shock. Especially in a difficult environment for arts funding. Still, when word got around about the impending death of New Star Books, there was outrage. It’s not just because the 56-year-old Vancouver-based publisher is a West Coast gem that has published many Canadian writers, but because its demise appeared related to diversity, equity and inclusion – or an alleged lack thereof.
In mid-January, New Star’s publisher Rolf Maurer announced he was winding down operations. He listed several factors: his age and health at 69; difficulty accessing the marketplace; and “the cold wind blowing in New Star’s direction from our arts councils, whose support of our work is a condition of existence.”
Its fall 2024 list – three books – will be its last.
As the story gained traction, there was sadness. But then, the longer letter Mr. Maurer sent his authors made the rounds. It included this detail: that the B.C. Arts Council had put New Star on “concerned status” (effectively, probation) for reasons that included “failure to address the BC Arts Council’s priorities for reconciliation, equity, diversity, inclusion and access.” (Full disclosure: I’ve received a travel grant from the B.C. Arts Council for a coming book.)
When the full letter was posted on Sutherland House Books publisher Ken Whyte’s Shush Substack, the CanLit hit the fan.
“Arts funders have jumped the tracks,” Mr. Whyte wrote. Rather than providing opportunities to artists, he wrote, funders are “neck-deep in the business of preaching, censoring, and directing creative output.”
The temptation from this tale might be to conclude: DEI = bad. Yet New Star has been a progressive house, publishing Canadian poetry, fiction, and experimental literature, as well as volumes on Canadian journalism, politics and history.
Mr. Maurer is “personally incensed” to find himself characterized by funders as an enemy to diversity. “I’m not going straight to heaven; I have some flaws too,” he said in an interview this week. “But if you’re going to go after New Star for anything, DEI stuff wouldn’t be it.”
The real story, he says, is funders’ behaviour – including overreach – during an immensely challenging time for his industry. “Publishing, especially Canadian publishing, has a long and glorified history of not making money,” he told me. For presses like New Star, he says, it’s gotten worse. He told me independent publishers account for about five per cent of the domestic market, whereas 20 years ago that figure was 15 or 20 per cent. Government support for Canadian publishing is not optional; it’s necessary. Without it, New Star was done.
It’s not this country’s only recent literary casualty. The Kingston WritersFest has announced that it is shutting down – a big loss to the Canadian literary festival scene. (Yes, there is a Canadian literary festival scene.) It cited declining attendance, increased operational costs, and reduced revenues since the pandemic, creating “deficits that cannot be overcome.”
Other book festivals are struggling mightily. They too could go the way of Kingston.
And consider the cold winds blowing from the south. What happens to a Canadian publisher that is reliant, at least to some degree, on U.S. readership?
Further, what will become of federal support for the literary ecosystem under new leadership? Reading the tea leaves (or the polls), we are looking at a Pierre Poilievre government in 2025. How generous will Conservatives be with arts grants?
Maybe you don’t care. Kingston WritersFest? Never went, never planned to, now never will. And New Star Books? Never heard of it.
Fair enough. But Canadian culture helps distinguish us from the behemoth to the south – the one suddenly making a lot of noise about us.
Consider New Star’s final list: a non-fiction book about Canadian media (Tomorrow’s News by Marc Edge); another about extremely flawed Canadian historical figures after whom streets, lakes and towns are named (When Heroes Become Villains by Jon Bartlett and Brian Robertson); and a novel based on The Scarlet Letter, with a neurodiverse narrator and a gender-fluid child (Hester in Sunlight by Hannah Calder).
I doubt even Margaret Atwood will be able to save the day, once we see how badly the day (and the country) requires saving. But we need Canadian voices during this geopolitical nightmare – and always. As a great Canadian singer-songwriter warned: “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?”
There are many ways to pave paradise.