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The only place where a church full of people comfortably packed together behind rows of tightly jammed primary school cafeteria tables can evoke a feeling of calm, jubilation, and enlightenment is at the bi-annual Toronto Small Press Book Fair...continue reading

Quill and Quire on the TSPF...

New Management Revises Toronto Small Press Fair
by Shaun Smith
November 6, 2007:

Preparing for the fall edition of the Toronto Small Press Fair, which happens Saturday, the fair's new organizers say a few changes are going over well so far.

Co-ordinators Halli Villegas and Myna Wallin first took over operations of the fair before its spring event, after longtime co-ordinators Beth Follett and Lindsay Zier-Vogel stepped down. The new team made some immediate changes to the fair, which is held for one day biannually. They added a downloadable PDF registration form to the fair's website and set table rental rates at $15 flat, rather than having a sliding scale. "Only one press complained about the price being higher," says Villegas, who is also owner of Tightrope Books. Exhibitor space at this weekend's fair is sold out, with 59 publishers taking part.

The duo also reinstated the fair's Instant Anthology, a collection of works submitted by fair participants, which is bound and sold on-site. The anthology, a long-standing tradition in the fair's 20-year history, had been dropped off the event's program by former organizers. "People really enjoyed having the Instant Anthology back," says Wallin, poetry editor for Tightrope. "We sold it at only a toonie, so whoever wanted one could afford one."

The fair received an additional $900 from the Toronto Arts Council this year, which organizers say will be used, in part, for marketing. "Myna and I would like to use some money to have a little deeper advertising campaign," says Villegas. The fair drew more than 300 people last spring, but organizers ultimately hope to increase attendance to 500.

More money will also go toward supporting the fair's program of readings, which have been moved from an after-fair evening event to run concurrently with the fair in an adjoining room. Readers receive a small honorarium, says Villegas, and this season a live band, called High Heels Lo Fi, has been added to the lineup.

There are 13 readers on Saturday's bill, including Alex Boyd, Emily Shultz, Paul Vermeersch, and Priscila Uppal. While most will be represented by publishers at the fair, those who aren't will have the opportunity to sell their own books.

Uppal, who will be reading from her 2006 Griffin Poetry Prize-nominated Ontological Necessities, says, "I think of almost all poetry publications as `small press' in the sense that these are labours of love rather than economic enterprises. Building a community of writers and readers through events like the small press book fair helps to keep poetry alive."