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Last Modified: November 20, 2024
Alberta Book Day 2024: A Spectator’s Impressions
by Peter Midgley
The rotunda at the Legislature is vibrating like a busy festival tent and strands of conversation drift into the passages. There is much laughter. I am at the seventh annual Alberta Book Day, a day on which we celebrate this province’s publishers, but more importantly, when book publishers have the opportunity to talk to elected officials and tell them about the many good things our publishers do. Elected officials and other government employees browse the books as they wait for the Minister of Arts, Culture and Status of Women, Tanya Fir, to arrive and declare 5 November 2024 Alberta Book Day.
Publishing is a small industry with an outsized impact. Relative to many other industries in Alberta, book publishing provides a high return on investment, and attendance at the Frankfurt Book Fair and other international events raises Alberta’s cultural profile around the world. Since Canada was the featured country at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2021, people have continued to visit our booth to discover what Alberta has to offer readers. Books are a sound investment, yet Alberta lags behind other provinces — only PEI receives less support from the provincial government.
What strikes me as I move around the tables is the sheer range of the books on display — from poetry and novels of every conceivable genre to nonfiction and self-help and educational materials. All the conversation around me is focused on books: What books Alberta writers and publishers produce, and why books matter. There are other, more arcane conversations, too, like explaining to an MLA that publishers work hard to find Canadian suppliers for their printing needs. For a book person like me, it is invigorating, affirming, to see this enthusiasm for books and the making of books fill the space.
“It’s important that we celebrate the strong publishing industry we have cultivated in our province,” said Kieran Leblanc, Executive Director of the BPAA. “Alberta’s book publishers work tirelessly to ensure that local authors are supported and our province’s stories and perspectives are shared locally and nationally.” Support, especially for new presses, is essential. It can take years before a new press qualifies for Canada Council funding, but even after they do qualify for grants, their position can remain precarious despite many other successes. So, as much as Alberta Book Day is about books, it is also about making the case for sustainable funding so that small independent publishers, a term that encompasses just about every Alberta publisher, can survive and publish local stories that matter most to Albertans.
By the time the minister arrives, many of the elected officials have departed for their respective caucus meetings. Minister Fir is a reader, and off the bat she tells us she keeps books by Alberta authors in her constituency office to give to visitors. There’s another flurry as MLAs rush from their caucuses to question period — Janis Irwin is on the move but finds time to ask specifically whether we have books written by one of her constituents. I am able to point her to Catherine Owen’s Moving to Delilah. The leader of the Opposition, Naheed Nenshi, is looking for a specific book to give to someone as a birthday gift — Red Barn Books’ award-winning Flip Flop Flapjack. Alas, that one is not on display, but he is quick to add that he’ll go and pick it up at a local independent bookstore (another important part of Alberta’s book industry).
With the stampede of elected officials over, I have time for some quieter conversations. I learn from Kelsey Attard, the managing editor of Freehand Books, that there is a course that studies publishers from around the world, and that Freehand is among them. It is news that confirms that Alberta Publishers are taken seriously, as they should be. At the recent Alberta Book Publishing Awards ceremony, local Alberta author, Ali Bryan thanked the press for taking a chance on her a decade or so ago so that she did not have to move to Toronto to make it as a writer. She’s right: Alberta publishers make it possible for writers and readers to love local and to shop local while also being ambassadors to the world. Alberta publishers are world class. What is not to like about that?
