imPRESSive: Highlighting Canada’s Small Presses

Metonymy Press

Owned and operated by Ashley Fortier and Oliver Fugler

How did the press get started? Give us a little bit of its history.

Metonymy is a partnership that has its history in community organizing: co-publishers and long-time friends Ashley Fortier and Oliver Fugler had both been involved in the Queer Between the Covers collective, which organized an annual queer English-language book fair as part of Pervers/cité: the underside of pride festival in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. The motivation that led in part to that book fair (increasing access in the city to independent queer literature) was what we brought to the press. Metonymy launched in 2014, with the support of a lot of the community we’d shared through the book fair, with the initial aim to publish an anthology that hasn’t yet materialized - but we’ve published 12 books in the meantime!

What are the press's mission/goals/mandate?

We publish queer, feminist, and social justice lit by emerging writers, and we prioritize voices and works that are underrepresented in the mainstream or otherwise might not have access to traditional publishing avenues. Our cheeky tagline is that we really want to keep gay book lovers satisified, but it’s true! And by gay we especially mean the people whose intersectional sexualities and genders are often violently erased or dismissed.

What future plans and dreams do you have for the press?

We really try not to move too fast and burn out, but we think there’s so much good writing that could be shared with the world! So we hope to keep publishing it, and we hope to support or inspire other folks who are trying to get these words to their audiences (some newer presses we’re thinking of in so-called Canada are Hush Harbour, Renaissance, and Little Puss). 

In 2022, our plans so far involve new editions of two previously published titles we’re thrilled to be working with: LOTE, by Shola von Reinhold, initially published in the UK by Jacaranda, and Les Enragé.e.s, by Valérie Bah, originally published in French by the Martiales imprint of Remue-ménages press. 

Is there anything else you would like readers and writers to know about the press?

We are (still) working on making all our books into accessible EPUBs, as they aren’t all there currently, but we’re working with the Literary Press Group and eBound to do so in 2022. 

There are only the two of us co-publishers working not even full-time on this project (and a lot of regular contract workers) – thanks for being patient with us! However, this year we’re starting to work more regularly on editing and acquisitions with authors in the city: Kama La Mackerel (author of ZOM-FAM), Helen Chau Bradley (author of Personal Attention Roleplay), and Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch (author of The Good Arabs).