For ReadIndies this year, hosted by Kaggsy, I’ve written about presses from Minneapolis Minnesota, during the democratic crisis unfolding in the United States: Graywolf Press | Coffee House Press | Rain Taxi Magazine. (I should have included Milkweed Editions there!)

Presses that push the boundaries and invite readers to work harder to understand other views, perspectives, and future possibilities: Biblioasis | Finlay Lloyd | Duke University Press.

And, now, small but mighty presses from the west, middle, and east parts of Canada: Laberinto Press | Crowsnest Books | Island Studies Press.

Laberinto Press landed in my stack because of my dedication to Wendy McGrath’s work (you might remember my ongoing obsession with The Beauty of Vultures, from another fine Canadian indie, NeWest Press). She edited Touch Sites: An Anthology of the Tangible—a Laberinto anthology published last May—which I enjoyed so much, that I ordered Beyond the Gallery.

Laberinto won the Book Publishers Association of Alberta “Publisher of the Year” award in 2024, and they focus on the work of “Canadian hyphenated authors”. Their list is short but mighty, and currently Alberta is home to book bans and secession-chatter, so this matters more than ever. Previously I’ve written about their collection of short stories, Margarita Saona’s The Ghost of You (Trans. Luciana Erregue-Sacchi, 2022), but their anthology series—designed by Cecilia Salcedo and featuring guest editors—is the star of their catalogue.

Touch Sites embodies Wendy McGrath’s eye for interconnection, her attentiveness to both the details and the universals that have the capacity to bring us together. In this anthology, there is a sense of curation and continuity, without any smear of same-ness.

There is a design motif—a thread, sometimes drawn as a solid line and sometimes a dashed line—which appears throughout the collection: it’s a nice touch, but even more impressive is the tender alliance between these pieces, though they are outwardly so different. In one poem, the steadiness of sunrise and, in a story nearby, a one-year-old boy plays a Brazilian hand drum: rhythms of different storytellers united, skilfully and almost imperceptibly. In prose and verse and hybrid forms, in mostly (but not all) English, this is a moving and remarkable collection.

Evident in both Touch Sites and Beyond the Gallery is a respect for the writers’ and artists’ work therein: each has a full-page dedicated to their biography (in the former, gathered at the end—in the latter, preceding each segment). It’s fascinating to trace the different routes that have brought these contributors to this shared space between two book covers, via editors Liuba González de Armas and Ana Ruiz Aguirre. Eight Hispanic Canadians respond to the concept of borders, including Carlos Andrès Torres whose essay focuses on the rock murals in Chiribiquete National Park, in northwestern Colombia: fascinating! Here the throughline is both art and language and, suitably, the essays are presented in both Spanish and English. Each highlights a distinct passion, which echoes the press’s mandate,;the collection “does not pander to tokenism, but touches on the true diversity, multiplicity, and complexity of the human experience”—a quote from Laberinto’s mission statement.

Aaron Schneider’s previous book, a collection of stories published by Gordon Hill Press in 2021, was included in a previous Read Indies; his latest, a novel, The Supply Chain, comes from Crowsnest Books, specialising in “new imaginative literature” because “from the right vantage point new ideas can be effectively introduced and old ones powerfully reconsidered.”

Sitting down to read The Supply Chain last October, I pulled his previous two books, intending to only peek: instead, I reread both. The characters in Grass Fed are not particularly good company—they’re not intended to be—but this time I found it very funny (still dark, but also entertaining). I clearly remembered how addictive I’d found the short stories, and I thought I might read one or two: instead, I read the first and then the second, and didn’t stop. But then it was November, time for MARM and for the reading-in-remembrance I’d planned all year—so, The Supply Chain was disrupted, until now.

Just as well, because I read it uninterrupted, all in one gulp. The whole time, trying to decipher why, straining to spot his technique (even though I know him through review work, and I could ask questions directly). It’s irresistible: this combination of specificity and vulnerability, stemming from sharply observed truths and contradictions about being human. Here the focus seems to be on how people live when one element of their day-to-life day is tied to something extraordinarily devastating, but the rest of their everyday life is simply ordinary. (It turns out… this is all of us.)

Here, though, we have one man working in the military industrial complex by day, lending his expertise to a sector which revolves around ending life; and this man up at night, tending to his infant son’s needs with his wife, as though any child’s future can be vital and peaceful when the corporations paying households’ bills profit from death not life. That discordance—it’s not only relatable, but relevant. The characters feel real and relatable, the story is accessible and layered, and I couldn’t look away from this tender, barbed story about how we hold one another close—and how we don’t.

“When Sarah broke up with him because, as she said and then repeated, they had different life goals, and she didn’t think that they were compatible, he was surprised, his pride was hurt by the rejection, and he was worried about what his friends would say, but he was mostly relieved that the talking, the effort of listening to and returning Sarah’s serious, careful sentences, was over.”

The mandate of Island Studies Press is to “publish books that focus on Island culture, economy, and environment and have a strong connection to Epekwitk”, Prince Edward Island. I ordered a few books, and read Return of the Wild Goose first: poems and an essay by Jane Ledwell. She was introduced to the figure of writer and activist Katherine Hughes via a biography by Pádraig O. Siadhail (which certainly seems like indie-press fare, too, but I haven’t found a copy).

The even pages often have a quotation from Hughes’ own writing—say, about Irish independence and women’s historical roles and perspectives—and the poems open on the odd pages. So, there’s a gentle alternation between Katherine Hughes’s own voice/era and the poet’s imagination of, or reflection on, her.

There is an overarching poignancy to the fact that we know—even before we’ve gotten acquainted with her through her words and these poems—that she spends the later years of her life in New York City saddened, by Ireland’s lack of independence and her desire for specific gains for women out of synch with her contemporaries.

For readers who are abundantly curious, books like these, from very small and independent presses, hold an instant and enduring appeal, even if they are from a faraway place (I mean, they’re fairly close to me, but most of you who read these posts are a long way from me).

But if Laberinto, Crowsnest and Island Studies feel too specific for your taste, consider looking for their kin—for the very small and independent presses that operate within a few hundred miles of wherever you are: you will be surprised to find that there are some and, likely, there have been some, for quite some time.

Thanks, again, to Kaggsy for having hosted this event; its main page is here.