There’s a laneway in downtown Toronto named after a poet: bpNichol Lane. Tucked away on that back alley is a crumbling old garage—a coach house—and inside it are two Heidelberg printing presses, an Autominabinda binder, and a big guillotine-like cutter. Passing through those machines is a gorgeous, antique-colored laid paper called Zephyr. And on that paper sits some of the most intriguing lines and sentences you’ll ever encounter. “To say that Coach House ‘publishes’ books would be to diminish the magic of what really happens within the old brick walls on bpNichol Lane,” says the Globe and Mail of our publishing program. It’s true. Our books are handsome, but they’ve got personality and wit too—they are, like our building, a little off the beaten path: innovative poetry, brazen fiction, provocative nonfiction. Every one of our books is a little portable piece of bpNichol Lane’s magic. For a taste, try out André Alexis’s Giller Prize-winning Fifteen Dogs, or Lisa Robertson’s cult novel The Baudelaire Fractal. We’ve got a swath of award nominations to our name and a stockpile of laudatory press, like NewPages’ claim that our books offer “a reason to read. A reason to write. A reason to believe in poetry.” Heck, Bookforum called us “the most esteemed literary house in Canada.” But we don’t let it go to our heads; we, and our Heidelbergs, just keep on beavering away in our little coach house to bring you the most unexpected, delicious, carnival-ride-like books we can find.
