Where is the Canadian Publishing Industry Going?

Date: Novem­ber 17, 2011

Time: 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.

Loca­tion: Uni­ver­sity of Ottawa, Des­marais Build­ing,
55 Lau­rier Avenue East, 12th floor, Room 12120

Ten years ago, the Cana­dian pub­lish­ing indus­try had no rea­son to envy pub­lish­ing indus­tries in other coun­tries. Cana­dian lit­er­a­ture and pub­lish­ing houses were the finest jew­els in Canada’s cul­tural life. Dur­ing this period, Dou­glas Gib­son pub­lished for McClel­land & Stew­art such authors as Alice Munro, Peter Gzowski, Jack Hod­gins, James Hous­ton, W.O. Mitchell and Mavis Gal­lant.  With the state of the econ­omy and pres­sure from the Euro­pean Union to relax own­er­ship rules, what does the future hold for the Cana­dian pub­lish­ing indus­try? These reg­u­la­tions, are they prof­itable and are they still appro­pri­ate in 2011?

Speaker: Dou­glas Gibson

Dou­glas Gib­son will share his thoughts on this topic. Mr. Gib­son worked as an edi­tor and pub­lisher from 1968 until his retire­ment from McClel­land & Stew­art in 2009. He may also share his anec­dotes pulled from his newly released book: Sto­ries About Sto­ry­tellers: Pub­lish­ing Alice Munro, Robert­son Davies, Alis­tair MacLeod, Pierre Trudeau and Oth­ers. Copies of the book will be avail­able for sale at the forum.

The Think­ing Cul­ture series is pre­sented by the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Uni­ver­sity of Ottawa’s Cen­tre on Gov­er­nance, Cen­tre for Con­tin­u­ing Edu­ca­tion and School of Polit­i­cal Stud­ies. The forums will be flex­i­ble in for­mat, tak­ing the shape of inter­ac­tive lec­tures, debates, pan­els and pre­sen­ta­tions with oppor­tu­ni­ties for audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion and exchange. We would like to thank the Asso­ci­a­tion for Cana­dian Stud­ies in the United States (ACSUS) for part­ner­ing in this forum.