About Us

A bit of history

In 1965, a young typesetter named Stan Bevington, newly transplanted to Toronto from Edmonton, began printing versions of the new Canadian maple-leaf flag. With the money he made hawking these flags in hippie Yorkville, he rented an old coach house and bought a Challenge Gordon platen press. With a newfound colleague, Dennis Reid (now a curator of the Art Gallery of Ontario), he printed a book of poetry by Wayne Clifford. Writers and artists soon flocked to the little coach house with their projects, bpNichol’s Journeying and The Returns and Michael Ondaatje’s The Dainty Monsters among them.

Coach House has always maintained a dual role in Canadian letters by both publishing and printing books. Through the years, the printing half of the company has produced books and ephemera for many of Canada’s literary presses and for the University of Toronto, setting new standards for design and printing quality. This emphasis on careful and innovative production enticed many of Canadian literature’s now-luminary figures to join the Coach House crew; in the 1970s and ’80s, the editorial board included, at various times, Victor Coleman, Frank Davey, Linda Davey, bpNichol, Michael Ondaatje, Sarah Sheard and David Young, and the roster of writers grew to include Robin Blaser, George Bowering, Nicole Brossard, Matt Cohen, Christopher Dewdney, David Donnell, Dorothy Livesay, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Daphne Marlatt, Steve McCaffery, David McFadden, Don McKay, Paul Quarrington, Gail Scott, Sharon Thesen, Sheila Watson, Phyllis Webb and countless others. The press was known for its adventurousness in both content and presentation.

A move and a change of ownership and management in the late 1980s brought a new, if short-lived, direction. Editors including Lynn Crosbie, Christopher Dewdney and Michael Redhill, under the stewardship of Margaret McClintock, published books by André Alexis, Ann-Marie MacDonald and Anne Michaels. In 1996, sadly, government funding cuts decimated the viability of the company, and it wound down.

In 1997, Stan Bevington resurrected Coach House, back in its original home in the old coach house, where the printing business was still hard at work. Helmed by Hilary Clark and Victor Coleman, the new Coach House boldly ventured online, publishing electronic editions and luscious print versions, archly referring to the physical copy as ‘that fetish object formerly known as the book.’ Darren Wershler-Henry took over as editor, and then Alana Wilcox, and, as the internet and the publishing climate changed, the emphasis shifted to print books.

And now? We’re still pushing at the frontiers of the book with our innovative fiction, poetry, film and drama, and select non-fiction, including a series of books about Toronto. Our family of fine scriveners includes Christian Bök, Claudia Dey, Guy Maddin, Maggie Helwig and Darren O’Donnell, among countless others. We’ve been piling up the awards nominations: Griffin Poetry Prizes, Governor General’s Awards, Trillium Book Awards, Toronto Book Awards, ReLit Awards, Lambda Literary Awards, Amazon First Novel Awards, Libris Awards, the Ontario Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and so on. And in 2009, we finally had the opportunity to purchase our little coach house. Home sweet House!

Who is CHBooks?

Coach House Books is a collaborative operation involving our regular staff and an ever-changing number of people from the writing, artistic, and publishing communities. And we all do a variety of work. But our primary staff and duties currently consists of:

Publisher: Stan Bevington was the founder and the original publisher of The Coach House Press in 1965. He is also the sole proprietor of Coach House Printing Ltd, a printer of fine books for the book trade since 1965. He has won numerous awards for design and is a pioneer in the use of computer technology in the realms of design, publishing and printing.

Editorial Director: Alana Wilcox is responsible for acquisitons and editing, as well as overseeing day-to-day operations. She is the author of A Grammar of Endings (The Mercury Press, 2000).

Publicist Evan Munday can be identified by his penchant for wearing neckties in social situations that do not call for them. He is also responsible for review copies, author tours, book launches, advertising, award submissions and many other manner of publicity matters. He is the author of a young adult book, The Dead Kid Detective Agency (published by ECW Press).

Publishing assistant Leigh Nash handles inventory, sales and a number of other administrative and marketing tasks. Nash also is one-third of the editorial firm, Re:word Communications and co-founder of the Emergency Response Unit, a chapbook press. Her first poetry collection, Goodbye, Ukulele, was published by Mansfield Press in October 2010.

Designer: Rick/Simon has been with Coach House Press/Printing, off and on, since 1967. He is an associate with a few art collectives, creating video and print design with VideoCabaret; costume design, percussion and stilt dancing with Shadowland on the Toronto Islands; and production design and performance with Caliloo Company in Trinidad & Tobago and Art Acts in Cleveland, Ohio.

Poetry board member Kevin Connolly is a Toronto poet, editor and arts journalist. He was editor and co-founder of the influential 1980s literary magazine What! and published early work by many of Toronto's best writers through his Pink Dog chapbook series in the 1990s. From 1999 to 2003 he was arts editor, poetry columnist and lead theatre critic for Eye Weekly. His first collection of poems, Asphalt Cigar, was published by Coach House in 1995 and was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award. A second collection, Happyland, (ECW) followed in 2002. His most recent book, drift, (House of Anansi) won the 2006 Trillium Award for poetry.

Poetry board member Susan Holbrook's poetry books are the Trillium-nominated Joy Is So Exhausting (Coach House, 2009), Good Egg Bad Seed (Nomados, 2004) and misled (Red Deer, 1999), which was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award. She lives in Leamington, Ontario and teaches North American literatures and Creative Writing at the University of Windsor. She recently co-edited The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson: Composition as Conversation (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Publicity and Marketing Intern: Simon Lewsen covers shipping, updates the website and handles numerous other details all around the office. He's a former intern for acclaimed Canadian magazine The Walrus.