Non-Fiction
ISBN-13: 978-1-997508212
$21.95 CDN / $19.95 US | Trade Paperback
October 2026
In Footnotes: Case Studies in Canadian Small Press Book Making, Cameron Anstee takes a deep dive to look at small press book makers in Canada from the 1960s onwards. His essays are a tribute to the people who have found ways to make books—and to persist in making books—celebrating work that is all too often un- or underacknowledged. Footnotes is an act of recovery, of bibliographic recuperation; it makes the case for looking at how small press books are constructed as objects and as ideas, and at how readers are asked to engage with these book objects in a constantly shifting cultural landscape.
Praise for Footnotes
Cameron Anstee’s Footnotes is a love letter to the bookshelf; how Canadian publishers have created strange and wonderous titles which occupy our desks, thoughts, and dreams. Like a walk down a wooded trail with the finest of park rangers, Anstee points at the titles and presses which sprout, like mushrooms and wildflowers, along the path. I adore this book and the thoughtful, generous, conversations that Anstee has brought to our homes.—Derek Beaulieu, author of Do It Wrong: How to be a Poet in the 21st Century
Don’t let the title deceive you: these fascinating, meticulous essays are much more than footnotes. Anstee skillfully unspools the stories behind a handful of under-the-radar small press publishers and projects to showcase a breadth of Canadian talent past and present. A love letter to ink, long-arm staplers, and artistic potential, Footnotes is an essential catalogue of small press publishing and inspiration for would-be bookmakers. —Leigh Nash, Publisher of Assembly Press
