The Bibliophile: There and Back Again
A week at Winter Institute, and reconnecting with booksellers across the border.
I realize that the Bibliophile has been pretty quiet so far in 2026, which is all the evidence you need for how busy things have been at the Bibliomanse proper, and no week illustrates this as much as this last one.
Saturday I worked with Jeff, our operations coordinator, from 7 am till past 9 at night to re-ready everything for the American Bookseller Association’s Winter Institute in Pittsburgh after UPS, who promised a 2-3 day delivery (Pittsburgh is only 4.5 hours from Windsor, about an hour closer to us than Toronto), failed to get our books to the city on time. The boxes took 13 days before they finally arrived mid-fair, looking like they’d barely escaped a war zone. Winter Institute is one of our biggest investments in American bookseller relations every year, the place where we launch several forthcoming books: to be there without any stock would have been a disaster (which was the word I used with UPS when I tried, with increasing frustration, to illustrate the D in our tracking code—D is for Disaster—to the displeasure of our off-shore quote-unquote customer service clerk). I cancelled my flight and left Sunday in my son’s CRV between the second and third period of the Men’s Gold Medal hockey game, worried that the border guards might not let me cross: the border has become increasingly erratic over the last six months and crossing with commercial goods is dependent very much on the agent one gets. Mine thankfully was quite decent, happy my paperwork was in order so that he could get back to watching the game. I wondered if my experience would have been different had I left after the game had finished.
The days since have run between 16-20 hours as I tried to manage the day-to-day, alongside promoting our books and authors as part of Meet the Presses, a three day book fair in which we met hundreds of booksellers across the US, refining our pitches in real time and pressing books into eager hands (and transforming skeptical booksellers, hopefully, into superfans).
It’s both exhausting and exhilarating. But to see the genuine excitement that readers feel for forthcoming books like Richard Kelly Kemick’s Decadence, Ivana Sajko’s Every Time We Say Goodbye, Don Gillmor’s Cherry Beach, Melissa Harrison’s The Given World, and Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s The Heart of Man, the concluding volume in his Trilogy About the Boy, among many other titles, recharges the spiritual batteries, as does the general awareness among American independent booksellers for Biblioasis and our titles.
When we started going to this years ago, booksellers knew nothing about us; now, many search us out specifically. We hosted, alongside our bookselling and publishing compatriot Drawn & Quarterly, a wonderful Duck-pin bowling party on Monday; a dinner with booksellers both familiar and new on Tuesday; then joined our American compatriots Seven Stories and Two Dollar Radio in another dinner on Wednesday before heading to another party that evening where I joined Peggy Burns of Drawn & Quarterly in pouring Fireball Whiskey into booksellers’ maws (and down their chins) through an intricate ice sculpture.
After a year hiatus, we unveiled the new edition of our improved bookseller trading cards, and, tired of the perpetual frontlist hustle, tried to engage booksellers (with some real success) in our Backlist to the Future campaign, more on which will follow.
There were impromptu meetings with booksellers and our American distributors, with American media, other Canadian and American publishers, and even with a couple of our favourite writers, including Daniel Mason and Douglas Stuart.
There were bookstore visits, and great conversations throughout all four days. As a bookseller I haven’t seen in years told me when we said goodbye, the last day felt like the end of summer camp, with repeated hugs and tears as we packed our tents and readied to go home. But I was grateful for the time I got to spend among some of my favourite people in the world, and I look forward to the next time I get to do so.
I have so much more to unpack about the past week, things I wish I had the time to better explore, and hope to do so in a later Bibliophile. We need to talk about the total lack of Canadian booksellers at this event (D&Q and Biblioasis were the only two this year, and we were really there in a publishing capacity) and the dangers of letting what is going on alienate us from our American compatriots on the front line of the fight against fascism. Books are a battleground in both countries for very obvious reasons, and we’d be much better keeping the lines of communication open between our communities than cutting them off in a fit of nationalistic spite. When we allow the current American administration to separate us, we are giving them exactly what they want.
I’d like to write about the essential connection events like Winter Institute make clear between independent publishers and booksellers, and how we could work better together for the betterment of both, and about the real hope and possibility that comes from talking with one another. I have so many ideas from conversations with Javier and Kristin Ramirez (Exile in Bookville), James Crossley (Leviathan), Kate Layte (Papercuts), Lori Feathers (Interabang), Carrie Koepke (Skylark), Sam and Emma Kaas (Norwich), Greg Kornbluh (Downbound), Miriam Chotiner-Gardiner (Three Lives), Bryan Seitz (Literati), and so many others. But that will have to keep. I think the only thing that kept me from driving off the highway on the return home was Barq’s root beer, chocolate, the Messthetics and the Ramones (Hey Hey Hey, why is it always this way just keeps cycling on my internal jukebox).
But before I go, two quick things for Bibliophile readers: our first book of 2026 officially launched this Tuesday. Mark Anthony Jarman’s Smash & Grab, a literal grab bag of fictions united solely by Jarman’s febrile imagination and wordplay, will be a treat for fans old and new. And our second, Ivana Sajko’s brilliant Every Time We Say Goodbye, launches next Tuesday: it’s already been assigned for a NYT review, and we’re expecting this to become one of the handsell titles of the year. So please head to your favourite independent wherever you are, and pick up a copy of each. I promise that neither will disappoint.
Dan Wells,
Publisher
In excellent awards news:
As we were finishing up this week’s missive, we learned that Ira Wells, author of On Book Banning: Or, How the New Censorship Consensus Trivializes Art and Undermines Democracy, has won the 2026 Freedom to Read Award from the Writers Union of Canada!
The award is presented annually by TWUC in recognition of work that is passionately supportive of access to books and the freedom to read. Wells was nominated for the Freedom to Read Award by a fellow Canadian author, and the nomination reads (in part):
Author Ira Wells, born in Alberta, is well-known for his long-held stance against censorship. This is witnessed by his record of publications, which often touch on the subject of societal thought control. His most recent book, On Book Banning is an extended exploration of the ways libraries have been ransacked, often under the guise of “protecting children.”
Congratulations to Ira!
