Vancouver World City of Literature - The Association of Book ...

BC Book & Magazine Week is an annual week-long
literary festival centred in Vancouver.
Chapter Three
Vancouver: The Literary City
Vancouver is home to the largest community of English-language publishers in Canada
outside of Toronto. Many publishers operating in Vancouver and British Columbia today
can trace their origins to the surge of nationalism and local expression that swept through
Canada in the 1960s and 1970s.
Several pioneering publishing houses established themselves during this time: Gray’s
Publishing, Douglas & McIntyre (now D&M Publishers, the largest Canadian-owned
English-language publisher), and Canada’s first aboriginal-owned and operated publisher,
Theytus Books. These publishers demonstrated that culturally significant BC titles could
find a wide audience throughout the province and beyond.
Since then, Vancouver’s literary community has been characterized by an openness to
experimentation, a plurality of voices, and a mingling of cultures and traditions—all of
which has contributed to the city’s emergence as a major cultural centre.
the aboriginal impetus
The first BC literature was aboriginal literature, which began as a highly developed oral
form comprising poetry, song, drama, and prose. This literature ranged from complex
origin myths to simple tales for children, and it often featured the character of the trickster.
Whether a raven, minx, or coyote, the trickster in BC’s aboriginal literature plays pranks
and disobeys the rules, introducing surprise and revelation into narratives.
With the arrival of the Europeans, aboriginal storytelling began to make its way into print
form and to be translated into English. By the 1970s, aboriginal writers had begun to adopt
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