Publishing Events

We are very pleased to host this year's guest Lorena Sekwan Fontaine, Head of Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba and cousin to Greg who will be in conversation with SFU Indigenous scholar, Deanna Reder at this year's Conversation. Join us in person or online as Lorena talks about her ongoing work on the new edition of Greg's seminal work The Elements of Indigneous Style.

Join Lori Beckstead, Ian M. Cook, and Hannah McGregor at the launch event of their new book Podcast or Perish: Peer Review and Knowledge Creation for the 21st Century. The authors are prepared to take you on a colourful journey as they explore new approaches to peer review and knowledge creation rooted in creativity, community, and care.

PUB 431 students explored the theme of Dream while investigating the formats of publication and the act of publishing itself to examine how form and content can enhance or distort the experience of reading the material at hand. In collaboration with SFU's Special Collections and Rare Books and SFU libraries, the students are presenting their versions of what a publication is or could be from April 9-May 1.

Welcome to the 2024 Emerging Leaders in Publishing Summit! Now in our 9th year, this five-day academic/industry event has explored innovative ideas and launched inspiring and enthusiastic conversations. This unique week, featuring authors, publishers, industry associations, and academics, delves into one of the most fascinating creative industries.

This year, we are honoured to welcome award-winning Nisga'a author Jordan Abel, a talented editor who has worked with renowned poetry magazines such as Poetry is Dead, PRISM, and Geist. Together with Sophie McCall, an esteemed settler scholar who has co-written a case study on collaboration as part of Greg's Elements of Indigenous Style, Jordan will lead a captivating conversation that will explore Indigenous publishing and honour Greg's legacy.

This year’s Emerging Leaders in Publishing Summit is back onsite! We will spend five days focused on Canada’s growing opportunities in the International book publishing ecosystem with sessions on rights sales and exports in existing and emerging markets. As part of summit, we have also organized a public event featuring Brewster Kahle, the founder and Digital Librarian of The Internet Archive on February 16.

The Canadian Publishers' Council (CPC) has organized an interactive and inclusive webinar series, Doors Open Publishing, which will take place from January 31 to February 8. These carefully curated sessions will provide a unique insight into the publishing industry and feature publishing professionals who work in the creation of books; from design to editorial to distribution.

On December 2, this year's cohort of 16 students presented their final projects to SFU Publishing alumni and panelists, Megan Radford, Sales Manager at Greystone Books, a trade book publisher of non-fiction books, and Michael Leyne, Editorial Director at Figure1 Publishing, an independently owned Vancouver based Canadian publisher of Art and Design as well as non-fiction books.

A robust conversation about Indigenous editing, writing, and publishing. featuring Metis scholar Warren Cariou and Cree-Métis scholar Deanna Reder. The Greg Younging Conversation takes place annually during the first week of May.

With the Emerging Leaders in Publishing Summit coming up from February 9-February 12, we had a chance to speak to one of our keynote speaker’s Craig Riggs. As an MPub alumnus and former MPub instructor at SFU, we are excited to have him back to speak with our students! See what he has to say about the Emerging Leaders in Publishing Summit and get a sneak peek of his presentation on February 11.

We launched the day with Ruth Linka, Associate Publisher at Orca Books; Adria Iwasutiak, Director of Publicity and Sales, Simon & Schuster Canada; Rob Firing, Literary Agent at Transatlantic, and Kevin Hanson to speak more about the future of publishing in acquisitions, publicity, contracts, rights, and agency. One advice for students who would like to work in marketing or communications is to make sure you are proficient with zoom.

Jane Friedman, co-founder of The Hot Sheet gave an exciting presentation on Publishing in a Pandemic: A Glimpse of Future Opportunities & Challenges. To recap the video presentation click here. One of the biggest surprises was that COVID has led to record sales in US print, with an 8.2% increase in sales. This growth was mainly driven by sales in children’s books, since parents wanted to keep their kids entertained and educated during lockdown.

We started the day with Stephen Collis, Poet and Professor at SFU; Kevin Hanson, President and Publisher at Simon & Schuster Canada to welcome our MPub students to the Emerging Leaders in Publishing Summit.

This year, we held our first virtual Emerging Leaders in Publishing Summit from February 9 - February 12, 2021. Joined by more than 25 industry professionals, students and attendees were able to connect and discuss about the latest changes in the publishing industry. To replay and watch the Day 1 videos, click here to see "The Gift of Never Landing" with Juliane Okot Bitek and Sophie McCall and here to see "How to Make a Thriller" with Samantha Bailey, Amy Stuart, Catherine McKenzie, and Nita Pronovost.

Dr. Greg Younging was a nationally and internationally renowned expert on Indigenous publishing and a tireless voice and advocate for raising Indigenous voices in Canada. In celebration of his work and his life, the Canadian Institute for Studies in Publishing and the SFU School of Publishing are deeply honoured to launch The Greg Younging Conversation.

Recently, our MPub students had the chance to share their Magazine Media projects with industry professionals and classmates of the publishing community.

It's often said that the pandemic has accelerated changes already underway in business, and that's proven especially true for book publishing. Even though the industry is often considered slow and not as susceptible to technological change (and print just enjoyed its most robust sales in more than a decade), it's been a transformative time for the business of books.

The year 2020 will long be remembered for the global Covid 19 pandemic. Lockdowns impacted work spaces as people scrambled to reorganize their work and home lives.

On Tuesday, February 9 at 2 pm, join psychological thriller authors Samantha Bailey (Woman on the Edge), Amy Stuart (Still Mine, Still Water, Still Here ), and Catherine McKenzie (I’ll Never Tell, Six Weeks to Live) with their editor, Nita Pronovost, for a spine-tingling panel discussion about their writing process.

Dr. Juan Pablo Alperin, an Assistant Professor in the Publishing Program and the Associate Director of Research of the Public Knowledge Project at SFU, delivered an opening keynote at the United Nations Library Conference, "Towards Global Open Science: Core Enabler of the UN 2030 Agenda" on November 19, 2019.

SFU Publishing is extremely pleased to announce that Dominique Raccah, the awarding-winning entrepreneurial Publisher and CEO of Sourcebooks, is the Jim Douglas Lecturer for 2019. Sourcebooks is America's largest woman-owned book publisher as well the largest trade book publisher in Chicago.

As Connie Walker’s hit podcasts, Missing & Murdered—”Who Killed Alberta Williams,” and, “Finding Cleo”—approach the 20 million download mark, we take you behind the stories, into the editorial decision making, and into the struggles behind one of Canada’s most downloaded podcasts. How has the media transformed over the last five years when reporting in Indigenous communities? What is the importance of understanding the role of trauma in our communities in our news and feature stories?

How do voices from outside the traditional settler mainstream media ensure that they are properly heard and represented? How can new media forms play a role in diversifying and enriching the media landscape?

Our inaugural speaker is Marion Sinclair, currently Chief Executive of Publishing Scotland and with 28 years experience in the Scottish publishing industry. Ms Sinclair will speak to us about "Scottish Publishing Today and its Place in the World," a subject with very clear parallels in Canadian independent publishing.

A special Sesquicentennial show celebrating our finest Fiction Writers With the help of superb author portraits by Anthony Jenkins appearing on-screen, publisher and author Doug Gibson roams the stage talking about our finest authors down through the years. Decade by decade, he chooses our best authors, English and French, and selects their very best books.

“Generative art” is a blanket term for any creative work produced in part through programmatic or algorithmic means. “Playful generative art” makes use of highly technical disciplines—computer programming, statistics, graphic design, and artificial intelligence—to produce chat bots, digital poetry, visual art, and even computer-generated “novels.”

On March 6, 2015, the Master of Publishing candidates presented their final magazine projects to faculty and industry guests. This year's batch of magazines included a digital-first news magazine for young urbanites, a wedding magazine for men and an bsurdist cultural satire magazine.