The Porcupine's Quill
Celebrating thirty-five years on the Main Street
of Erin Village, Wellington County
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The Porcupine’s Quill is remarkable in Canadian publishing in that most of the physical production of our journal is completed in-house at the shop on the Main Street of Erin Village. We print on a twenty-five inch Heidelberg KORD, typically onto acid-free Zephyr Antique laid. The sheets are then folded, and sewn into signatures on a 1907 model Smyth National Book Sewing machine.
To take a virtual tour of the pressroom, visit us at YouTube for a discussion of offset printing in general, and the operation of a Heidelberg KORD in particular. Other videos include Four Colour Printing, Smyth Sewing and Wood Engraving. Photographs of production machinery used on these pages were taken by Sandra Traversy on site at the printing office of the Porcupine's Quill, December 2008.
The Porcupine's Quill would like to acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. The financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) is also gratefully acknowledged.
“The Porcupine's Quill has long been considered the ‘little engine that could’: a small publisher located in Erin, Ontario that thrived by publishing good Canadian writing by great Canadian writers. The Writers' Trust of Canada has enjoyed many wonderful associations with Canadian authors whose works were launched or supported by Porcupine's Quill including two previous chairs of our Authors Committee, Kim Moritsugu and Antanas Sileika, both of whom had books published by Porcupine's Quill. In addition, Elizabeth Hay was our 2001 Marian Engel Award winner and Jessica Grant was our 2003 Writers' Trust McClelland and Stewart Journey Prize winner. Both of these talented writers are also Porcupine's Quill alumnae.” —Don Oravec
