The Porcupine's Quill

The Porcupine's Quill is located in two nineteenth-century brick storefronts on the Main Street of Erin Village, Wellington County; about an hour north-west of Toronto, on a branch of the West Credit River.

Take a virtual tour of the Press. Courtesy of Sandra Traversy.

68 Main Street, P O Box 160
Erin, Ontario N0B 1T0

Telephone 519 833 9158; Fax 519 833 9845

e-mail Elke or Tim Inkster, about administrative issues, or ordering.

Our fiction editor is Doris Cowan, who lives in Warkworth, in eastern Ontario. Graphic novels are handled by George A. Walker, who teaches at OCAD and lives east of Yonge Street, in Toronto. Non-fiction proposals should be directed to Carmine Starnino, who lives in Montreal. Poetry is edited for the press by the very famous Wayne Clifford, who currently lives on Grand Manan Island in the Bay of Fundy.

Our intern and manuscript reader is Caleigh Minshall, who is finishing up an undergraduate degree at Queens in Kingston.

 

A portrait of Tim Inkster by Norman MacDonald. October, 2009 at the Busholme Inn, Erin Village, in Wellington County.

 

Brief histories of Erin Village are available from the Press ($2) or as pdfs.

Order Direct from the Press

The Porcupine's Quill now accepts orders paid by VISA (only) by voice phone at (519) 833-9158 or (preferably) fax at (519) 833-9845. Please include your name, VISA card number and expiry date on your faxed order. Please also include a voice telephone number or an e-mail address in case of unexpected trouble. Please do NOT send us credit card information via e-mail (it's dangerous).

The Porcupine's Quill does not (yet, anyway) have the means to accept on-line credit card payments over the Internet. If you wish to pay by credit card in this manner please see How to Order for information on a variety of virtual booksellers who may (actually, increasingly) have a wide selection of Porcupine's Quill titles in stock. Select backlist titles are also available from abebooks (click on the Buy button at the bottom right of many individual title pages on this site).

All titles listed on this site are, however, available for shipping within twenty-four hours directly from the publisher in Erin Village (near Guelph, Ontario).

To order direct, give us a VISA number or make out a cheque payable to The Porcupine's Quill and mail it to the shop at 68 Main Street, P O Box 160, Erin, Ontario N0B 1T0.

The retail price of each book is listed underneath the jpeg image of the book's cover. That's it. The price is the price. There are no added fees, taxes or handling charges to pay.

Orders received with cheque enclosed are NOT subject to GST (we will pay the GST for you) and we will also cover the cost of shipping (by Canada Post).

If you're in a rush and want the book shipped by courier, or if you require further information, please e-mail Elke Inkster.

 

A Last Word

Amanda Jernigan worked at the shop in Erin from August of 2002 to September of 2003. What follows is Amanda's recollection of what happened. There may be some (prospective interns, perhaps?) who may see this text as a cautionary tale. ‘Simba’ was Elke's border collie.

 

Routine

For Tim and Elke

`The world of publishing,' you told
me on my first day on the job, `is mad.
Well — what did you expect?
There is no money in it: what we've sold
this summer wouldn't buy you lunch:
which is what editors are out to — in both senses.
Authors? Unavoidable expenses.
Printers? An eccentric bunch,
but mostly daft (myself excepted).
One more thing: the public doesn't read.'

All this no doubt intended to dissuade.
Instead, intrigued (and obstinate) I stayed —
and saw, against the fickle post,
which might bring money or disaster,
there was coffee at exactly ten o'clock,
the local gossip at the dairy, toasted
sandwiches in paper bags, and last
year's bulbs reliably emerging. And though
we were behind, the press would slow
unfailingly at four, for Simba's walk.

You've been typecast (excuse the pun)
quixotically; on pressback, Zephyr
Antique laying waste forever
to shoddy bindings, box-stores, bills.
Yet I have seen this battle done
with neither swords nor slings — nor quills.

On Friday nights you swept the shopfloor clean.
Against the wrack of publishing, the sanity of routine.

Amanda Jernigan, 2005

 

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.