THE LITERARY STOREFRONT: THE GLORY YEARS
Vancouver’s Literary Centre 1978-1985
By Trevor Carolan
Foreword by Jean Barman
Mother Tongue Publishing

“A remarkable document of how one young woman with a dream developed Vancouver’s Literary Storefront in the 1970s into an active community significantly open to its diverse writers of the ‘80s. Lively, full of anecdotes, Carolan’s commen-tary clarifies that the Storefront was a forerunner for so much that followed. It fills a memory gap in Vancouver’s literary history.” -Daphne Marlatt

"Just as Alan Crawley and Dorothy Livesay organized Vancouver writers in the Thirties and Forties, Mona Fertig took the job seriously in the late '70s and early '80s, long before city culture bureaucrats were upbraided in 2012 for allocating less than 2% of their arts budget to literary arts. A Literary Arts Centre will finally come pass, but Fertig led the way. –Alan Twigg


Founded by poet Mona Fertig and inspired by Shakespeare and Company in Paris, The Literary Storefront was Canada’s first non-profit literary centre and flourished in Vancouver’s colourful Gastown district from 1978-85. A pivotal time in west coast history when feminist, nationalist, and multicultural passions surged to redefine what a socially-committed literary community could be, the Storefront housed the regional offices of The Writers’ Union of Canada, The League of Canadian Poets, an editing & printing company, and was the birthplace of the Federation of B.C. Writers. Carolan’s history recounts the inspiration, origins, achievements and tribulations of this seminal and legendary B.C. literary institution. Includes interviews with many important authors and survivors from among the Storefront Society's 500 members. Dorothy Livesay, Margaret Atwood, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Hodgins, Earle Birney, Brian Moore, Elizabeth Smart, Phyllis Webb, Christie Harris, Edward Albee, Carol Shields, P.K. Page, Joy Kogawa, Audrey Thomas, Stephen Spender, W.P. Kinsella, Czelaw Milosz, George Faludy, Betty Lambert, David Watmough, Daphne Marlatt are some of the many writers who passed through its doors.

Trevor Carolan emigrated from Yorkshire to British Columbia in 1957 and was raised in the family building trade. He began writing as an arts reporter at 17, filing dispatches from San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury music scene for The Columbian newspaper. He has published many books of fiction, memoir, poetry, translation, anthologies, and extensively as a literary journalist. The international editor of Pacific Rim Review of Books since 2004, he served for three years as an elected municipal councillor in North Vancouver, and has worked as media advocate for Pacific Coast watershed conservation issues and First Nations treaty claims. He holds a PhD from Bond University in Queensland, and since 2001 has taught English and Creative Writing at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, B.C. His first public reading in Canada was at the Literary Storefront.