Rare Machines is Dundurn Press’s literary fiction imprint. Its name emerges from the idea that a writer is a rare machine and the book itself is as elegant and complex as the most unusual of devices.
Launched in 2021 as a place for literary and hybrid fiction, Rare Machines books are playful, unusual, daring, or innovative. Our authors are curious, courageous, and forward-thinking.
Rare Machines authors have received a total of 15 prize nominations including the Governor General’s Literary Awards for both fiction and nonfiction, the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Amazon First Novel Award, the First Nations Communities Read Award, and the Crime Writers of Canada Award for Best First Novel.
What are we looking for in Rare Machines? Literary fiction is a vague category that really means anything that isn’t strictly genre fiction — although we have published several hybrid works that include genre elements such as Sifton Tracey Anipare’s mythical fantasy Yume, Victoria Hetherington’s literary sci-fi Autonomy, David Whitton’s fragmented spy novel Seven Down, and Larry Gaudet’s philosophical cyberpunk Eris. What we are really looking for is not so much content as form — an original or elegant writing style, a distinctive voice.