We're celebrating 50 years of publishing this year! We asked our authors to share some of their favourite memories for this blog series! Enjoy some stories of important, life changing meetings in this post featuring Sky Gilbert, Rosemary Sadlier, J.D.M. Stewart, and Lorna Poplak.
"Meeting Russell for the first time after many years in a bar of the F'amelia Restaurant and casually saying "Hey I didn't know you were an editor at Dundurn would you be wiling to read my manuscript?" and then we had a great chat about -- well everything -- and then my new literary life began....." —Sky Gilbert
"Meeting the past and the current executive directors." —Rosemary Sadlier
"I had never published a book before Being Prime Minister, and Dundurn had expressed an interest in my proposal for what became this book. I was invited into a meeting at the Church Street office with Carrie Gleason and Margaret Bryant. They asked me a few questions about the proposal, such has how many words I envisioned the book being and when I thought I might be able to complete a manuscript. New to all of this, I asked Carrie if she were really interested in my book.
"You're at this table," she said. "No one gets here unless we're serious. Yes, of course we want this book."
As a rookie writer, I was somewhat incredulous. Here I was watching a dream come true. Then in walked Kirk Howard, tall and calm, with his own questions about prime ministers of Canada. A couple of weeks later I signed my first book deal. As I noted in my diary at the time (2016), "I am over the moon ever since I met with the Dundurn people at their office. But I could never quite bring myself to believe it was happening until now."" —J.D.M. Stewart
"How can I ever forget my meeting with Kathryn Lane in November 2018 at Dundurn’s former offices on Church Street? I had come to discuss a couple of ideas swirling around in my head for a nonfiction book to follow my first, Drop Dead: A Horrible History of Hanging in Canada. Kathryn stopped me at Idea Number One. When I told her that no one had yet written a book about the Don Jail in Toronto, she said: “We need a book about the Don Jail, and you’re the person to write it.” This was the beginning of my journey to bring The Don: The Story of Toronto’s Infamous Jail to the page. Thanks, Kathryn!" —Lorna Poplak