TLDR; Metonymy Press needs money to keep publishing groundbreaking queer books! You have the opportunity to influence an important project ~ thank you for your ongoing support.

Want the whole story? Read on :)

Are you interested in being a patron of the arts? Want to help Metonymy Press continue publishing books by queer and trans writers?

It's a terrible time in the world, and in the arts; in response, we're doubling down. We have a bold vision - and a new publisher on board: Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch is now working with founding publisher Oliver Fugler. We're still committed to doing publishing differently: We care about community, we care about our authors, and we're unwilling to forget our politics while publishing groundbreaking work by emerging queer and trans writers, particularly racialized writers. We are antifascist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperial. Our politics are at the forefront of our publishing and not just an afterthought, so we don't think it's an exaggeration to say we are publishing life-changing queer literature in this time of repression. For Metonymy Press to continue to push boundaries, we need more money and we need your help. Join us! Be a part of the Metonymy community!

Our story:

Metonymy Press has been publishing excellent books for over eleven years with very few fundraising endeavors. A two-person operation with no permanent staff, we’ve mostly subsisted on grants and book sales, though we’ve rarely been able to pay ourselves more than $500 a month for our own labour, if at all. As a small English-language publisher in Quebec, we also don’t have access to Quebec-specific funding. We are taking this opportunity to reach out to our communities to ask for help in making the project more sustainable. With the rising costs of living, the increased prices of paper and other materials, it’s becoming harder and harder to keep Metonymy Press going. Publicly funded granting bodies, like the Canada Council for the Arts, that have supported us in the past have not received funding increases themselves in several years, which means that very few small publishers have been able to access sustained core funding lately. We hope that increased community funding will help us pay ourselves for the important work we do, in order to increase the sustainability of the press and to expand our capacity as queer and trans publishers.

In the past few years:

- We did not receive a couple of Canada Council grants that we were banking on

- The cost of publishing has gone up significantly

Given our financial and structural challenges, we paused our publishing program in 2025, meaning that our sales income has been further reduced. We want to get it going again. We have a lot of ideas and the energy and excitement to make many of our new programming and publishing ideas a reality. Help us get back on our feet and get out of debt so we can keep producing the books we know you love.

Metonymy Press has a dream of expanding, and we have a proven record of being able to follow through, having been publishing critically acclaimed and beautiful books by emerging authors since 2015. If we reach our fundraising goal, we'd be able not only to restart our publishing program, but also to run several programs that we've been wanting to initiate for years:

1) Running writing workshops out of our space, led by queer and/or trans facilitators

2) Offering mentorships to new writers, at a sliding scale (or free!) to make sure as many people can access the service as needed

3) Starting a support network for queer, trans, and BIPOC small presses in North America

4) Launching a series of long essays by queer and trans writers on subjects like publishing, activism, translation, illness and disability, etc.

5) Expanding the amount of contract work we can offer, and hiring more consistently, in order to make our work at Metonymy Press more sustainable.

We know the kind of publishing we do is unique and important. Here are the ways you can help us:

- Sign up for our annual book subscription (your choice of 2, 3, or 4 books a year)

- Join our yearly sustainers list

- Come to our upcoming in-person events (Montreal & Toronto) and buy some r*ffle tickets for the chance to win some great prizes (more to come)

- Donate to our GoFundMe

- Share this call within your circles

- Buy our books, merch, and gift certificates!

If you'd like to support us in an ongoing way or gift us with a large one-time donation, here is a link to our sustainers donation page. For any inquiries, contact us @ [email redacted].