"You're imagining The Porcupine's Quill." - The Montreal Gazette
"When I drifted into editing for Tim and Elke [Inkster] I wanted to favour
the short story as a genre and I wanted to publish prose which was stylistically
innovative. I was looking for excitement. I was looking for energy. I was looking
for language that could strut and flaunt. I was looking for elegance and
sophistication. I wanted to draw together into one place as many talented writers
as I could find so that together we could assert relentlessly literature's
importance and burn like a beacon in the gloom of Canada's uncertainties." - John Metcalf
"Tim Inkster started in the basement -- that is, shovelling cat dirt out of the
basement at 671 Spadina Avenue in Toronto, the famous address where the House of Anansi,
new press, and Press Porcepic all began. Inkster graduated from the University of Toronto
in 1970 and went to work at Porcepic for one of his professors, Dave Godfrey. But he and his wife,
Elke, decided that Toronto was a lousy place to live on low wages, and persuaded Godfrey to
move Porcepic out of town. Godfrey chose Erin, Ontario.
"The Porcupine's Quill, the press that Tim and Elke Inkster eventually founded, might be
called `second wave', arising directly out of that first wave of nationalist Canadian publishing
that began in 1967. Working as a pressman at Porcepic, Tim Inkster (what a wonderfully fated name)
became frustrated by Godfrey's reluctance to invest in a better printing press. So in 1974
Tim and Elke started The Porcupine's Quill simply as a production arm. But when the arrangement didn't work out,
the Inksters decided to become independent, bought their own building across an alley -- where they still
operate -- and moved in above it." - Books in Canada
"Among the first things you see when you enter the office of the literary press called The Porcupine's
Quill are the awards for book design proudly affixed to the walls. There are Litho Awards
and award certificates from the Alcuin Society, the Art Directors' Club, the Malahat Review,
the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada and
the Leipzig Book Fair. One of these certificates, for Virgil Burnett's A Comedy of Eros, bears
an inscription: `Book design is one of the excellencies by which a civilization can be measured.'
"It's an inscription that could serve as a motto for The Porcupine's Quill owner-operators,
Tim and Elke Inkster. They manage to live an eminently civilized life in their restored
storefront building on the Main Street of this Southern Ontario town, all the while
producing uncompromisingly fine books of literary fiction and poetry." - The Globe and Mail
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