Small is beautiful. And necessary. Jane Rule's work first appeared via William McConnell's Klanak Press. A UBC-based mag called TISH gave rise to George Bowering, Fred Wah, Daphne Marlatt and many others--including Georgia Straight founder Dan McLeod. New Star Books grew out of Georgia Straight Writing Supplements. Harbour Publishing evolved from Raincoast Chronicles. Talonbooks grew out of Talon magazine. Before he moved to Toronto, Brian Fawcett ranted in a mag called NMFG (No Money From Government). Anvil Press is an outgrowth of SubTERRAIN magazine. And so on... Peter Newman and Sean Rossiter are just two of the many B.C. authors who first gained their reputations as magazine writers. Others include Daniel Wood, New Yorker contributor Edith Iglauer and, most famously, Douglas Coupland. Similarly, Geist magazine founder Stephen Osborne first came to light in 3-cent Pulp, which evolved into Pulp Press in 1981, which has since morphed into Arsenal Pulp. Along the way Osborne has morphed into one of the West Coast's most respected commentators and photographers, gathering his articles into an anthology, Ice & Fire: Dispatches from the New World, 1988-1999 (Arsenal $17.95). It includes a misleadingly titled and bemused memoir called 'Yevtushenko in Oklahoma' in which Osborne recalls a strange 1974 dinner at the once-popular Orestes restaurant in Vancouver with Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the most prominent Russian poet in the West during the Cold War.

[BCBW 1999]