History
The Capilano Review was founded in 1972 by Pierre Coupey at Capilano College. Since then editors have included Bill Schermbrucker, Ann Rosenberg, Dorothy Jantzen, Bob Sherrin, Ryan Knighton, Sharon Thesen, and Jenny Penberthy. The current editor is Brook Houglum.
Throughout its four decades, TCR editorial policy has maintained its commitment to publishing experimental writing and art.
Awards, etc.
Since 1978, TCR has received numerous awards for excellence: eight gold and silver awards for fiction and poetry from The National Magazine Foundation, one Journey Prize, two Western Magazine Awards, and one Association for Canadian Studies Award of Merit in recognition of outstanding contributions to the development of Canadian Studies.
TCR contributors have been well represented among the Griffin Poetry Prize nominees and winners – Christian Bök, George Bowering, Erìn Moure, August Kleinzahler, Sylvia Legris, Robin Blaser, Ken Babstock, Roo Borson, Di Brandt, Robert Bringhurst, Nicole Brossard, Robert Majzels, David McFadden, Don McKay.
Governor General’s Literary Awards nominees and winners include TCR contributors Sina Queyras, John Pass, Michael Ondaatje, Roo Borson, Don McKay, Ken Babstock, Erìn Moure, Tom Wayman, Colin Browne, and many more.
The Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, one of the annual BC Book Prizes, has also included amongst its nominees and winners many TCR contributors: George Bowering, Meredith Quartermain, Steve Collis, Ken Belford, Fred Wah, Larissa Lai, Daphne Marlatt, George Stanley, Sharon Thesen, Rita Wong, and many more.
Praise from our readers and writers:
Susan Bee and Charles Bernstein: "The key to The Capilano Review's remarkable success over so many years is the combination of adventurous and meticulous editing, great design, and The Capilano Review's connection to Vancouver, one of the great literary, art, and poetry centers of the Americas. We are delighted and honored to have been included!"
Erìn Moure: “The Capilano Review offers what must be the richest view of literary and visual culture in Canada, with dynamic work that pushes poetry's boundaries from numerous perspectives, engaging young new writers publishing their first poems or new work alongside experienced practitioners from the most crucial aesthetic currents in Canada since the 1970s. Its sense of style (without waste), the hard work of its editors, its ability to reach out through its contributing editors to the multitude of places where poets, fiction writers, translators, plastic artists and people who use mixed modes and genres flourish and create what is new. Really new. It's the best literary magazine in the country, and the most consistently excellent, and I've been a reader since Issue 1. As a contributor, I've been treated fairly and promptly at all times, and my publications in the magazine have reached audiences across North America.” (January 2010)
Renee Rodin: “Just when I think it can't get any better, a new TCR arrives that is even more beautiful, even more engaging than the previous one. From cover to cover this classy publication never fails to captivate me. A top quality literary and aesthetic experience.” (January 2010)
Meredith Quartermain: Among Canadian literary magazines, The Capilano Review is a leader and a groundbreaker. Its editors have been consistently visionary, its design elegant and its content (both graphic art and literary) breath-taking, provocative, and passionate. It is impossible to imagine the literary culture of Western Canada without the communities of writers and artists the Review has fostered during its astonishing 35-year run. (October 2007)
Erìn Moure: Yr mail jarred me back to 1974 to Peregrine Books, where the first "books" I bought on moving to Vancouver were 3 issues or so of The Cap Review. Exciting, cover to cover reading, not the usual mag snoresville... I thought life had changed utterly! (March 2006)
Fred Wah: The Capilano Review has, for over thirty years, provided a measure to the innovative and contemporary and a productive site for a generation of literary and artistic boundary walkers. Its editors have provoked and sustained imagination and possibility for a wide range of writers and artists. The TCR is a crucial voice to the continuing surge of west coast and Canadian culture. (February 2006)
John Barton: I have never felt so satisfied with the appearance of my work in a magazine. It has been beautifully laid out on the page, the page itself is beautiful (the paper), the typeface is beautiful. The company my poems keep in this issue is beautiful. For some reason, publishing these poems in The Capilano Review feels as enlivening as publishing an entire book of poems.
Bill Gaston: I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed the issue my five little stories appeared in. The Cap Review is perhaps the only journal around to which I would apply the word 'elegant.'
Warren Tallman: An image of the world as of now. Beautiful . . . I can see the extraordinary care with which each issue is handled, obviously a labour of love.
Jack Hodgins: I don't know of any other magazine which gives a writer such special treatment. Every issue is as permanent as a book and better produced than most.