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I fell in love with Metonymy Press earlier this year. Metonymy is a small press based in Montreal; they publish queer and transfiction as well as non-fiction. The slogan on their website is: “We want to please gay book lovers.” Well, not only do they keep this gay book lover happy – they change the way I think about reading, too.
I read my first metonymy title last year: Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars by Kai Cheng Thom. At that time I didn’t know anything about the press or where I heard about the book, but I liked it. Later that year I bought another metonymy title, Small Beauty from jia qing wilson-yang. I had marked it as worth reading at some point, but had trouble finding it in my library. I decided to buy it because it sounded exactly to my taste, but I didn’t make the connection that it was a different Metonymy title. It lay unread on my shelf for months.
Cut to 2021. On the recommendation of another Rioter colleague, I reserved another metonymy title (still unknown to me), Little Blue Encyclopedia (For Vivian) by Hazel Jane Plante in a library. I read it in two sessions and haven’t been able to shut up since. I love this book with all my heart; It’s fun and moving and sharp and creative, hands down one of my favorite novels of all time. A few weeks later, in an effort to read more books I already own, I finally got Small Beauty. It shot to the top of my list of best reads of the year, and I’ve raved about it to anyone who’ll listen.
This is when the pieces started to fall. For a few years now, I’ve been following the publishers in my reading table without paying much attention to them. But when I entered the dates for Small Beauty and Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian), I noticed that they were both published by that press I had never heard of: metonymy. It can’t be a coincidence that two of my favorite books of the year are from the same press, can it? So I did a little research and found that I had already read and loved another Metonymy title (Fierce Femmes). Then I did something I had never seen before (for me anyway): I went to the Metonymy website and bought every book they published. It’s a small press, so I only bought six books. Still, this is no small book booty, especially since I usually only buy books that I have already read and loved.
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Is it shocking that several of these books became instant favorites? Maybe not, but it surprised me. I have a prickly history of short story collections; I often find it unsatisfactory. So buying a collection of unread short stories was a risky move. Friends, A Natural History of Transition by Callum Angus is, as you guessed it, another favorite read of 2021. It’s a beautiful, intricate book of tales of tranche characters who defy labels, who embody magic that is forever change and transform again in surprising ways. It’s a book I’ll cherish forever. And while I probably would have picked it up at some point, I doubt I would have bought it and read it so quickly had I not been so in love with metonymy.
I also loved Addie Tsai’s Dear Twin, a YA novel about a queer Asian-American teenager whose twin sister is disappearing. It’s a beautiful book that I had never heard of until I decided to buy it. Dear Twin is not one of my all-time favorite books, but it’s a book I think about a lot, one that’s stuck with me and that I’m so grateful for reading. I think the same about Zom-Fam by the Mauritian-Canadian writer Kama La Mackerel. It is a volume of poetry about gender and homeland and queerness, the legacy of colonialism, indigenous history, art and translation. It’s not my favorite poetry collection at all. But I’m glad I read it, and I expect to repeat it.
Falling in love has a lot to do with trust. I’ve read Metonymy’s entire backlist and implicitly trust them. It’s not that I expect every book they publish to be perfect, or that I will love all of their books as much as I love Little Blue Encyclopedia (For Vivian). But I trust they will publish books that are always worth my time. I trust them to introduce myself to authors whose work will open and challenge me. And that trust made me a more adventurous reader.
Indie presses often have a specialty (it’s no surprise I fell for so much queer press), but even so, books from the same press are not necessarily similar in genre, style, tone, etc. Aside from being trans – Authors wrote, Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars and A Natural History of Transition have little in common. That’s the exciting part of getting to know an indie publisher. I tend to read books that I might not otherwise have picked up. With books outside of my favorite genres, I tend to take risks.
I’m in love with Milkweed Editions (thanks to The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson) and have just added a number of their titles to my TBR. Earlier this year, I read and loved Time is the Thing a Body Moves Through by T. Fleischmann, published by Coffee House Press. I’m excited to see Borealis by Aisha Sabatini Sloan and Madder: A Memoir in Weeds by Marco Wilkinson, two books I’d never heard of before browsing the Coffee House website.
I am eternally grateful to Metonymy for the amazing books they put out and for changing the way I find new books. Cant wait to see what little press I fall in love with next. Feminist Press and Indie Publishers: Please don’t hesitate to woo me with books.
