This little press has been a long time in the making. While other twenty-year-olds in undergrad were discovering frat parties and other diversions, what I really craved was a long stapler so I could staple my little folded chapbooks in the middle. Perfect binding was beyond me in those days; imperfect binding would have to do. Having grown up on the early indie publishers of the 18th and 19th centuries—Horace Walpole, William Blake, William Morris—it was a dream of mine to follow in the same footsteps, to publish works old and new, perhaps in the vein of Morris's legendary Kelmscott Press, to delight the senses and thrill the mind's eye as well.
This dream became...okay, not quite a reality... but it became a risky venture on March 29, 2019, when Cynehelm Press became a self-aware Ontario small business. Time well tell what becomes of it. I hope to keep you posted with official news here.
In the meantime, enjoy this royalty-free stock picture of a far handsomer man than I am, leaning over a laptop in a far tidier office. Imagine that he's me, and that it's a respectable hour of the day, and that I'm deep in thought over whether a stylized em-dash or en-dash would be more elegant in a headline.
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