Strength in Numbers: Introduction
Writing is a solitary endeavour, but publishing is not. A manuscript is the product of days, weeks, months, and often years, spent alone at a desk. The editing process requires many hours on top of this, with every paragraph, sentence, and word subject to scrutiny. Further, the business of publishing involves a network of many individuals representing different facets of the process: the publishers themselves, the agents, the illustrators, the publicists. Writers, as well, have formed important communities amongst themselves, to speak with a collective voice.
When writer Graeme Gibson died earlier this year, an obituary in the Globe and Mailremarked upon this. As Gibson once told writer and biographer Rosemary Sullivan, the notion that individual artists function best in isolation was nonsense; in fact, there is strength in numbers.
This exhibition is an attempt to tell part of this story, primarily by using the Fisher Library’s extensive literary archival holdings to showcase the communal and collaborative efforts so important to Canadian publishing.
The exhibition was curated by Natalya Rattan and John Shoesmith. The physical exhibition was designed and installed by Linda Joy.