In this new instalment of our 5 questions with series, we interview Luciana Erregue, the Director of Laberinto Press.

1. Tell us about Laberinto Press. Where are you located and what kinds of books do you publish?

Established in 2020, we are located in Edmonton, Alberta. We publish hyphenated Canadian literature and World literature in translation. Laberinto means labyrinth in Spanish, an homage to Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges who wrote about the Labyrinth as a metaphor for intersection and diverging stories and languages. This is what we are about.

2. What’s the single best thing you’ve done to promote your books to readers?

The best thing for us has been our connection to the community of Alberta independent booksellers, readers, and our outreach activities through the Book Publishers Association of Alberta, the Harvest Book Fair in Edmonton, and The Olive Reading Series. We not only participate in book launches and book fairs in Alberta but have been invited by LitFest YEG and the Winnipeg International Literary Festival to present our books or participate in panels. We also support the Hispanic community by sponsoring contests or attending Filibro, the preeminent book fair in Spanish in Canada. We have also been invited to the Buenos Aires Book Fair two years in a row. But our strength is in connecting with our readers and authors one on one, one event at a time. We are hoping soon to have readings in Toronto and BC.

3. What makes your publishing house different from others?

Our programming coherence in how we developed our catalogue. We started in the beginning of the pandemic, with a Diversity in the Arts Grant from the Edmonton Arts Council in 2020. Initially we just wanted to publish one anthology featuring all those hyphenated Edmonton authors who were, like myself, unable to crack the mainstream gate because their first language was not English. Just think about it now, how everything has changed, that now publishing houses are striving to publish more hyphenated literature than ever. Our culture is one where high literary standards are valued. We have a rigorous editing process, as well as Canada-wide distribution and sales. We belong to our provincial publisher’s association, and due to our continued labour, we have received two awards, in 2022, Best Emerging Publisher in Alberta and in 2024, Best Publisher of the Year. Our colleagues’ support here in Alberta has been incredible. So far we have published close to 45 hyphenated-Canadian authors. We began with an anthology titled Beyond the Food Court, to showcase stories that spoke of the deeper aspects of food and society. This inspired us to continue along the idea of a “poetic of the senses” a la Italo Calvino, which yielded three more anthologies, on sight (Beyond the Gallery), on the sense of smell (Beyond the Park), and our latest, on the sense of touch (Beyond Touch Sites). We also published a collection of short stories in translation which has received rave reviews, Margarita Saona’s The Ghost of You, which we launched in Chicago.

4. What do you wish you had known about publishing when you were starting out?

The small percentage of books sold in Canada by Canadian presses and how important librarians are to the Canadian publishing ecosystem, coupled with book censorship attempts in Alberta and the US. We also did not have an inkling of how AI would change publishing, and we still are in the dark about this, and how very few publishing house directors or owners were non-white and women, like me.

5. What’s next for Laberinto Press?

We were lucky to receive a Canada Council grant for our past anthology and our next, which will be on sound, titled Beyond the Concert Hall. We will continue to work on strengthening our connection to our readers, beyond our province. We are still in the early stages of establishing ourselves and feel like there is lots of room to grow. We mostly like to study the Canadian publishing landscape and how it swiftly changes depending on funding and political climate.

BONUS: What topics would you like to see more often in the books you publish?

Once we finish our Beyond series anthologies, we would like to begin publishing good quality fiction
from single hyphenated authors, in particular, historical fiction.

Thank you Luciana for answering our questionnaire! Read more instalments of our 5 questions with series here.

Are you an independent bookseller, small publisher, or library staffer interested in being featured in our 5 questions with blog series? Send us an email!