Background
Beth Follett was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She spent her adolescence and young adult life in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
Beth Follett, editor, novelist, publisher, writer, author, poet.
845 Rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Montréal, QC H3A 0G4, Canada
Beth Follett received her master's degree in social work from McGill University.
Beth Follett, editor, novelist, publisher, writer, author, poet.
Beth Follett, editor, novelist, publisher, writer, author, poet.
Beth Follett with her husband Stanley Louis Dragland.
Beth Follett, editor, novelist, publisher, writer, author, poet.
Beth Follett, editor, novelist, publisher, writer, author, poet.
Beth Follett, editor, novelist, publisher, writer, author, poet.
Beth Follett with her husband Stanley Louis Dragland.
845 Rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Montréal, QC H3A 0G4, Canada
Beth Follett received her master's degree in social work from McGill University.
Beth Follett, editor, novelist, publisher, writer, author, poet.
2008
Beth Follett's husband Stanley Louis Dragland, critic, novelist, poet, educator.
Beth Follett's colleague Monica Kidd, doctor, educator, writer, poet.
(The novel tells the story of Nora Flood, a young woman wh...)
The novel tells the story of Nora Flood, a young woman who lives between two sets of voices: those of her own fragmented desires and the internalized voices of western culture, which have always denigrated or refused her deepest desires. She struggles with these contradictory forces, overwhelmed, at times mute, seeking the roots of her psychosexual malaise, searching for the possibility of her own true voice, caught in an obsession that drags her away from the exploration of her own appetites and hungers into its sterile heart. But through the interventions of Djuna Barnes, creator of the literary Nora Flood of Barnes' novel Nightwood, this Nora begins to slip between the cracks and fissures of obsession to shape a life of her own.
https://www.amazon.com/Tell-Slant-Beth-Follett/dp/1552450813
2001
editor novelist publisher writer author poet
Beth Follett was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She spent her adolescence and young adult life in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
As a teenager, Beth Follett had visions of a future as a poet. But her father - himself a great lover of poetry - dissuaded her. He knew it would be a difficult road, especially for a woman. Instead, Follett, who says she was "lacking the boldness of some," spent her time volunteering with inner-city youth.
Follett received her master's degree in social work from McGill University, then went on to work at shelters in Montreal and Toronto. She continued to write but kept it a "very hidden, private affair." Social work proved tough in the long run and when Follett felt herself burning out, she decided to take the plunge and launch her own publishing company.
Beth Follett is a founder of Pedlar Press, which was born out of her Toronto apartment in 1996, the same year Coach House Press declared bankruptcy. Emerging authors, who may have dreamt of placing their first book with Coach House, came knocking at this new publisher's door. From the onset, Follett has been the driving force behind Pedlar's design aesthetic, which she describes as "modern, avant-garde," and as a publisher, she is responsible for discovering emerging talent like painters Margaux Williamson and Dana Holst. Follett won't reveal how she scored Mark Rothko's painting Yellow Over Purple, 1956 for the cover of Ronna Bloom's 2017 collection, The More, except to say that she dares to ask the famous.
In 2016, Follett determined she was ready to return to her own writing. She decided to sell Pedlar and began to quietly speak to prospective buyers. Although the original plan was to sell full shares, the new buyer - a former Newfoundlander hoping to relocate back home - didn't feel comfortable taking on all the responsibilities of a small press. For now, Follett will remain as a primary director with majority shares, handing the publishing end of the business, while the new co-owner will take on editorial duties. The long-term plan is to find another person to buy Follett's remaining shares. Former CBC staffer Monica Kidd is now Folletts partner in running Pedlar.
In 2001, she had her first novel, Tell It Slant, published. Tell It Slant is the story of Nora Flood, a character taken from a 1930s novel by Djuna Barnes called Nightwood. The plotline also closely follows that of Nightwood and Barnes even shows up in this book as a minor character. The title is derived from an Emily Dickinson poem, which reads "Tell the Truth but tell it slant/Success in Circuit lies." This first novel was followed by YesNo (2011), an essay in chapbook form, and two poetry chapbooks, Bone Hinged (2010) and A Thinking Woman Sleeps With Monsters (2014). Her second novel, Instructor, has recently been submitted to Canadian publishing houses. She awaits reply.
Beth Follett founder Pedlar Press, each manuscript from which receives full attention as they publish only seven books a year. Books are not published as submitted but go through an editing process that refines the beauty of the work and pairs it with a graphic design of appropriate aesthetic sensibility. Many of the books have won prizes.
(The novel tells the story of Nora Flood, a young woman wh...)
2001As a figure in Canada's book world, Beth Follett has kept to her credo: to acquire works of exceptional literary quality which also break silences regarding widespread failures of social and political systems: to make books with serious intellectual and emotional content, that are also works of art.
Beth Follett has always done things her own way. She does not own a cellphone. She enjoys selling her books directly to customers in local markets. She likes to talk to people face to face, which has informed her own thinking and visioning.
Beth Follett is married to Stanley Louis Dragland.
Stanley Louis Dragland has taught at the University of Alberta, The Grammar School, Sudbury, Suffolk, the University of Western Ontario, and the Banff Centre Writing Studio. After 29 years in the English department at Western, he received Emeritus status in 1999 and retired to St. John's. Stan Dragland's extensive work creating, publishing, critiquing, and teaching Canadian writing has made him an influential figure in Canadian letters.
While a professor at the University of Western Ontario, Stan Dragland published a number of revealing critical studies that explore how the racial politics of Duncan Campbell Scott's sympathetic "Indian poetry" relate to Scott's role as the deputy superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs. Characteristic of Dragland's critical writing and of his own approach to creative writing, his book Floating Voice: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Literature of Treaty 9 (1994) explores the nuanced intersection of literature and life. Floating Voice won the 1994 Gabrielle Roy Prize for Canadian Literary Criticism. Stan Dragland has also edited a collection of essays on Duncan Campbell Scott and produced an edition of Scott's short story collection In the Village of Viger and Other Stories (1973).
Stan Dragland is noted for his extensive work as an editor and for promoting the importance of small presses in Canada. He was the founder of the poetry publishing house Brick Books in 1975, for which he still works as publisher and editor, and a founding editor of the literary review magazine Brick in 1977. He served as poetry editor for McClelland & Stewart from 1993 to 1996.
Monica Kidd writes poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, with seven books, and poems, essays and articles numbering in the dozens. Her latest poetry collection, Chance Encounters with Wild Animals, was published by Gaspereau Press in 2019.
She worked for CBC Radio until 2004, producing reportage and documentaries and one radio play that won national and international awards; she finished up as CBC's National Science Reporter and an editor for the popular national science program Quirks & Quarks. She misses radio like a phantom limb, and stays connected to audio through occasional pieces she produces for Voice of Bonne Bay Radio, and her website for poetry and field recordings, curiaudio.com.
In 2004, she transitioned to medicine, completing medical school and family medicine residency at Memorial University of Newfoundland. She has been working as a family doctor in Alberta and in Newfoundland, with special interests in global health, child & maternal health, and medical humanities, since 2011. She has teaching appointments at the University of Calgary and Memorial University and has been a frequent contributor to national medical publications such as The Medical Post and Canadian Medical Association Journal.
In 2016, she began Whisky Jack Letterpress in Calgary, producing small works such as posters and broadsides. In 2017, she went back to her roots in biology and spent her first month in Antarctica working as an expedition guide, lecturing on the natural and cultural history of the extreme south. She became a partner in Pedlar Press in 2018, where she is Acquisitions Editor and Production Manager.
