Gaspereau Press to Change Ownership
We’ve received news that the Gaspereau Press will change ownership at the end of 2025. Please find the announcement here, written by Andrew Steeves:
At the end of 2025, Gary Dunfield and I will be leaving Gaspereau Press after 28 years as printers and publishers. With our departure, the offset printing and trade bindery activities of Gaspereau Press will effectively come to a conclusion, but we are pleased to announce that the literary publishing program and the Gaspereau Press name will continue under the ownership of Keagan Hawthorne. Keagan is presently the proprietor of Hardscrabble Press, a micropress based in Sackville, New Brunswick. He intends to relocate Gaspereau Press to New Brunswick and carry on in a similar spirit there, building upon the cultural enterprise that Gary and I began in 1997.
During the transition we expect day to-day operations to carry on as normal. Keagan will be joining us as Associate Editor. I will be selecting, editing and designing trade books for the 2025 publishing season while at the same time assisting Keagan as he selects and prepares books for publication in 2026. Gaspereau Press books will continue to be manufactured at and distributed from the Kentville location until late in 2025.
And what will happen to Gary and I? Gary wishes to retire, which is why he initiated the winding-up of our partnership and the sale of the business. I considered the option of buying Gary out and carrying on as sole owner, but decided that the challenge of re-imagining and retooling Gaspereau Press for the future was better entrusted to a fresh set of hands. My own post-Gaspereau plans are still taking shape, but will likely involve some combination of freelance writing, editing, book design and teaching. I also intend to keep producing fine letterpress books, chapbooks and broadsides under a new press name.
We will be sharing more details in coming months. Gary and I are incredibly grateful for the support that the community has shown Gaspereau Press and its authors over the years, and we are excited to see what’s next for the press under Keagan Hawthorne’s leadership. We hope you are too.
A follow-up by Keagan Hawthorne:
I’m excited to share the news that in early 2026 I will be taking over as publisher at Gaspereau Press. After 28 years at the helm, Andrew Steeves and Gary Dunfield will be stepping aside, entrusting me with the privilege and responsibility of carrying on the work they started back in 1997.
Any transition of this magnitude is bound to involve change. The physical operations of the press will relocate to Sackville, New Brunswick, and trade printing and binding will no longer be carried out in-house, though books will continue to be published with letterpress jackets in the signature Gaspereau style. There are new voices that I’m excited to invite to the conversation, particularly Acadian literature in English translation, while at the same time keeping the old habits of thought and story alive.
But above all else I remain committed to the values that for me, as a long-time reader and lover of these books, exemplify everything that Gaspereau Press stands for: great design, careful attention to the details of production, and a commitment to literature that reminds us of who we are, and what we have the potential to become.
The work currently carried out at The Hardscrabble Press – poetry chapbooks and letterpress broadsides – will be folded into the larger Gaspereau publishing program.
I’ll share more details of this transition as it evolves over the coming months, as I begin to work with all those whose voices make the Gaspereau conversation the thriving cultural marker that it is.
We congratulate Gary on his well-deserved retirement, wish Andrew the very best in his future endeavours and look forward to Keagan’s contribution and continuing legacy at the Gaspereau Press.
Now might be the perfect time to visit the upcoming Gaspereau Press’ Wayzgoose on October 26, 2024, in Kentville, NS, and chat and admire the work of its longtime proprietors. The event will feature Amos Kennedy, John Shoesmith, Stephanie Wolff and Dan Wood.
Gaspereau Press and Andrew Steeves have won over 50 Alcuin Awards citations until he ultimately stopped submitting books for the competition to make “way for the next generation of emerging designers”.
