Oct 5, 2021
Canada has an impressive tradition of
producing great printer- publishers. Three of our best are Stan
Bevington, Tim Inkster, and Andrew Steeves.
Ancient interviews with all three can be found here on The
Biblio File website.
The one with Andrew took place a dozen
years ago so I figured it was time to clock another. I drove down
to Kentville, Nova Scotia last month, where Andrew lives and works,
and sat down with him again right next to the place where the wall
cordoning off his office used to sit (it came down about a decade
ago), inches away from where our previous talk too place.
Andrew bills himself as a writer,
editor, typographer, letterpress printer and literary publisher.
Over the past two decades he's won more than 50 citations for
excellence in book design from Canada's Alcuin Society. His essay
collection Smoke Proofs: Essays on Literary Publishing,
Printing and Typography appeared in 2014.
We talk here mostly about the specifics
of book design and how Andrew makes books that very beautifully and
aptly express their contents; we also discuss the challenge
of selecting titles; the use pilcrows, the importance in life of
paying attention, and much more.