We’re reaching out to our community for urgent support, solidarity, and action.
For decades, operational funding for the arts has been vital to publishers’ ability to compete against the cultural hegemony of the US. With devastating cuts to provincial arts funding both in Nova Scotia and Manitoba, where Fernwood is based, publishers, booksellers, designers, printers, authors, and illustrators face unprecedented instability. Nova Scotia’s austerity budget also dismantles crucial community supports and educational institutions while funding militarism and fracking on Mi’kmaw land.
This is not only about one province’s budget. Canada’s history of neoliberal policy shows that, without public resistance, other jurisdictions are quick to replicate these attacks on social infrastructure.
There can be no independent publishing in Canada without public funding. Nova Scotia is the only province to forfeit its support of cultural expression.
Please take action now. We ask you to join us in refusing the diversion of funding from critical thinking to resource extraction. Nova Scotia MLAs are currently in session, and they will be voting on the budget soon. The time for public pressure is now.
If you’re in Nova Scotia, you can participate in these actions:
- Join the Shoulder to Shoulder rally in Halifax on March 3 and the Rally for the Arts on March 4
- Write to your MLA, and CC the Minister of Finance (FinanceMinister@novascotia.ca); the Minister of Communities, Culture, Tourism, and Heritage (MIN_CCTH@novascotia.ca); and NDP MLA Claudia Chender (claudiachender@nsmla.ca), explaining why wholesale elimination of funding for independent publishing is unconscionable. Use this template or put it in your own words.
If you’re a Fernwood author:
- Boost your book wherever you can, no matter how long it’s been since your book came out: add a link to it in your email signature; put up a poster in your department; organize a book talk on any one of today’s intersecting problems
- If you’re a teacher, adopt a Fernwood book in your class (don’t be shy about using your own brilliant book!)
- Offer to do author talks in classrooms, workplaces, or organizing spaces
- If you have stable income, consider donating your royalties to our Supplemental Author Development Fund so we can continue to support precariously employed writers
If you’re a Fernwood reader:
- Organize a book club involving a Fernwood title
- Order your books from indie bookstores or directly from our website
- Assign Fernwood books or chapters in your class. For help with this, contact us at permissions@fernpub.ca
- Tell your colleagues about Fernwood and suggest books for their classes or organizations
- Write a review of a Fernwood book in a magazine or scholarly journal
- Tell your friends and comrades about Fernwood books you’ve enjoyed and learned from
- Be publicly outraged about attacks on cultural funding!
Austerity budgets are an expression of corporate greed resulting in an upwards transfer of wealth and a continued degradation of our expectations. Critical ideas and culture are not frivolous indulgences. They are essential to imagining and enacting a more just world.
This budget calls for collective action and dissent, and we’re calling on much-needed solidarity from you, our community.
With thanks,
Fernwood Publishing