- click for submission guidelines and our (upcoming) online submission form -

Dusty Owl Press is a chapbook press that spun off the reading series. We currently sell at small press fairs, such as the CanZine Small Press Fair, ExpoZine in Montreal, and, of course, the SPAN-O Small Press Fair here in Ottawa, and Dusty Owl readings, and our books can be found in various bookstores in Ottawa, Montreal and Peterborough.

Our quarterly journal, The Dusty Owl Quarterly, or DOQ, is currently on hiatus while we undergo some restructuring. We'll keep you posted as developments arise: for now, we're hoping to get it back underway in spring or summer of 2008.

Our Books:

The novella Tattoo This Madness In, by Daniel Allen Cox, first published in 2006, was shortlisted for the 2007 ExpoZine Alternative Press Awards and was launched in April of 2007 at the Ottawa International Writers Festival. It has now sold copies around the world (really! we've sold copies to readers in Australia, South Africa, Norway and Germany, not to mention across this continent from Texas to California to BC to New York) and is in its third printing.

An online catalogue of our back issues and previous titles is in the works for early 2008.

Do you have an opinion? A cause? An argument? Consider submitting your thoughts to:

Small Books, Big Ideas:

This is a running non-fiction series. We're looking for short, punchy, controversial essays on big topics, to be printed in a series of lovely pocket-sized, hand-stitched and glued quarter-page chapbooks. It's our little way of bringing back the grand old genre of tract literature. Do you have an opinion on something? Defend it! We'll be printing a regular series under the "Small Books, Big Ideas" label. We'll be judging essays on how well they're written and how well they're defended, not on whether or not we personally agree with the opinions expressed (although we maintain the right to make a judgment on things like blatant hate literature. Be intelligent, be incisive, and above all be civil.)