A guest post by Alex Ventimilla
The Covid-19 pandemic postponed countless events around the world: weddings, graduations, vacations… For UAlberta Press, our collective efforts to minimize the spread of the virus meant we could not make full use of our beautiful new workspace–until now! And what better time to celebrate our new home than during University Press Week?
University Press Week is an annual celebration dedicated to excellence in university press publishing. This year, we decided to mark the occasion by hosting an open house and reception in Henderson Hall, which sits adjacent to our new office suite in Rutherford Library South. This became our official home mere days before the onset of pandemic-related restrictions. And while we were happy to do our part during those trying times, we also felt we were long overdue for an opportunity to share this fantastic space with our authors, friends, fans, and colleagues. With this in mind, we gathered on November 16 to celebrate both our homecoming as well as another successful year of scholarly publishing.
We had the honour of featuring a number of fascinating speakers on that day. The first was Press Director Douglas Hildebrand, whose warm welcome and introductory remarks were an excellent prelude to eloquent words from Chancellor Peggy Garritty, Deputy Chief Librarian Kathleen DeLong, Press Committee Chair Temitope Oriola, and Interim Dean of Graduate Studies and Research (and three-time Press author) Roger Epp. We wish to thank them for contributing to this celebration of our work and space. We also thank everyone who joined us this day for fun, food, and conversation.
The open house was our first use of Henderson Hall, which is a safe and welcoming space in which to celebrate accomplishments by our institution, colleagues, and authors.
This is a good time to affirm our continuing commitment to publishing outstanding scholarship, which is the essence of university press publishing, as well as essential Canadian poetry and literary nonfiction. And in this, we thank you, for it would not be possible without our readers.
