About Playwrights Canada Press

Playwrights Canada Press, the Canadian drama publisher, was created in 1984 as an imprint of the Playwrights Union of Canada, the professional association of Canadian playwrights, now called the Playwrights Guild of Canada. In 2000 the Press was separately incorporated from the Guild.

For the first ten years, the Press published four to six titles of English-Canadian drama a year, but in the past several years that number has grown. We now publish roughly thirty books of plays, theatre history and criticism each year. While located in Ontario, the Press is proud of its list of published playwrights which stretches from Newfoundland to British Columbia and the Yukon. Playwrights Canada Press also publishes French plays by Canadian authors in English translation, and includes plays for young audiences.

Theatre Communications Group (TCG) represents Playwrights Canada Press in the United States. TCG, as well as being a publisher of American drama, is an association of 350 medium-sized professional theatres, and the publisher of the periodical American Theatre. Playwrights Canada Press represents TCG’s list in Canada, as well as those of Nick Hern Books and Aurora Metro Publications from the United Kingdom.

Nick Hern Books is one of the UK's leading specialist performing arts publishers with over 800 plays, screenplays and theatre books in their catalogue catalogue. They also license most of their plays for amateur performance.

Aurora Metro Press is a distinguished list from Great Britain, that publishes mainly anthologies. It has done much to improve access to culturally diverse voices in translation, and in particularly work from women playwrights.

Playwrights Canada Press is a member of the Association of Canadian Publishers, the Literary Press Group, the Organization of Book Publishers of Ontario, and the Canadian Association of Theatre Research.

Playwrights Canada Press acknowledges the support of the taxpayers of Canada and Ontario through the Government of Canada Book Publishing Industry Development Program, the Export Marketing Assistance Program, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.