50 Years, 50 Books
Acquisitions Editor Randy Schmidt reached out to fifty UBC Press authors and asked them to talk about their favourite UBC Press book. This is what we heard. (New books will be posted regularly, so check back often).

UBC Press Backlist Bestsellers: Celebrating 50 Years of Thought that Counts
To celebrate our 50th anniversary, we take a look at our 50 bestselling books, arranged in alphabetical order.

THE BOLDEST TRIUMPH of UBC Press’s first half-century is the unique vitality the Press’s publications have brought and continue to bring to the world of ideas – foregrounding scholarship that eclipses the status quo and stands anew, inviting discussion, demanding debate, challenging an outworn record. Our authors’ works have a constant and intellectually kinetic influence on our understanding of Canada as a land of many nations and a home to many peoples, of diverse geography and human culture, of laws and struggles, of rights and relationships, of achievements and atrocities, and, the necessary prologues to ongoing learning and transformation.

UBC Press has always been and remains a shared endeavour. Books are born of discussion – sometimes over years – between authors and acquisitions editors. A work’s merit is furthered by peer reviewers and the discerning assessment of the UBC Press Publications Board. Manuscripts are shaped by the experience of production editors, as well as freelancers, and then made known through the creativity of marketing initiatives. Booksellers and librarians fill their shelves, physical and digital, with our publications and those who review the books assess whether, in their view, the choices made were wise (in our view, they always are!). Readers, in all ways, have the final word.

Incorporating greater diversity and inclusion throughout the Press’s undertakings is critical to its future success. A leader on that path is the recently launched RavenSpace, a digital publishing model for collaborative authorship between Indigenous communities and researchers. It is with excitement and a strength of purpose that we look forward to UBC Press’s next half-century and responding to the changing dynamic and needs of the academy as it engages with broader public conversations.

The cumulative energy that brings UBC Press to its robust fiftieth year is exhilarating. We thank the University of British Columbia for creating and supporting a university press and to everyone, each and all, who has contributed along the way.

MELISSA PITTS
Director, UBC Press