Marketing: Strategic asset releases (cover reveal)

Social media campaign across all platforms

E-Newsletter feature

Holiday promotion

Publicity: National consumer press outreach

Holiday roundups

Fan site/blog giveaway

For more than four decades, Hugh Segal has been one of the leading voices of progressive conservatism in Canada. A self-described Red Tory warrior who disdains “bootstrap” approaches to poverty, he has always promoted policies, especially a basic annual income, to help the most economically vulnerable. Why would a life-long Tory support something so radical? In this revealing memoir, Segal shares how his life and experiences brought him to this most unlikely of places, beginning with his childhood in a poor immigrant family in Montreal to his time as a chief of staff for Prime Minister Mulroney and to his more recent work as an advisor on a basic income pilot project for the Ontario Liberal government. This book is a passionate argument not only for why a basic annual income makes economic sense, but for why it is the right thing to do.

Hugh Segal, OC, O Ont, is a remarkable Canadian whose multiple vocations have spanned politics, academia, business, and communications for more than four decades. He has served in myriad capacities in provincial, federal, and international politics, including formal roles as chief of staff to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and principal secretary to Premier Bill Davis. Internationally, he was a member of the nine-person Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group that proposed reforms around democracy, rule of law, human rights, gender equity, judicial independence, and modernization to the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in 2011.

Hugh Segal has taught at Queen’s University’s School of Policy Studies for twenty years and has lectured at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. He is a distinguished fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Policy Studies, a life-time fellow of the Institute for Research on Public Policy in Montreal,a fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute in Calgary, and a former principal of Massey College.

He is also an outspoken political commentator and the author of seven books on public policy and the nature of conservatism in Canada – the most recent being Two Freedoms: Canada’s Global Agenda. In 2016 the Ontario government commissioned him to devise a blueprint for a guaranteed annual income pilot project in Ontario. Although shelved by a change in government in the province, it serves as an important model to put poverty reduction into practice.

How does an affluent, middle-class, private-school-attending son of a doctor end up at the Aryan Nations compound in Idaho, falling in with and then recruiting for some of the most notorious neo-Nazi groups in Canada and the United States?

The Cure for Hate paints a very human picture of a young man who craved attention, acceptance, and approval and the dark place he would go to get it. Tony McAleer found an outlet for his teenage rage in the street violence of the skinhead scene. He then grew deeply involved in the White Aryan Resistance (WAR), rising through the ranks to become a leader, and embraced technology and the budding internet to bring white nationalist propaganda into the digital age. After fifteen years in the movement, it was the outpouring of love he felt at the birth of his children that inspired him to start questioning his hateful beliefs. Thus began the spiritual journey of personal transformation that enabled him to disengage from the highest levels of the white power movement.

This incisive book breaks commonly held stereotypes and delivers valuable insights into how regular people are drawn to violent extremism, how the ideology takes hold, and the best ways to help someone leave hate behind. In his candid and introspective memoir, Tony shares his perspective gleaned from over a thousand hours of therapy, group work, and facilitating change in others that reveals the deeper psychological causes behind racism. At a period in history when instances of racial violence are on the upswing, The Cure for Hate demonstrates that in a society frighteningly divided by hate and in need of healing, perhaps atonement, forgiveness, and most importantly, radical compassion is the cure.

Tony McAleer is an international speaker, change maker, and father of two. As co-founder of the nonprofit organization Life After Hate, he has made it his mission to help people leave hate groups. The Cure for Hate is his first book. He lives in Vancouver.

Catherine Hernandez's literary career exploded with the 2017 publication of her award-winning novel Scarborough. Her latest, I Promise, marks her delightful return to children's literature, having published her first children's book, M Is for Mustache: A Pride ABC Book, in 2015.

Featuring tender-hearted illustrations by renowned artist Syrus Marcus Ware, I Promise captures with love and honesty the intimate moments of parenting in all their messy glory - from dealing with a kid who doesn't want to brush their teeth to looking under the bed for monsters to cuddling after a long day. This charming picture book showcases the many shapes, sizes, and colours that families come in, emphasizing that every queer family starts with the sacred promise to love a child.

Catherine Hernandez is the author of the novel Scarborough, which won the 2015 Jim Wong-Chu Award; was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award, Toronto Book Award, the Evergreen Forest of Reading Award, and Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction; and was longlisted for Canada Reads 2018. It made the "Best of 2017" list from The Globe and Mail, National Post, Quill and Quire, and CBC Books. Her plays The Femme Playlist / I Cannot Lie to the Stars That Made Me, Singkil, and Kilt Pins were published by Playwrights Canada Press, and her children's book M is for Mustache: A Pride ABC Book was published by Flamingo Rampant. She is the Artistic Director of b current. Catherine lives in Scarborough, Ontario.

Syrus Marcus Ware is a Vanier Scholar, visual artist, activist, curator, and educator. Syrus's work explores social justice frameworks and black activist culture. Syrus is a core-team member of both Black Lives Matter Toronto and Blackness Yes!/Blockorama. Syrus has won several awards, including the TD Diversity Award in 2017. Syrus is a PhD candidate at York University in the Faculty of Environmental Studies.

Ivan Coyote is one of North America's preeminent storytellers and performers, and the author, co-author, or co-editor of eleven previous books, all but one of which have been published by Arsenal Pulp Press. Their most recent book, Tomboy Survival Guide, was shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction, named an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book, and longlisted for Canada Reads.

In their latest, Ivan takes on the patriarchy and the political, as well as the intimate and the personal in these beguiling and revealing stories of what it means to be trans and non-binary today, at a time in their life when they must carry the burden of heartbreaking history with them, while combatting those who would misgender them or deny their very existence. These stories span thirty years of tackling TERFs, legislators, and bathroom police, sure, but there is joy and pleasure and triumph to be found here too, as Ivan pays homage to personal heroes like Leslie Feinberg while gently guiding younger trans folk to prove to themselves that there is a way out of the darkness.

Rebent Sinner is the work of an accomplished artist whose plain truths about their experience will astound readers with their utter, breathtaking humanity.

David Neel was an infant when his father, a traditional Kwakiutl artist, returned to the ancestors, triggering a series of events that would separate David from his homeland and its rich cultural traditions for twenty-five years. When the aspiring photographer saw a mask carved by an ancestor in a Texas museum, the encounter inspired him to return home and follow in his father’s footsteps. Drawing on memory, legend, and his own art, Neel recounts his struggle to reconnect with his culture and become an accomplished Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw artist. His memoir is a testament to the strength of the human spirit to overcome great obstacles and to the power and endurance of Indigenous culture and art.

David A. Neel, carver, jeweller, painter, printmaker, writer, and photographer, comes from a family of traditional Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw artists, including Dave Neel Sr., Ellen Neel, Mungo Martin, and Charlie James. In addition to apprenticing with carvers in Alert Bay, he received training in writing and photography from the University of Kansas and Mount Royal College in Alberta. He is the author of Our Chiefs and Elders: Words and Photographs of Native Leaders (1992) and The Great Canoes: Reviving a Northwest Coast Tradition (1995). He is dedicated to the promotion and preservation of Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw traditional art and culture.

MEDIA: active media campaign intended to obtain print, radio, online, and television coverage in national, regional, and local markets, concentrating specifically on ON as well as cities with large immigrant populations. Will also target gay/LBTQ2S+ and immigrant publications, alternative and/or independent media (Rabble.ca, Briarpatch). 

(U of R Press has a stellar established track record in obtaining media, with regular coverage in major outlets such as The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, CBC's The Current and The Next Chapter, CBC Books, as well as regional print, TV, and radio outlets, and international outlets such as The Guardian and the New York Times.)

ADVERTISING: $5,000 budget, devoted to print ads in Mother Jones, Literary Review of Canada, and online ads on rabble.ca. 

OTHER: 
- online: advertising on publisher website
- social media: giveaway, promotions through 49th Shelf 
- events: Toronto area festival appearances and Toronto launch  

COMPARATIVE TITLES: 
I'm Afraid of Men - Vivek Shraya
Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes - Kamal Al-Solaylee