About Taddle Creek

Every six months Taddle Creek restores the sanctity of the literary magazine, fusing traditional editorial and design values with non-ephemeral, modern-day urban fiction and poetry to create a product unassociated with any one literary movement. Works found in Taddle Creek are not easily categorized: intelligent yet stylish, sensitive yet cavalierly violent, self-absorbed yet socially aware, humorous yet disturbing. In short, Taddle Creek is the journal for those who have come to detest everything the literary magazine has become in the twenty-first century.

Taddle Creek publishes both up-and-coming and established authors. Subject matters vary, though genre work and theme issues are generally avoided. And while fiction and poetry may be the magazine’s main focus, each issue also includes a combination of illustrations, comics, essays, interviews, photographs, grammatical rants, and whatever else suits Taddle Creek’s fancy, resulting in a most-unlikely general-interest literary magazine.

Though the printed magazine—published every June and December—is Taddle Creek’s flagship venue, other platforms include a Web site, a series of audio projects, literary happenings and stage shows, art installations, and more.

Taddle Creek was founded in 1997 as a Christmas annual for the Annex, Toronto’s unofficial literary hub, and its surrounding neighbourhoods (Seaton Village, Christie-Ossington, Little Italy, Palmerston, Sussex-Ulster, Huron-Sussex, and the University of Toronto area). In 2000, the magazine expanded its area of coverage to encompass the entire city and increased its frequency to semi-annual. Two years later, Taddle Creek’s distribution network finally escaped Toronto’s borders and the magazine became available on newsstands coast-to-coast, eventually spilling into the U.S.

THE TADDLE CREEK HAPPENINGS

The Taddle Creek Happenings usually coincide with the launch of a new issue of the magazine, and include a mixture of readings, music, art, food, and alcohol. Happenings generally are not confined to a single location, moving throughout Toronto, from coffee shop to speakeasy to bar to tavern. Most importantly, readings are restricted to a legendary fifteen-minute maximum.

THE TADDLE CREEK WEB SITE

Although Taddle Creek finds the Word Wide Web’s disposability unappealing and the lack of care and attention spent on its copy repugnant, the magazine is committed to doing its part to up the standards of this young medium via its on-line companion, the Taddle Creek Web Site. The site’s most noteworthy element is the Taddle Creek Archive, containing nearly every piece published in the magazine since its inception, complete with illustrations. Would-be contributors will certainly want to read the Taddle Creek Guidelines for Submission, and all visitors should enjoy browsing the contributor biographies and the magazine’s list of recommended books. The site’s home page is also a disseminator of information on Taddle Creek news and upcoming events, though the magazine strongly suggests signing up for the Taddle Creek Mailing List of Current Information.

EDITORIAL STYLE

High editorial standards are Taddle Creek’s top priority (the magazine detests the word “mandate”). All works appearing in the magazine go through a rigorous process of editing, fact-checking, copy editing, and proofreading. The magazine’s main editorial resource is The Taddle Creek Guidebook to Editorial Style and Its Usage, an in-house document describing the ins and outs of everything from proper en dash usage to initialisms versus acronyms. Also of great use is The Taddle Creek Guidebook to Fact-Checking Fiction. So ignored is factual accuracy in today’s literary world that Taddle Creek offers this book free of charge to all publishers of fiction and poetry in the hopes of spreading its seed of precision. A secondary (but by no means lesser) style resource employed by Taddle Creek is the legendary Chicago Manual of Style.

Taddle Creek’s official spelling resource is the Oxford English Dictionary. Though the magazine often refers to the O.E.D.’s abridgement the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, it does so with less frequency than in the past. Frankly, some of the Canadian Oxford’s decisions are a bit wackado.

ABOUT THE TYPE

Taddle Creek’s display typeface, also used at a smaller size for photo credits and any other sans serif needs, is a version of Futura. Designed by Paul Renner, in 1927, for the Bauer Typefoundry, of Germany, it is a non-traditional sans-serif gothic typeface, and remains a favourite amongst artsy types.

Taddle Creek’s body type is set in a version of Bodoni, named for Giambattista Bodoni, an Italian master printer, active in the eighteenth century. All versions of Bodoni are based on his work, though there are many variations. Bodoni is known for creating modern letter styling, with more “perfect” forms and more contrast between the thick and thin strokes of his characters in comparison to traditional typefaces.  

The body type on the Taddle Creek Web site is set in Georgia, designed by Matthew Carter, for Microsoft, first made available in 1996 and designed specifically for screen reading.

From 2002 to 2009, Taddle Creek’s main display typeface was TC Stillson. Designed exclusively for the magazine by Rod McDonald and Renée Alleyn in 2002, it is the first digitized version of Stillson. The renowned Chicago typefoundry Barnhart Brothers & Spindler first introduced Stillson to the printing trade in approximately 1899, and the typeface’s design was patented by R. L. Stillson in 1900. The design of Stillson is typical of many display typefaces produced near the end of the nineteenth century. The book American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century calls it “rather crude,” though Taddle Creek finds it rather elegant. It is believed TC Stillson was the first typeface designed especially for a Canadian literary magazine, but no effort has been expended to confirm if this is true even remotely. TC Stillson is still in use on the Taddle Creek Web site, though the magazine hopes to change this soon.

Prior to TC Stillson, Taddle Creek’s display typeface was Bernhard Modern, designed in 1937, by Lucien Bernhard, for American Type Founders. From 1997 to 2009, Taddle Creek’s body type was Garamond 3, produced at the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, under the direction of C. H. Griffith, in 1926. It was one of the most popular text faces used in North America for most of the twentieth century.

From 2004 to 2009, the magazine’s photo credits and the section headings on its contents page are rendered in Toronto Subway, a typeface first designed in the late nineteen-forties by the architects of the Toronto Transit Commission’s underground rail system. Though the typeface has graced the city’s subway stations and much of its original signage since the system’s opening, in 1954, it remained unavailable in font form until its 2004 release by the typographer David Vereschagin. Taddle Creek is proud to have been among the first to use Mr. Vereschagin’s font. From 2000 to 2004, contents headings and photo credits were rendered in Cityof, a recreation of the lettering used by the Union Pacific Railroad on its freight and passenger trains beginning in the nineteen-thirties. Cityof was employed by the magazine as a replacement for various versions of the classic typeface Helvetica.

CATCHING UP WITH TADDLE CREEK

Proving there’s more to the Internet than pornography and eBay, Taddle Creek is proud to make available on its Web site nearly every work published in the magazine since its inception, as well as all tracks from its 2000 audio compact disc, its 2001 on-line–only issue, and its 2008 talking issue. Readers may browse for articles alphabetically via the Archive page, or chronologically though the Back Issues page.

If, like Taddle Creek, you prefer your magazines in print format, take note that print copies of Taddle Creek are archived by Library and Archives Canada; the Toronto Reference Library; and Robarts Library and the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, at the University of Toronto, among others. The Taddle Creek Information Superhighway Location on the Internetwork is also archived by Library and Archives Canada.

THE TADDLE CREEK VIRTUAL WALL OF ACCOLADES

2000 National Magazine Award (Honourable Mention)
Profiles
Alfred Holden
“The Streamlined Man”

2001 Heritage Toronto Certificate of Commendation
Alfred Holden
“For writing that illustrates Toronto’s architecture and its contribution to the quality of the city.”

2002 National Magazine Award (Honourable Mention)
Poetry
John Degen
“Bicycles”

2003 Now magazine Best of Toronto Critics’ Pick
Best T.O. Lit Mag
Taddle Creek

2004 National Magazine Award (Honourable Mention)
Words and Pictures
Michael Cho
“Night Time”

2005 National Magazine Award (Honourable Mention)
Fiction
Elyse Friedman
“Lost Kitten”

2006 Journey Prize (Long List)
David Whitton
“The Eclipse”

2007 National Magazine Award (Honourable Mention)
Fiction
Cary Fagan
“Shit Box”

2007 National Magazine Award (Honourable Mention)
Poetry
Katia Grubisic
“A List Before Departure”

2007 National Magazine Award (Silver)
Words and Pictures
Michael Cho
“Stars”

2008 National Magazine Award (Honourable Mention)
Words and Pictures
Conan Tobias, Ian Phillips, Grant Heaps, Kevin Connolly, and Thomas Blanchard
“Night of the Sewist” 

2009 National Magazine Award (Honourable Mention)
Words and Pictures
Michael Cho
“Trinity”

2010 National Magazine Award (Honourable Mention)
Fiction
Michael Christie
“The Quiet”

2011 National Magazine Award (Honourable Mention)
Fiction
Grace O’Connell
“The Many Faces of Montgomery Clift” 

2012 Professional Writers Association of Canada Award
Features Writing Award
Jay Somerset
“Local Hero” 

2012 Journey Prize (Long List) 
Grace O’Connell
“The Many Faces of Montgomery Clift”

2012 National Magazine Award (Honourable Mention)
Illustration
Ethan Rilly
“Cool Parents” 

INDICIA

TADDLE CREEK is published semi-annually in print (ISSN 1480-2481), in June and December, and on-line (ISSN 1710-8632), by Vitalis Publishing, P.O. Box 611, Station P, Toronto, Ontario M5S 2Y4 Canada. Canadian Publications Mail Agreement No. 40708524. Taddle Creek acknowledges the financial support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. Taddle Creek is a member of Magazines Canada. Created in Canada. © 1997–2013 by Vitalis Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of the print or on-line version of this periodical may be reproduced in any form without the consent of Taddle Creek or the individual authors. In the case of photocopying or other reproductive copying, a licence from Access Copyright, (800) 893-5777, must be obtained.