NeWest Press is launching a new speculative fiction imprint this fall.

Barbour Books, named after the late long-time NeWest president Douglas Barbour, will be edited by author and scholar Jenna Butler.

The mandate of Barbour Books is to publish Western Canadian science fiction, fantasy, horror, “and everything in between” and particularly “the works of underrepresented voices in Canadian literature of the fantastic.” Submissions to the imprint are open through NeWest Press’s website.

The imprint’s first title is C.J. Lavigne’s The Drowned Man’s Daughter, in fall 2025, with a second title, Naomi K. Lewis’s Riley Mallory, expected in 2027.

Barbour, a poet, editor, and English professor at the University of Alberta, was a founding member of NeWest Press. At a party in 1977, a group of instructors from the university’s English department discussed how Alberta’s authors weren’t receiving much attention outside of the region. From this conversation, an idea to publish an anthology of stories by a group of creative writing graduate students was born, and it was brought to fruition with a $500 loan from Barbour that spurred the launch of the press. As a critic, Barbour was known for is writing on  contemporary Canadian poetry and on science fiction and fantasy. He died in September 2021.

In 2022, the Book Publishers Association of Alberta changed the name of the Speculative Fiction Book of the Year Award to the Douglas Barbour Award for Speculative Fiction.