The Penny University Imprint is for essay collections and creative nonfiction books.
In 17th Century London, the first coffee houses were nicknamed Penny Universities. Scientists, merchants, poets, and politicians used the coffee houses to meet in, converse, and even conduct experiments and demonstrations. The name came from the idea that you could get a university education from listening to the customers, all for the price of a one-penny cup of coffee.
This concept inspired the former Penny University Bookstore, and now this imprint as well!
Our Books:
Collection:
Write the Neighbourhood
Our first nonfiction anthology is out now! This is a collection of essays we received following our call for submissions on the topic of ‘Write the Neighbourhood’. We’re very proud to feature contributors from the UK, South Africa, Costa Rica and all across Canada. Available now at all good indie stores, online on Amazon, Indigo and Barnes & Noble, or support Pete’s Press directly: click here to buy online.
Here are the Write The Neighbourhood contributing authors: (L-R)(Row 1) Mackenzie Brooks, Lilly Daubermann, Erin Derfoldy, Paul Deschene, Cara Amy Goldthorpe
(Row2) James Park, Leighton Peart, Hannah Rumble, Claire Terrill, Annabel Townsend.
Chapbook:
Musings from the Bookstore
In the Penny University Bookstore, we had a typewriter and a pile of loose old book pages. We encouraged people to type their thoughts or try their hand at black out poetry on the book pages. Every one of these acts of creativity that was left in the store, we treated as a ‘submission’, and once a year we published them into a little volume called “Musings from the Bookstore”. Click here to buy online.
Collection:
Remember When?
Remember When? is a collection of Joe Ralko’s 25 favourite columns he wrote for The Senior Paper.
November 1, 2024
Memoir:
Trouble Brewing by Annabel Townsend
Ten Years of Misadventures in Coffee.
This is not a success story.
It’s a tale of ten years in the coffee industry, of what happens when you take the leap, seize the day, and follow your dreams – then discover you don’t have any money, your landlord is an idiot, and the job you moved to another country for may not exist.
Annabel’s coffee adventures took her from a wet, dreary market in northern England to the Canadian Prairies via a PhD in Central America. Along the way, she learned her barista skills from a world champion barista, entertained teenagers with her coffee and culinary experiments, and discovered the joys of entrepreneurship almost by accident. She sorted bad beans from good ones on tiny farms in the highlands of Nicaragua and took home a tropical disease as a souvenir. Her business ventures have combined coffee with books, babies, bicycles, burlesque, and emigration bureaucracy, because what else do you do with a PhD in coffee? This is the real story of coffee entrepreneurship, with all the grim, impossible, frustrating, and messy bits left in.
Memoir:
One Woman’s Century by Kay Parley
Filled with insight, charming anecdotes, and fascinating snapshots from the past, ONE WOMAN’S CENTURY is a celebration of the life and work of Saskatchewan author and centenarian Kay Parley.
The book covers the full scope of her writings from the 1950s all the way to 2024. A remarkable, one-of-a-kind collection.
Manual:
Mapping an Understanding by Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson and Teela Robertson
How to visually represent the self in psychotherapy and research
Discover a transformative tool for therapy—memetic mapping.
Identify the meme’s (smallest units of culture) that make up the client. Learn to visually organize the parts of the clients self, clarifying what drives them, where they get stuck, and how to foster meaningful change.
Who It’s For:
Mental health professionals wanting a new way to work with identity, mood disruptions, trauma, and cultural intersections in therapy. Read it on your own, or join one of our training sessions.
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