Cormorant Books is pleased to announce Dancing Cat Books, its imprint dedicated to publishing author driven literary fiction, non-fiction and poetry for the young adult and middle grades, as well as picture books.

Dancing Cat’s Publisher, Gail Winskill, will direct the editorial vision. The imprint will have its own website, www.dancingcatbooks.com, designed by Bryan Ibeas, Cormorant’s Marketing Coordinator.

Gail comes to Cormorant with more than 30 years of experience. Since 1998, she has initiated and developed a distinguished line of award-winning and nominated children’s and young adult books. She has brought to print a long list of acclaimed authors, including Jill MacLean, Alma Fullerton, Deborah Ellis, Marsha Skrypuch, Eric Walters, Celia Godkin, Joanne Fitzgerald, Frieda Wishinsky, Maryann Kovalski and Rachna Gilmore.

“I’m absolutely thrilled,” said Gail Winskill. “The team at Cormorant has embraced Dancing Cat Books and I’m delighted to find a home with a publisher whose reputation for high literary standards matches my own ambitions for this imprint. Some day, Dancing Cat readers may grow up to become Cormorant Book readers, and wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

Gail’s long-time colleague, freelance editor Ann Featherstone, will continue to provide her editorial expertise. For the past 21 years she has specialized in children’s books, and since 2000 helped Gail bring out hundreds of children’s and YA titles. Assisting Gail in editorial will be Barry Jowett, who has worked with a number of YA authors, including k.c. dyer, Deborah Kerbel, Mahtab Narsimhan, Valerie Sherrard, Marsha Skrypuch, among many others. A graduate of the Centennial College Book and Magazine Publishing Program, Barry has worked in the industry since 1996.

The first titles scheduled for publication in Fall 2010 are:

Burn is a middle-grade free verse novel by Alma Fullerton, whose previous free-verse novel, Libertad, garnered an impressive list of fourteen honours and awards, including the 2009 Governor General’s Literary Award for Children’s Literature shortlist, the 2009 TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award shortlist, and the 2010 Silver Birch Award shortlist; it won the 2009 Ruth & Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Award, the 2009 CLA Book of the Year Award Honour, the Golden Oak Award, and the Once Upon a World Children’s Book Award.

Home Truths is a young adult novel by Jill MacLean, author of The Nine Lives of Travis Keating, which won the 2009 Ann Connor Brimer Award and was shortlisted for the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children, as well as the 2010 Hackmatack, Silver Birch and Diamond Willow awards. Her second novel for children, The Present Tense of Prinny Murphy, has been shortlisted for the 2010 Ann Connor Brimer Award and is on Resource Links’ Best Books of 2009 list.

Giraffe and Bird is the debut picture book by illustrator and designer Rebecca Bender.

Other authors joining Dancing Cat Books in 2011 include Deborah Ellis, Celia Godkin, Rob Laidlaw, Joni Mitchell and Brian Deines, Michelle Muir, Charles Pachter, Valerie Sherrard, Marsha Skrypuch and Kari-Lynn Winters.

The imprint is projected to publish eight titles in 2011 and ten titles in 2012.

“Establishing a children’s and YA imprint was a decision we made easily,” said Marc Côté, publisher of Cormorant. “The success of the two Charles Pachter children’s books — M is for Moose and Canada Counts — and the support shown us by the children’s booksellers, notably Mabel’s Fables and Vancouver Kids Books, got me thinking. When Barry Jowett joined Cormorant in the Fall of 2009, he brought with him his commitment to quality YA books and then, in December, Gail Winskill and I began to talk. Her enthusiasm, experience and previous successes made the decision to establish Dancing Cat very easy.”

Although Cormorant Books has been known for the quality fiction and first-time authors it publishes, the

original vision of its founder, Gary Geddes, included children’s books.

Dancing Cat Books is a wholly owned imprint of Cormorant Books. Founded in 1986 and active in 1987, Cormorant Books has been nominated four times in the last five years for the Libris Award for Small Press Publisher of the Year, awarded by the Canadian Booksellers Association; it has received the award twice, in 2008 and 2009. The company is best known for the fiction authors whose first books it has published: Nino Ricci, Elizabeth Hay, and Joseph Boyden. In recent years, the company has widened its publishing program to include children’s illustrated books, such as the award-winning M is for Moose: A Charles Pachter Alphabet, biographies of Canadian women artists, and Toronto-specific books like City of Words: Toronto Through Her Writers’ Eyes.

Please see the attached pages for more Biographical Information

For further information, please contact:

Meryl Howsam

Publicist, Cormorant Books

m.howsam@cormorantbooks.com

P: 416.929.4957

or visit www.dancingcatbooks.com

To order Dancing Cat Books, please contact our sales representatives at Hornblower Books and

Michael Reynolds & Associates, or you may contact our distributor, the University of Toronto Press.

Cormorant Books is pleased to acknowledge the continuing support of The Canada Council for the Arts, the Canada Book Fund, the Ontario Media Development Corporation, the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit, and the Ontario Arts Council.