For over fifty years, The Capilano Review (TCR) has supported and been sustained by a vibrant community of readers, writers, and artists interested in experimentation in writing and art. Over the course of its fifty-year run, TCR has published work by more than 1,500 contributors and has been a vital gathering space for creative practitioners and cultural critics in Vancouver, British Columbia, and across Canada. We believe a space to experiment, play, challenge, and subvert is essential to the creation of art and writing that has the power to redefine, reimagine, and subtly remake our world. 

In addition to its commitment to publishing formally innovative and challenging work, TCR also seeks to redress historical inequity in the literary and arts publishing spheres by soliciting and prioritizing creative and editorial work from equity-deserving groups, including Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour; queer and trans people; working-class and underemployed people; women and femmes; disabled people; emerging artists; and elders. We acknowledge that, too often, the label “avant-garde” is applied only to work that is aesthetically innovative, and is often used as a gatekeeping term. TCR embraces forms that are socially and formally innovative, and has a longstanding history of supporting work that invests in their meaningful intersection.

Each issue features full-colour art sections, poetry, short essays, reviews, and interviews. In addition to publishing two print and digital issues of the magazine each year, we also host an annual Writer-in-Residence, thematic writing contests, and numerous workshops, readings, and other events. We also offer paid editorial internships. 

TCR was founded in 1972 by Pierre Coupey at Capilano College in North Vancouver, and has been an independent publication since 2015. Read more about the magazine’s history here.

The Capilano Review’s offices are located in the Woodward’s Heritage building in Downtown Vancouver. Our organization respectfully acknowledges that we carry out our operations on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

“Capilano” is an anglicization of the Indigenous name qiyəplenəxʷ, an important hereditary title. Learn more about the name Capilano here.