Common Deer Press seeks crowd funding, offers exclusive hard-cover edition of Shards of Time by Nyah Nichol

Nyah Nichol

Media Release:

Common Deer Press is on a mission to find and publish extraordinary and enduring books for children and teens. Books that change lives. Books that build bridges, connect cultures, transcend differences and, by showing the humanity in others, open hearts. We believe that when you captivate a child with books, worlds of possibilities open up to them. Books widen the aperture of what a child’s life can become. 

Last year, we introduced our annual writing competition, The Uncommon Quest. The judging is anonymous, the opportunities are equal for debut and seasoned writers alike. After all, every great writer of juvenile fiction was a debut novelist at one point! The independent panel, comprised of professional writers, librarians, and educators, has no idea whether the author has a publishing history, an agent, or a platform. Each manuscript is judged strictly on its own merit.

The effectiveness of this approach was borne out by the recent staggering win of Broken Shards of Time, a dazzling debut YA sci-fi, written by 14-year-old Nyah Nichol! An excerpt of this astonishing book is available HERE.

​Our 2019 competition was Canada-wide, and we had entries from across the country. Each winning author has received a cash prize plus a publishing contract. All three winning books will be published in Fall 2020.

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Erin Silver, who many readers will know
from the Friday morning class in Toronto,
took 3rd place in the Common Deer contest

With your support, we can make this competition international! We have already increased the prize money for next year, and each 2020 winner, Gold, Silver, and Bronze, will also receive a publishing contract.

​It’s expensive to run a competition like this and to bring a book to market. We are a young press (est. in 2016), run by four women passionately committed to publishing the best in juvenile fiction. And, like most start-ups, we have a lot of heart and not much cash! Therefore, we are running a crowdfunding campaign featuring an exclusive hard cover edition of the 2019 Gold winner, Broken Shards of Time. It will have a white cloth cover with a blue foil imprint and a wrap cover designed by the teen author for maximum gorgeousness.

The funds raised will go towards editorial costs, book design and typesetting, the initial print run, and publicity. Stretch goals have been set!

See the Kickstarter campaign here,

See Brian Henry’s schedule here, including writing workshops, weekly writing classes, and weekend retreats in Algonquin Park, Alliston, Bolton, Barrie, Brampton, Burlington, Caledon, Collingwood, Georgetown, Georgina, Guelph, Hamilton, Jackson’s Point, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Midland, Mississauga, New Tecumseth, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Sudbury, Toronto, Windsor, Woodstock, Halton, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York Region, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.