A man wearing glasses, a baseball cap, and a black jacket standing in front of a brick wall.

Jared Bland is a writer and editor who, over the course of his twenty-year career, has held key positions at many of Canada’s cultural institutions, including The Walrus (managing editor), House of Anansi Press (managing editor, senior editor), and The Globe and Mail (books editor, arts editor, occasional columnist).

In 2016, he was named Publisher of McClelland & Stewart, the legendary Canadian house of luminaries such as Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, Anne Michaels, and Rohinton Mistry.

Books he acquired, edited, and/or published have won many of Canada and the world’s most prestigious literary prizes, including The Booker Prize, The Giller Prize, The Griffin Poetry Prize, and The Governor General’s Literary Award, among many others.

In 2022, he stepped down from M&S and changed roles, serving as a Vice President of Communications for Penguin Random House Canada. He left the company in 2023 to focus on recovering from some health challenges.

In 2024, he founded Occasional Rain, a consultancy serving individuals and organizations in the creative industries. In this capacity he works as an editorial collaborator, co-writer, or ghostwriter for interesting people who want to bring their stories to the world.

His first novel, The Harmony, will be published by Random House Canada in August 2027.

A crime novel, Lower City, will be published under the pen name Alex Spring in September 2026, also by Random House Canada.

He serves as publishing advisor to the world-renowned and New York Times–bestselling Tibetan meditation teacher Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, and is the co-author of Rinpoche’s forthcoming books A World of Difference (with Helen Tworkov) and Living Meditation, which will be published by Grand Central.

He makes music under the name The Late Echo, which you can find on all streaming services.

He was born and raised in Springfield, Illinois, and lives in Toronto and Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. 

He is represented by the extraordinary Faye Bender at The Book Group.

If you’d like to be in touch, you can send him a note here.