I would like to thank Jennifer Shahade not only for her excellent and thoughtful introduction to this text, but also for her promotion and performances of this project. She was excellent to speak to as the project evolved. Deep gratitude to Derek Beaulieu for his amazing visual chess poems that begin the opening, middle, and end games portions of this book. I would also like to thank Jody Miller for being a tremendous collaborator, and I look forward to continuing to work together on the next versions of the ChessBard.
Thank you as well to Jay and Hazel Millar for taking the time and care to make sure this book came out looking as beautiful and interesting as it has. Thanks to the whole BookThug team, in particular Malcolm Sutton for his very patient cover design. I’m also deeply indebted to Dene Grigar and Gary Barwin for the considerate readings and blurbs of this work.
On a more personal level, I want to thank Jordan Scott, Adam Seelig, Marianne Apostolides, Ted Nolan, Beatriz Hausner, Stuart Ross, Stephen Murphy, Tyler Harper and Renee Jackson-Harper, and all my other friends who have supported this project over the years. Thanks as well to my parents, Cam and Sherrie, for always relentlessly encouraging me down all the paths of my life. Too, this book is dedicated to Julia for the daily and fierce intelligence and love she gives.
The ChessBard project has had a wealth of support including, chiefly, the Ryerson Centre for Digital Humanities and in particular Dennis Denisoff, Jason Boyd, and Lorraine Janzen Kooistra. Early stages of this project were also nudged along by Matt Bouchard and Andy Keenan at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute. And of course, little of this project would have been possible without the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council.
Thanks to everyone who has published versions of the ChessBard, including Carousel, The Puritan, Touch the Donkey, and The Rusty Toque. The work has been generously spread further by international exhibitions curated by the Electronic Literature Organization, the University of Winona, and Temple University.
Lastly, thank you to the muse of this book, Marcel Duchamp, the best kind of rascal.