The CEDO Intercultural booth at the Tucson Festival of Books.

This weekend, I attended the Tucson Festival of Books, where the Book Art Collective had a booth, and where I got to see some of the manifestations of the work I’ve been doing. In addition to the CEDO booth, the Sonora Review shared a space with the Poetry Center and sold copies of their latest issue, which I designed and illustrated.

Chapbook panel. Here, Charles Alexander is speaking. Ander Monson is to the left with Jake Levine.

The Festival organizes a ton of book signings with well-known authors and illustrators, as well as various panels in which authors and thinkers discuss a chosen topic. I made it just in time to hear the tale end of the Chapbook Discussion, where Ander Monson was speaking. Ok, so I missed Ander’s part of the talk, sadly, but I did get to hear Charles Alexander of Chax Press discuss the beauty and intimacy of the form. He spoke of the spirit of play alive in chapbooks, as well as the closeness garnered between author and book, author and reader, reader and book.

Chapbooks are small books (and some would say don’t need to be delineated at all) which are often sold cheaply and hand-bound. The term was developed in the 1800s and originally referred to a kind of ephemera, like a brochure or pamphlet. I think of them now as an accessible, democratic form, like a secret shared by the interested, the curious. I really like the idea that literature – experimental, illustrated, weird, awesome – might be found in a small yet poignant way, and held.

Because it’s pretty, one of the Book Art Collective members enjoying the sun.

Some of the chapbook makers noted at the panel: Atticus/Finch, Belladonna and Burning Deck Press. After hearing the talk, I’m really interested in the idea of the form now. Small, letterpress maybe, illustrated, experimental, wild, simple. I’m definitely going to be checking out these presses and thinking about multiples in the coming months and years.