Sofie Sherman-Burton (Two Plum's longest volunteer/production assistant/advisor/contributing author/co-star of travelogue) took our wares up to Seattle for this year's APRIL book expo.
This was the debut of our newest title: Awake, Wild, Secret Free (016) by Andrew Barton, and only the second time on the public market for Clouds n' Matches (015) by Ana Rocha.
Thanks for another great festival, APRIL! And for these photographs! Consider doing it in April next year?
Another year, another lovely Publication Fair! This is the curated small press event hosted every holiday season by our friends Publication Studio, at the Ace Hotel Cleaners space in downtown Portland.
This was the debut of Clouds 'nd Matches by Ana Rocha. Ana is a friend I met in Berlin in late 2012, who is from Portugal, a writer/choreographer/force of nature. Her book is strange and beautiful, and a long time coming. Look for it on the webshop some time soon.
On this Publication Fair, I was also celebrating the release of my cookbook, Myrtlewood: home cooking from the Pacific Northwest. It was self-produced, designed, and published with the backing of Kickstarter supporters. Though the book is not published by Two Plum Press, we used this weekend as a pick-up time for supporters who'd already reserved their copy, and an opportunity to sell them to people discovering it! It was accompanied by a letterpress poster and recipe cards, which you can spot in this photo as well. The letterpress poster is the quotation on the back cover of the cookbook, but it started years ago as an idea for a letterpress poster series, a satellite venture to Two Plum Press. Perhaps in 2016, I'll do more posters like this one!
Here we are at Short Run, 2015. It was a wild Halloween weekend in Seattle! Thanks, Seattle! Luckily, we found a charming pseudo old fashioned general store, selling candy by the pound, on our way to the festival, so we had candy on offer. We are dressed as the day sky (Sofie) and the night sky (Andrew).
Here I am, close up zoom in style, at Short Run. It's a pretty nice picture, but I look a teeny weeny bit like I'm grimacing. The frown line is really just the shadow of my glasses on my face!
Here's Sofie at last year's Short Run! Thanks, random Short Run photographers!
This was our favorite internet representation from the day, an Instagram post by our friend Noland of Snoot Books:
Two Plum Press had our biannual reading/release party in late September.
The event featured the Vermont poet Gary Lindorff, who was celebrating the release of two titles on Two Plum Press. The first, The Blue Man, is a reissue of his book from 1982, with new author's preface. The second, The Last Recurrent Dream, is a brand new collection, illustrated by his son Evan Lindorff-Ellery. I became aware of Gary's work last December when Evan approached me at the Publication Fair, said he thought my press would be a good fit for his father. Later he gave me a copy of The Blue Man, the same day Gary wrote me an elegant e-mail, complete with a few excellent new poems. I knew then that this was project I wanted to work on. Over the next 6 months or so we put together the books. In August, when I visited friends in New England, I went to Gary's place in Vermont to meet him and take photos for the interior textures on the books.
It was also super exciting to have Kellen Hopfner and Rebekah Green in town for this reading–Two Plum Press authors who had not read here in Portland before, but whose books are top sellers/favorites. They both gave marvelous performances.
Favorite friend/author Ross Robbins wasn't able to make it at the last minute; we missed him dearly! We also heard a super fun "jazz" set from Michelle Overby, accompanied by a drummer, an exciting set of mostly new work from Elizabeth Ferguson, and had the debut of Piece Kennedy, whose first book of poems will come out sometime in 2016 on Two Plum Press.
It was an appropriately blustery evening. Thanks to Rebekah and her friend Robin, I was able to make a large quantity of cookies for the party. We made the chocolate rye cookies from Tartine Book n. 3, and made up some ancient grain popcorn chocolate chunk cookies, using flour from Lonesome Whistle Farm. Thanks to Noland Chaliha, we had shots of milk available with the cookies. We made cold brew from delicious Water Avenue Coffee, which also worked well with the cookies. My dear friend Russell Melia was in town with a loaf of bread he'd just made, which was exquisite, so we served it with butter and flaky salt. Lastly, a hibiscus brew, made with my own hibiscus blend and some Steven Smith meadow tea.
We tabled faithfully at the Portland Zine Symposium this summer, debuting our first FULLY ILLUSTRATED title, Zoe Donnellycolt's One Whole Breath. The book flows from prose to poetry, and captures an extended feeling in Zoe's life. This title was in the works since Two Plum Press's first year (2013), so it was an extra-great experience seeing it come together.
The book will be available online soon. For now, if you'd like one, order a copy of 'Autumn Wanderers' and leave a note saying you'd really like 'One Whole Breath'! If that doesn't show how this is a rag tag operation, then nothing will!
Zine Symposium wouldn't have been possible for me and Delphine of Sincerely Analog without the fuel of Speilman bagels and coffee– thanks Raf and Co.!
