Jo Reed, who was at the 2013 fair, is reading some of her recent poetry next week at St Anne's, Soho.  It sounds fascinating - if this is on your patch and you'd like to hear her, here are the details.

Michelle Rowley of Wirral Met College has arranged two previous exchanges between students on her BA Fine Art course  and students from the Department of Visual Arts at Brigham Young University, Utah.  This time the trip will take in Yellowstone National Park, and Michelle and the students have decided to dip their collective toe into the world of Kickstarter to help towards the students' flight costs. 

I thought you might be interested in supporting a venture designed to excite and inspire the next generation of book artists, and to encourage intercontinental collaboration (doesn't that sound good?) so here's the link to their campaign page, where you can see the students' video, read about the project aims and find out how you can get involved through the pledges and rewards that have been designed around the project outcomes. 

If you do choose to become involved and make a pledge, you'll become part of their online community and will receive regular updates on their progress and project developments.

Wirral Met BA Fine Arts have been regular exhibitors at the fair, where previous students have shown the exciting work produced after their travels - there's sure to be an equally fine body of work as a result of this trip.      

Short notice, I know, but if you're within reach, why not take a trip to the Bluecoat in Liverpool this saturday to see the Juniper Press letterpress workshop, newly established by Kenneth Burnley, Sue Mclaren and Elizabeth Willow.  See also chloweb.wordpress.com for a little letterpress art.   

A lovely, lovely print, no?  MMU's Special Collections Library are hosting a free morning of talks in March.  More details below.

Women in Print: Print as an agent of change 1920-1965
Friday 7 March 2014, 10.00am-12.30pm
Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections, Sir Kenneth Green Library

Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections is hosting a morning of lively talks and debate presented by writers and academics on the subject of Women in Print.  The event has been programmed as part of the ‘Wonder Women Radical Manchester’ project co-ordinated by the People’s History Museum, Manchester, in the lead up to the 100 year anniversary of women’s (partial) right to vote in 2018.

Speakers:

Carolyn Trant will be talking about artist, designer and educator Peggy Angus
Harriet Cory-Wright will be talking about the women illustrators of Puffin picture books
Desdemona McCannon (Manchester School of Art) will be talking about women designers who also collected and wrote about folk art
Dr. Rosemary Shirley (Manchester School of Art) will be chairing the discussion

Contemporary illustrators and writers have been asked to create a personal tribute, in chapbook form, to a woman designer whom they feel deserves to be better known. Copies of these chapbooks will be given away on the day.

Places are free but must be booked in advance. Book by calling 0161 247 6107 or online via EventBrite:
http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/women-in-print-print-as-an-agent-of-change-1920-1965-tickets-10523701675

For more information visit the facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/events/698592230192666/?notif_t=plan_user_joined

Photos from this year's fair are now on the website and everything has moved around somewhat to reflect that the 2013 fair is now a previous fair.  We can almost guarantee that nothing too much is going to happen here for a while, but it won't be very many months before plans for the next fair start to put out tiny tendrils and the whole thing starts all over again... 

We'll be back.  

What an excellent couple of days that was!  This year's fair is now over and it went down pretty well all round.  College and school classes visited, along with much of the rest of the world (no really, it did feel quite like that at some points), and the crowds for the sale of letterpress (fonts, furniture and much else besides) were impressive, with people visiting especially for tiny scraps of metal from well beyond Manchester and the north-west - how good is that?  Thanks goes out to everyone involved in whatever way, from the volunteers who so generously gave up their time to help from start to finish, to the visitors, the exhibitors and the staff at the gallery.  I'll publish plenty of photos on the site over the next week or so - meanwhile here's a handful of photos of the second day.

Hey, maybe we should do this again some time.    

Well that was exciting!  We're going to do it all over again today.

And so it begins.  One gallery, stacked tables, serried ranks of chairs, teetering piles of tablecloths.  No hint of the book arts riches it's going to boast, the colour, the chatter.  It'll all look rather different tomorrow.

Really, so many MABF bookmarks going out there.