The Seattle Art Book Fair celebrates independent publishing, book design, and books-as-art. The free event features local, national, and international artists, designers, and organizations. This year’s Seattle Art Book Fair takes place May 6 and 7 at Washington Hall, 153 14th Ave, with more than 65 exhibitors.

Multiple talks will be offered on Saturday and Sunday aimed at creators of art books, zines, and other limited run books. Saturday opens with a discussion of how the the risograph printer can be used for the animation process and share a short screening of risograph animation work. Look for talks on Colonial “zines,” community collaboration and engagement in publishing, and more.

Partners in Print will offer opportunities to engage in letterpress poster printing on Saturday. Visitors can also tour Site/Archive/Cite, an augmented reality art intervention based on the National Archives at Seattle that interrogates the relationship of archive to place and public.

For a full schedule of activities, check seattleartbookfair.org/programs.

Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association is staging a Spring Pop Up for members and publishers. The event takes place April 12 and 13 in Eugene, Oregon. The two days of programming for booksellers includes presentations by publishers and authors on upcoming 2023 titles.

Publisher Promo Opportunities at the Pop-Up

PNBA offers the following promotional opportunities for publishers. Publishers do not have to be in attendance to participate in these:

Stuff-Its

Send a sellsheet and PNBA will stuff it in the book bags to be handed out to booksellers attending the Authors On The Map evening event, April 12. 50 single-sheet flyers will be stuffed for $75. Sign up HERE!

Galley Grab

A table dedicated to publisher giveaways at Authors on the Map. Send 25 to 30 copies. The cost is $125 per title. Sign-up HERE!

A complete overview of the event is available at PNBA.org.

To celebrate their tenth anniversary, the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art has started a new unrestricted award of $15,000 for artists in the Puget Sound region. In its inaugural year, four BRAVA Awards (BIMA Recognizes Achievement in the Visual Arts) will be awarded.

The four categories for 2023 will be emerging artist, artist’s book artist, Native American and First Nations artist, and children’s book illustrator. Applications are now being taken for all four categories.

Each of the four BRAVA awardees will receive an unrestricted award of $15,000. In addition to the cash prize, the recipient of each award receives recognition from BIMA, invitations to participate in events related to the awards, and an invitation to serve on the review panel for the next biennial award.

Online submissions will be accepted via CaFÉ through May 1, 2023. Artists may submit up to 12 images, and one (1) video, with a maximum of 12 works total. Applicants will be notified of the selected award winners by August 1, 2023. Awards will be presented in person at a special awards event on Saturday, September 23, 2023. For further information including fees, see biartmuseum.org/brava-awards-process.

PubWest provides three days of networking and education at Renaissance Hotel in Seattle, February 1-3, . The conference will pair with The Book Manufacturers’ Institute (BMI)’s Book Manufacturing Mastered conference. Attendees from both groups will hear from experts in printing, marketing, accessibility, sales, and consumer outreach.

The Publishers Association of the West (PubWest) is a national trade organization of publishers and of associated publishing-related members. PubWest is dedicated to offering professional education, providing publishing-related benefits, creating opportunities for our members and associate members to do business, speaking as an advocate for members, recognizing outstanding achievement in publishing, and providing a forum for networking. In 2023, PubWest is offering free memberships for one year to Black Americans/Canadians in the publishing industry. Learn more at pubwest.org.

One of largest literary conventions is happening in Seattle on March 8-11. With the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference happening downtown, the Seattle City of Literature and Common AREA Maintenance are compiling a list of offsite events that Seattle-area organizations are hosting. They plan to print an event guide and a map to distribute across the city.

If you have an event that would be appropriate for the guide, email the organizers at info@seattlecityoflit.org by January 27. Be sure to include all event information: name of event, date, time, location, and website for more information.

Oregon Humanities announced recently that they will award $25,000 in funding to enable rural and rural-adjacent Oregon libraries to create and host events in their own communities. Consider This Mini Grants of up to $2,000 per event are available to Oregon libraries who want to create and host events centered on the theme of “People, Place, and Power.”

“Grantees are welcome to interpret this theme and develop topics that are relevant to their communities. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, community care, collective power, and civic engagement in rural areas. Libraries, including branches, located in (or adjacent to and serving) rural or frontier zip codes that have annual operating budgets of less than $1.5 million are eligible,” according to the organization’s website.

Applications are due by January 6, 2023. To learn more, visit oregonhumanities.org.

Scenic photo of Oregon by David Mark from Pixabay

Independent Book Publishers Association’s new CEO Andrea Fleck-Nisbet will be introducing herself to IBPA members during the IBPA Member Roundtable on December 15 at 10am PT. With her past experiences in publishing at HarperCollins, Ingram Content Group, and Workman Publishing, Fleck-Nisbet is ready to answer questions about content and acquisitions; working in the indie publishing space; and much more. After the opening Q&A session, attendees will be split into various breakout rooms to network with other IBPA members.

The IBPA Publishing University celebrates IBPA’s 40th anniversary in 2023. The organization is again offering one member from each Regional Publishers Association a scholarship to the conference, which is a savings of $500 for current IBPA members and $600 for non-members! The deadline to apply is December 31. Here are more details.

The 2023 IBPA Publishing University will be held held May 4-6 in Corornado, California. The conference features an agenda designed to meet the unique needs of small publishers with in-depth learning sessions, powerful keynote speakers, lively networking events, and an industry awards gala.

Your intrepid editor has been dipping into virtual conventions throughout the past year, believing in the power of connecting with writers, publishers, and readers without having to leave her book-lined cave.

The latest was held “in the Metaverse” and proved quite science fictional. Bookycon was created by the app Booky Call, which calls itself “a free book discovery platform cleverly disguised as a dating app.” Held on November 12, the festival promised to feature more than 100 author interviews and limited free tickets to 3,000 attendees.

After creating a dashing avatar (attendees could make their favorite book appear as their chest while topping it with their headshot), I rolled through the virtual convention site, taking a seat at the stage of my choice to listen to author interviews, and then meet the authors afterward for one-on-one video chats. All of it worked quite well although lining up with the room map boards to find out where things were proved oddly tricky. However walking through chairs and walls was more fun than stumbling down long corridors at a BookExpo.

I managed to hear at least six interesting interviews while completing some household chores (you can’t fold your laundry and put away the dishes if you’re at a real con), jotted down some book titles to look up later, and had a nice chat with a member of Independent Book Publishers Association via our avatars.

Like the Hotel California, Bookycon was easy to enter but I never found a way to check out. So my avatar may still be there, wandering around saying “hello, hello, anyone here?”

If you are putting on a virtual convention or have been promoting books in one, comment and let everyone know how it worked for you.

Two longtime favorites of Northwest readers, writers, and publishers happen in November.

In Oregon, it’s time for Portland Book Festival at the Portland Art Museum and neighboring venues on Saturday, November 5, 2022. The daylong event features author discussions, pop-up readings, writing classes for youth and adults, kids’ story time, an extensive book fair, local food trucks, and live music! For more information, check the website at literary-arts.org.

In Seattle, look for 10th anniversary Short Run Comix & Arts Festival also on Saturday, November 5. The festival devoted to zines, comics, and other small press will be held from 11 am- 6 pm at the Fisher Pavilion at the Seattle Center. Free to the public, Short Run is depending on the success of this event to continue their programming for indie artists. As they announced in May: “We made the decision to hold the festival this fall as the past few years have offered little for artists in the way of book tours and ways to engage with a new audience. As an organization, it has been difficult to sustain the level of volunteer engagement needed without a festival to plan and execute. And finally, the continuation of Short Run (the organization, as a whole) depends on the festival this year, because financially, our infrastructure will not survive another postponement.”

You can find all the Short Run programming at their website shortrun.org.

Past Short Run at the Seattle Center, photo courtesy of Short Run Comix & Arts Festival

The Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) returns to Seattle, March 8-11, 2023, at the Seattle Convention Center. The conference will host literary panels, readings, and a book fair. In 2014, when AWP last happened in Seattle, more than 14,000 people attended. The organizers say it will be a “destination for writers, teachers, students, editors, and publishers of contemporary creative writing. It includes thousands of attendees, hundreds of events and bookfair exhibitors, and four days of essential literary conversation and celebration. The AWP Conference & Bookfair has always been a place of connection, reunion, and joy, and we are excited to see the writing community come together again in Seattle, Washington in 2023.”

Registration is now open at awpwriter.org/awp_conference/overview for $200 (Members) or $300 (Nonmembers) for the full conference. This early bird rate increases to $250/$350 after November 22. Onsite registration in March will be $435/$540. For those who cannot afford these rates, AWP offers other ways to participate.

The AWP Conference Scholarship Program, which has a deadline of December 8, 2022, is now open. AWP encourages those who identify as people of color, disabled, LGBTQIA+, and/or low-income to apply. Membership is not required to apply. This year, 75% of conference scholarships will be awarded to local Seattle residents.

AWP also offers a Work-Exchange Program, which is intended for “current students, adjunct professors, or someone in need of assistance to cover the cost of the conference.” In exchange for training and four hours of volunteering, AWP will provide a waived conference registration. The deadline to apply is January 27, 2023.