World Book Night 2016 : The Handmaid's Tale

We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.

The United Artists assembled in the Grand Ballroom of the White Swan Hotel, Halifax on 23 April for the annual World Book Night event. This year The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood was selected by artist, performer and writer John Bently. The 16 artists present created Serena Joy, a portfolio of miniprints responding to the text, from rubber stamps contributed by 43 international artists. We were lucky to have rubber stamp authority Stephen Fowler in attendance. After a hard day at the inkpads, a musical sermon by John Bently and the Eyes brought events to a close.

Pleasure is an egg. Rubber stamp by Corinne Welch, printed by Mette-Sofie D. Ambeck 

All Flesh. Rubber stamp by Jane Cradock-Watson, printed by Angela Butler

Serena Joy: the final set, complete with gilded box. 

Photo: Sarah Bodman

You can see all the finished prints and read a full list of contributors on the UWE Book Arts website, where there is also a link to John Bently's impassioned rendition of 'Amazing Grace' and other delights. Many thanks to Sarah Bodman who assembled this digital record, as well as coordinating the event and curating the Serena Joy portfolio.

If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending... But if it's a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don't tell a story only to yourself. There's always someone else. Even when there is no one.

World Book Night - The Secret History Dinner

The annual collaboration with Sarah Bodman and Co. at CFPR Book Arts to produce an artist’s book in tribute to a particular novel is now complete. The book, print and video will launch on 23rd April, World Book Night.

To date we have made books for Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley and Douglas Coupland’s The Gum Thief. This year we featured Donna Tartt’s novel The Secret History. The dinner took place over Easter weekend, in an aptly situated venue in Oxford. Collaborators brought their typewriters and cameras, and food and drinks from the book were served throughout the night, including dangerous-looking mushrooms, an elaborate lentil dish, roast meats, frozen cheesecake, and even food inspired by Bunny’s tasteless wake at the Corcoran’s house.


The typed version of the group’s collaborative essay: The Secrets of Metahemeralism, cobbled together and triple-spaced in the style of Bunny Corcoran provides the core of a photocopied, editioned artist’s book, in tribute to the narrator Richard’s extra paid duties at college. The book will also include postcards, notes, scraps of paper, photos, etc. 


Contributors to the book were: Helen Allsebrook, Helen Barr, Sarah Bodman, Angie Butler, Simon Butler, Arthur Buxton, Nancy Campbell, Jenny Gal-Or, Hazel Grainger, Charlotte Hall, Anna Lucas, Kirsten Norrie, Simon Smith and EF Stevens. 

Angie Butler’s Letterpress Etiquette Network has printed a letterpress broadside edition of lines of text selected from the compositions (below).

TOAST: A Night on Weevil Lake

Staedler Print by Helen Allsebrook

TOAST: A Night on Weevil Lake is now complete. Sarah Bodman has made a riotous film charting our tribute to Douglas Coupland’s novel The Gum Thief on World Book Night. To see the inevitable visit to STAPLES stationery superstore, the discovery of a weevil in the pancake mix, and the necessary last-minute recourse to Chinese takeaway… click here.

In addition, an artist's book has been published, incorporating verbal and visual toasts from each of the dinner guests (as well as some satellite participants).