Publishing as weaving
“The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn't have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable. If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell it to you again when you're fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you're reading a whole new book." ~ Ursula K. Le Guin
Winter texts is the publishing practice of writer and book-designer Conner Bouchard-Roberts. (aka Me; I'm the one writing this webpage copy too.) Started sometime around 2017, it has since changed and adapted in many different ways. At the moment, it is classified in the broader publishing industry lingo as a "Micro-press" or "Art Press".
Winter texts is my ongoing inquiry into the form of a book and how these odd and meaningful objects are located in our particular time, language, and place. My current philosophy is a muddied up version of M. M. Bakhtin's ideas: Every book is a culmination of a long and winding conversation of author and world; individual and interconnected.
I try and help make material what’s just been words and ideas. Carrying each book just long enough to change hands, meet readers, move the texts back into the conversations that formed them. At the moment, I see it as a practice of weaving: Weaving symbols, images, ideas, and moments into pages, into printed matter, into texts, and back into the world.
I print in editions of 300 copies or less.
None of my books make much money. Nor is that the goal. Revenue is a happy-byproduct of this slow, human endeavor.
You can reach me here for all book related inquiries/comments (although, be kind, I'm always behind on my email): publisher.wintertexts@gmail.com
but to say Winter texts is only one person isn't really true. It is a tangled and motley assemblage of people who keep it evolving:
Publisher, Conner Bouchard-Roberts
Editor-at-large, Tudor Etchells
Chemist, Nayon Park
Bandmate, Rachel Smith
Fixer, Chie Kawahara
Nurse, Hopi Jayne
Co-conspirator, Christina Vega
Goatherd, Lydia Vadopalas
Scholar, Nanya Jhingran
Poet-at-large, Haines Whitacre
Wetland steward, J. Turner Masland
Sign painter, Lizz Muller
