Publishing as artistic practice
Winter texts is the publishing practice of writer and book-designer Conner Bouchard-Roberts. (aka Me; I am writing this.) 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".
It is a practice of weaving. Weaving symbols, images, ideas, and moments into pages, into printed matter, into texts. Every book is a culmination of a long and winding conversation of author and world; individual and interconnected. I work at a small, intimate scale. I help make material what’s just been words and ideas. Sending off these books to change hands, meet readers, weaving the texts back into the conversations that formed them.
I print in editions of 300 copies or less.
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. I hope to gradually expand my imagination of what books are and can be through this practice of attention and sincerity.
None of my books make much money. Nor is that the goal. Revenue is a happy-byproduct of this slow, human endeavor. (If you're wondering how I keep the lights on: I bartend.)
but to say Winter texts is only one person isn't totally true. It is a tangled and motley assemblage of people who keep it evolving:
Poet-Publisher, Conner Bouchard-Roberts
Editor-at-large, Tudor Etchells
Chemist, Nayon Park
Fixer, Chie Kawahara
Nurse, Hopi Jayne
Creature Figurer, Amanda Jorgenson
Goatherd, Lydia Vadopalas
Archivist, Nanya Jhingran
Musician, Haines Whitacre
Witch, Dr. Mary Schroeder
Gardener, Rachel Smith
Fisherman, Kat Murphy
Restauranteur, Cam Roberts
Cook, Plai Junpo
