NEA AWARD: GETTING STARTED

August 4, 2021

After receiving the news in May that the KBAC was one of only 21 organizations in Michigan to receive a Grants for Arts Projects award from the National Endowment for the Arts, we immediately got to work on several exciting projects.

First on our list is a book featuring a short story called Truth Comes Slowly by Los Angeles writer Jervey Tervalon. We are currently setting the type for the book by hand. This process is quite meditative and gives us time to contemplate the engaging details of the story. It also presents new challenges for us. We usually set poetry, posters, and small quotations, so we weren’t completely prepared for issues like running out of capital letters, like M’s and B’s, which are the first letters of two of the characters’ names. The story is also written in first person, so naturally we need a whole lot of I’s! We have ordered more type to finish setting the book and to use in future projects. After the type is set, we will begin printing, which will include woodcut images by artist Mary Proenza. We will then bind the book by hand, including some deluxe editions. There is a reading and exhibition scheduled for April 23, 2022. 

The NEA Grant also allowed us to offer two studio memberships to encourage creative work in the book arts during 2021-2022. We focused on emerging artists and, after an open call for proposals, chose Laura Citino and Rachel Stickney. Laura will work on a chapbook of flash fiction pieces, and Rachel, a former KBAC intern and current instructor, will use her time to prepare prints and set type for a larger book about home and memories. Both artists are in the planning stages, and we can’t wait to have them in the studio to experiment with our presses and papermaking equipment. Look for future posts about both projects!

The third component of the NEA grant is the production of two limited-edition chapbooks. Our Poets in Print Coordinator, Alyssa Jewel, chose poems by Mónica Gomery and Lauren Alleyne for these projects. The books will be in addition to the handset and printed broadsides we create for every Poets in Print event. We have already made prototypes of both books and have chosen Vicki Cook as the artist to design linocuts for Lauren’s book, (Un)Becoming Gretel, and Vicki VanAmyden to make images for Monica’s collection of poetry. We hope to get on the press soon because there certainly is a lot of printing to do in the next few months!

This is all very time-consuming and requires close attention to detail, but mostly it is energizing and quite exciting for the staff, interns, and artists/writers involved.  We’ll keep you updated as we go!

Jeff, Katie and Lorrie

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