Minnesota Center for Book Arts

Use a Vandercook printing press to print a message and learn about the power of the press as a tool for disseminating information! 📣✨ Teaching artist Patrick Schultz will work with the group to set a short phrase with wood type from MCBA’s expansive type library. Each participant will ink up and pull at least one print to take home. 💪 Follow the link in our bio to sign up and bring your phrase ideas to this in person workshop!

Fore Edge Fair pieces are selling out! But there is still time to browse all pieces and snag one at mnbookarts.org/fore-edge-fair. Link is in bio! This inaugural online sale the Fore Edge Fair curated 20 artists’ books and zines.

Congrats to for selling “Business is Boomimg!” to Maryland Institute College of Art’s Decker Library!

Congrats to for selling “Somewhere a house I was never inside is inside of me” to Emory University’s Woodruff Library!

And congrats to for selling “Pathogenesis” to Maryland Institute College of Art’s Decker Library!

Transform flat sheets of paper into several different types of performative and entertaining paper cards in this virtual workshop. Explore flexagons, paper automata, and cascading waterfall card formats that will amaze your friends! 🪄✨ Work alongside Kelli Anderson, artist, designer, animator, and tinkerer who pushes the limits of ordinary materials by seeking out possibilities hidden in plain view. Visit the Workshops link in our bio to sign up.👈

Ask your favorite independent bookseller 😎 about Kelli’s recent book, Alphabet in Motion, an ingenious feat of paper engineering featuring 17 pop-ups that demonstrate typographic concepts. 📕💖

MCBA Prize applications are due tomorrow Sunday, May 31st at 11:59 PM CT! Follow the link in our bio to find the application. And peruse all past submissions on our new website MCBAprize.org. We are looking forward to seeing all of the amazing books people have made the past two years.

Seen in image is 2022 semi-finalist “Niki Nakayama: Chef, owner n/naka restaurant” by Cathleen Casey . This piece is as acquired by the University of Michigan during the 2022 MCBA Prize exhibition!

🎉🥳 Congratulations to our 2026 McKnight Book Artist Fellows, Christopher Selleck .selleck and Brooks Turner ! Christopher is an artist, photographer, and book artist whose interdisciplinary practice explores masculinity, identity, and vulnerability through photographs, sculpture, and intimate book-based forms. Brooks is an artist, writer, educator, and parent. Through methodologies that include archival research, collage, drawing, and installation, Brooks engages histories of labor, fascism, and resistance in Minnesota. Christopher and Brooks will be awarded $25,000 in unrestricted funds to explore and deepen their art practices thanks to our partnership with the McKnight Foundation , which annually supports two exceptional Minnesota-based book artists.

The finalists were selected by esteemed jurors Imin Yeh , Anthea Black .black, and Benjamin Rinehart .

“I was drawn to Brooks’ lifelong research, passion, advocacy, and teaching in anti-fascist histories. The work exploits a large range of the history of print and paper and their relationship to stories, news, propaganda.” -Imin Yeh

“Christopher’s sense of craft, objecthood, and representation of q***r masculinity in the artist’s book form is meticulously considered; this McKnight award is both a recognition of his work, and my expression of excitement for what’s coming next in his practice.” -Anthea Black

We are excited for them both!

Transform images before your very eyes 👀 with visiting teaching artist Keri Miki-Lani Schroeder! In this in-person workshop, make assorted paper toys that use transparencies and sliding panels to hide and reveal content. 🪄✨ Visit the Workshops link in our bio to sign up by 8AM CT on Saturday, May 30th. Swipe to learn more about Keri. We are thrilled to have her in our studios this summer!

If you're in Rice County on June 6, join us and make your own watercolor sketchbook at the Rice County Historical Society with India Johnson! The workshop runs 1-3pm.

Register by calling or emailing Rice County Historical Society:
507-332-2121 or [email protected]
$20 for RCHS and MCBA members, $25 for non-members

For this workshop, you'll turn a single piece of art paper into a 24-page sketchbook, complete with a pencil holder and pocket. You will be able to easily recreate this project at home to make your own notebooks to use or gift. All materials are provided, but bring watercolors and a brush–if you have them–to decorate the cover.

India Johnson is half of Late Night Copies Press, a micropress publishing zines, and directs the Workshop for Independent Publishing in Minneapolis.