Skip to main content
Making “Instructions on Not Giving Up” by Ada Limón

Making “Instructions on Not Giving Up” by Ada Limón

This poem gets me every time, especially this time of year, especially this line: “Patient, plodding, a green skin / growing over whatever winter did to us,” — I feel a welling up of all the grief I carry, and as I automatically try to choke it back the poem opens me up further with that “strange idea of continuous living.” 
Continue reading
Aid to Gaza via poetry prints

Aid to Gaza via poetry prints

For the month of December, Expedition Press will donate 50% of sales from prints by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Zeina Hashem Beck, and Mosab Abu Toha to Emergency Aid: Gaza Under Attack, a joint campaign of the Palestinian Feminist Collective x Middle East Children's Alliance.
Continue reading
“We Love What We Have” broadside by Mosab Abu Toha

“We Love What We Have” broadside by Mosab Abu Toha

Mosab's poetry goes beyond recognition. It catapults us into actual feelings which is why it's uncomfortable and important to read. And it does this while holding fierce love.
Continue reading
Colt's Armory press FOR SALE

Colt's Armory press FOR SALE

14x22 Colt's Armory press in great working condition for sale. Asking $9,000 obo.
Continue reading
23" Challenge Guillotine SOLD

23" Challenge Guillotine SOLD

SOLD! 23" Challenge guillotine paper cutter for sale. Asking $900. Sharp, clean, square: this small guillotine cuts big stacks of paper with ease. It's used often in a working print shop and the only reason for selling is that we're getting a bigger one!

Continue reading
45" Vaggelli Board Shear SOLD

45" Vaggelli Board Shear SOLD

Sold! Beautiful Italian board shear that cuts like a dream. Asking price $3,000. In Kingston, WA.
Continue reading
Releasing “Apenimonodan” small print by Margaret Noodin

Releasing “Apenimonodan” small print by Margaret Noodin

During the final steps of finishing this print — sorting and counting comp copies, archives, inventory — I found myself setting another and yet another aside, into a gift pile that accrues regularly on one corner of my work table.
Continue reading
Graveside poetry & pie: Late Fragment by Raymond Carver

Graveside poetry & pie: Late Fragment by Raymond Carver

Never did I imagine myself more than a decade later, standing in front of Raymond Carver's grave on his birthday, reading this poem to his loved ones at their annual pie and poetry gathering in his honor.
Continue reading
Letterpress United: No to War

Letterpress United: No to War

“What we want to emphasize with this action is the presence of a real community that can try to respond, with a voice at the same time unique and plural, in a united way to the problems that society presents us, demonstrating our existence and our point of view in a clear and understandable way. We want to make our voice heard clearly on the collective theme of freedom of expression and the rejection of war.”
Continue reading
Making “Choreography of Ruin” by Ellen Bass

Making “Choreography of Ruin” by Ellen Bass

All the while the feeling of it soothed me. The quiet potatoes and the wind rubbing the trees leant a calm recognition of the present ruin we’re in. I needed those words.
Continue reading
Poetry Unbound & On Being

Poetry Unbound & On Being

“immerse yourself in a single poem ... anchor your week … to the everyday poetry of your life …” I felt a thrill roll through me, a mirror held up at once.
Continue reading
Making “tó” by Sherwin Bitsui

Making “tó” by Sherwin Bitsui

I don't know if this is relevant but the four sacred colors in Navajo are blue, yellow, jet, and white.”
Continue reading
Embracing Grief

Embracing Grief

What I’m most grateful for about the losses I’ve experienced in my life is their effect of making me suddenly, unexpectedly, excruciatingly present. The summer my older brother died I was painting a friend’s 2-story 4-bedroom house a soft pale yellow.

Continue reading
June Jordan by Sabina Smith

June Jordan by Sabina Smith

When I first read June Jordan’s “Poem about My Rights,” it was the first day of spring break. I was sitting at a coffee shop next to Expedition Press with my friend. We saw Myrna and she invited us over. On her wall in the shop there was a copy of the poem tacked up. I still can’t fully describe how powerful it felt, so full of emotion and honestly, I’d never read anything more mesmerizing. 

Continue reading
On Edge

On Edge

Recently I was interviewed by a 13 yr old who asked me what the hardest part of my job is. “Time!” I said immediately. “Good lord, time management. Knowing what to prioritize when.” A week prior a journalist asked me about my relationship to time as if I knew some secret about detaching from the fast-paced pressures of the digital

Continue reading
Building an Art Show

Building an Art Show

A year ago, at a windy roadside stop in South Dakota with a couple flickering bars of reception, I checked my email. There was a message from the manager of a gallery in downtown Seattle. She was wondering whether I wanted to join next year?

Continue reading
Making Sweet Darkness

Making Sweet Darkness

I first read the poem “Sweet Darkness” by David Whyte on a Friday, at the end of one of the worst weeks of my life. Husband demanding separation, step daughter screaming, mother gone missing.

 

Continue reading
Ode to Morning Pages

Ode to Morning Pages

It’s a simple practice. Write three pages, first thing every morning, longhand. Can't imagine not writing them.

Continue reading
On Propaganda & Personalizing

On Propaganda & Personalizing

I watched the election results come in with increasing sickness. I went to bed early and woke up numb. The rollercoaster ride since recalls the early days after my brother died: anger, shock, despair, and overall a grand penetrating sense of pure disbelief.

Continue reading
Broken Broadsides

Broken Broadsides

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my voice as an artist and my role as a publisher: how they inform and whether they inhibit each other. I feel a strong insistence that I should divide these actions and define them. Then I forget.

Continue reading
Design Process with Metal Type

Design Process with Metal Type

People often gawk when I give a typesetting demo, sliding each metal letter one by one into the composing stick, tilted at an angle to keep them in line, upside down and backwards.

Continue reading
Letterpress Workers 2016

Letterpress Workers 2016

I’m just back from two weeks in Italy, the first in Milan, the second at Tipoteca Italiana and then Venice. I am sitting here back in New York feeling a little sad, missing all the lovely new friends I made and knowing I won’t see them for quite some time. Oh time. But what a time!

Continue reading
Artist Residency at Wells

Artist Residency at Wells

I spent the last two and half weeks printing up a storm in the Wells Book Arts Center, at Wells College in Aurora NY. I camped out in the new press room with five Vandercooks, reams of Mohawk Superfine, a 3lb can of black ink, and tunes, snacks, and a water bottle.

Continue reading
Starshaped Press: Handset at its Best

Starshaped Press: Handset at its Best

Halfway through my cross country drive, I had the great honor to spend two evenings and a full day with the very talented tough-as-nails Jen Farrell of Starshaped Press.

Continue reading
Letterpress Zion: Platen Press Museum

Letterpress Zion: Platen Press Museum

I arrived at the Platen Press Museum in Zion, Illinois, at 12:30pm on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Paul Aken’s collection is truly a wonder to behold.

Continue reading
Moving Day: Colt’s Armory Press

Moving Day: Colt’s Armory Press

It’s here! We welcomed a 14×22 Colt’s Armory Press into the shop a few weeks ago. Feel lucky, blessed, lots of degreasing and rust removal ahead.

Continue reading
Welcome Colt’s Armory Press!

Welcome Colt’s Armory Press!

Big ol’ heart throbbing welcome to this 14×22 beautiful new beast, previously owned by Harold Berliner, now employed in the service of literary letterpress.

Continue reading
How to Publish a Poetry Book

How to Publish a Poetry Book

When it comes to publishing, I have only one criteria: I must love the poems. I’ve always known that so long as I love something, I can make something beautiful from it.

Continue reading
Thousandth Time: Broadside Construction

Thousandth Time: Broadside Construction

I first imagined this piece nearly four years ago. It was an ambitious project at the time, and I got about three-quarters of the way through before I abandoned ship. It just wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be.
Continue reading
Letterpress Origins: Mainz, Germany

Letterpress Origins: Mainz, Germany

At summer’s close, here’s a jaunt back to June and the week I spent in western Germany. This leg of the trip was largely unplanned until I arrived in Amsterdam.
Continue reading
September art show is up!

September art show is up!

‘Space Available’ is now filling the Blackbird Bakery on Bainbridge Island.

Continue reading
William Stafford broadside

William Stafford broadside

“A Story That Could Be True” by William Stafford. Commissioned for a wedding keepsake, this print was a surprise gift.

Continue reading
Letterpress in Barcelona & Amsterdam

Letterpress in Barcelona & Amsterdam

In my recent travels I had the great fortune to tour three letterpress shops and three museums of printing and typography. First up: highlights from Spain and the Netherlands.
Continue reading
Expedition’s off to Europe!

Expedition’s off to Europe!

I will be abroad for the next three weeks, tromping around Europe in search of old friends, cold brews, and all things letterpress. From Gaudi to Gutenberg.

Continue reading
Etching Steel Book Covers

Etching Steel Book Covers

The steel book saga continues! We’ve arrived at the cover treatment, which consisted of etching the cover art into the steel and then applying a rusted patina.

Continue reading
Full Immersion—Sally Green

Full Immersion—Sally Green

Collection of poems by Sally Green, published by Expedition Press in 2014. “The title refers, beautifully, to a pool of moonlight: we step into it from the shadows and are “rinsed wholly through to the bone.” 

Continue reading