Someone Editions invites you to the launch of its new imprint: FRENCH LETTER SOCIETY on Saturday July 6, 7:00 – 9:00 PM, at CAPSUL STUDIO, 2nd floor, 25 Liberty Street, Toronto.
The event is free, but please feel free to RSVP via Eventbrite. Also see our Facebook Invitation!
The prototype and the first two of the FRENCH LETTER SOCIETY series (of five) titles to be issued in 2024 are:
THE THROAT IS SYRUPY/ THE SKIN REMEMBERS
poetry by Beatriz Hausner /art by Deborah Barnett
GLACIER MELT MATTERS/ PRIZE INSIDE
poetry by Sonja Greckol /art by N. Moskwa
THIS MESSAGE HAS NO CONTENT /THE FALL
poetry by Stephen Cain / art by Jesse Graham
Participants in the evening’s event include: Deborah Barnett, Beatriz Hausner, Jesse Graham, Natalia Moskwa, Sonja Greckol, and Stephen Cain, with presentations by A.F. Moritz and Simon Rogers
The French Letter Society advances while disrupting the traditional form and authority of the book by juxtaposing design, poetry and visual art. Exquisitely produced, each French Letter chapbook is issued in an edition of 100 copies, featuring an original fine art image presented in designed relationship with a previously unpublished short poem, and enclosed in hand printed and mail- ready envelopes. As non-conventional book objects, the French Letters explore the book’s evocation of intimacy and the forbidden, privacy, protection, and enclosure.
FLS publications are available for subscription via from PATREON and direct purchase via Deborah@someone.ca.
Launch participants:
Deborah Barnett is an artist and master printer dedicated to art print publishing. Her practice balances in the space between the ‘perfect printing’ of traditional letterpress and her disruptive practice which questions the form, authority, administration, and representation of the historic book. Barnett holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art Media and Design from OCAD University. With editor Beatriz Hausner, she launched Someone Editions in 2009, focused on producing limited edition works in diverse forms. She co-founded Dreadnaught Press in Toronto (1970-80), and launched the University of Toronto’s St. Michael’s College Kelly Print Studio imprint.
Stephen Cain is the author of the poetry collections dyslexicon, Torontology, American Standard/ Canada Dry, and False Friends. He has collaborated with Jay Millar on the prose poetry book Double Helix, and with Clelia Scala on the collage and poetry collection I Can Say Interpellation. His latest poetry book, Walking and Stealing, will appear from Book*hug Press in Fall 2024.
N. Moskwa is a multidisciplinary artist based in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Most recently, her work was chosen as part of a show at Definitely Superior Gallery in Thunder Bay. She is an active member of Mindful Makers Collective, an artists’ group whose members identify as persons with mental illness and/or recovering from addictions. Among her influences and inspirations are Dadaism, Louise Bourgeois, Shary Boyle, Deborah Barnett and Lou Reed. She is in her 60s but still feels very young.
Sonja Greckol (Tkaronto) has published four books of poetry: Monitoring Station (University of Alberta Press, 2023), No Line In Time (Tightrope, 2018), Skein of Days (Pedlar Press, 2014), and Gravity Matters (Inanna Press, 2008). Her long poem, ‘No Line In Time’, won the 2017 Briar Patch Poetry Contest and No Line In Time was listed for the League of Canadian Poets Raymond Souster Award in 2019. Her translation of ‘Dark Matter Diverted’ of Rocio Cerón’s ‘Materia Oscura’ appeared in La Presa.
Jesse Graham is a solo tattoo artist in Toronto. For more than a decade Jesse initiated and co-owned in Black Cloud Tattoos, earning both the Toronto Star’s and NOW Magazine’s Reader’s Choice Best Tattoo Shop awards. He emerged from OCAD University’s Illustration Program, via Sheridan College and York University, 5-year Special Arts Program at Central Technical School. Memento Mori, reminding us of the inevitability of our deaths, informs Jesse’s work, often with his renderings of iconic skull images. With each intimate tattoo experience, from first consult to final inking, Jesse carefully prepares his clients for the best possible outcome.
Simon Patrick Rogers is a Toronto based archivist with overlapping interests in community archiving, printing and bibliography, independent music, literary culture and the monetary appraisal of archives. He knows a little bit about a lot of different things.
Beatriz Hausner has published several poetry collections, most recently Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart (2020), and She Who Lies Above (2023), and many limited-edition chapbooks. Her books have been published internationally and translated into several languages, most recently Greek. Hausner is poetry editor of EXILE and Exile Editions, and editor of Someone Editions. She runs the literary series Here Is Elsewhere and publishes the surrealist zine The Philosophical Egg.
A.F. Moritz’s most recent books are The Garden: a poem and an essay (2021), As Far As You Know (2020; finalist for the Trillium Award), and The Sparrow: Selected Poems (2018). His next, Great Silent Ballad, is forthcoming in fall 2024. His poetry has received the Guggenheim Fellowship; inclusion in the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets; the Ingram Merrill Fellowship; the Award in Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the Beth Hokin Prize of Poetry magazine; and the Griffin Poetry Prize, among others. Three of his books have been finalists for the Governor General’s Award in poetry. His poems have been translated into many languages; volumes of selected poems have been published in Spanish, Greek, and Bengali.
Agata Mociani is an intern and social media manager at Someone Editions. She is a recent graduate of the University of Toronto’s Book and Media Studies program and will be starting a Master of Information at the same institution in Fall 2024. Agata also spent a year studying Publishing at Toronto Metropolitan University, which nurtured her interest in the industry. She has years of experience in literary content creation and spends her free time writing poetry.
Sophia Katres is Someone Editions’ Printer’s Devil. Hailing from Pittsburgh as an international student, she recently graduated from University of Toronto as a Book and Media Studies major. She’s thrilled to have been focused on traditional typesetting and letterpress printing, in particular with the FLS program. Sophia’s still wondering what she wants to be when she grows up.
