About Small Press Incubator
The
Small Press Incubator Program is a unique opportunity for BIPOC individuals to learn and develop their skills in different aspects of the book-making system. Recognizing that the book arts have a long history of being used by marginalized artists looking for ways to showcase ideas without relying on the exclusive systems of conventional publication or gallery representation, the goal of this incubator is to provide a platform for poets to take their ideas for poetry publishing from abstraction to reality by providing participants with the skills, context, and community to start a small press. From conception to production and distribution, participants will receive support and guidance to bring their creative projects to fruition.
This lecture and the Small Press Incubator Program is generously supported by the Poetry Foundation.
About This Event
This in-person event will take place on Friday, December 13th, between 6PM – 8PM ET. The participants from the Small Press Incubator Program will be presenting their work from this 8 week program. This will include a presentation on their small press idea, as well as a prototype of their first book. Each participant will have an alotted time slot for guest interaction, so that any questions might be asked from either attendees of the events, or the mentors themselves. The four participants of the program are Rubi Aguilar Jones, Sela Mariama, Olaronke Akinmowo, and Jasmine Weber.
About The SPI Participants
Rubi Aguilar Jones (she/her) is a Mexican-American hairstylist and mother based in New York City. Her 15-year career has focused on styling hair in the fashion and beauty industry while maintaining a select haircut clientele in NY and LA. Her studio practice, SALON, is a hair salon and community library dedicated to exploring the intersections of hair and culture through printed matter and community programming.
Sela Mariama (they/she) is a visual artist, writer, and curator from Los Angeles, California. Their practice is informed by the witnessing of counter–narratives to the cisheteronormative colonial canon in western culture and media. Rooted in “automatic” drawing and writing methodologies, they primarily create reflections on The Divine, The Land, and The Ancestral Realms. Sela has worked with The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, artist/activist Mary Lovelace O’Neal, and is currently contributing to the California African American Museum’s forthcoming exhibition
Black Queer California: Art & Politics (1950 – Present).
Olaronke Akinmowo, (she/her) the creator/director of
The Free Black Women’s Library, is a literary scholar, librarian and visual artist who works in collage, papermaking, printmaking, book arts, and stop-motion animation. Through a rigorous and playful experimentation of pulp, paper and ink, she explores and interrogates the constructs of sanity, beauty and safety. She has received artist fellowships and residencies from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Women’s Studio Workshop, and The Metropolitan Museum. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Hyperallergic, Teen Vogue, and BUST magazine.
Jasmine Weber (she/her) is a writer, editor, and artist working with textile, ceramics, and collage. Her writing has been featured in Hyperallergic, Seen Journal, and Cultured Magazine. She received the Rabkin Prize for Visual Arts Journalism in 2021 and the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for short-form writing in 2024. She is based in Brooklyn, New York.
