Bookmaking Workshop

Learn how to make a softcover notebook using hand stitching and bookmaking techniques. These skills can be applied to make your own personalized zines, chapbooks, journals, and other pamphlet-style booklets. This is a beginner-friendly workshop and no previous experience is required. 

All basic materials are provided. Participants are welcome to bring extra materials (i.e. decorative paper, stickers, stamps, photos) to customize their projects. We will also have a limited number of gluesticks, rulers, and scissors available so participants are encouraged to bring their own.

Each participant will be able to make two blank notebooks using saddle-stitch and pamphlet-style binding, or one zine/chapbook. 

Note: If you’d like to bind a zine or chapbook, please bring up to 8 pages of writing or art. 

Text/images will need to fit within 5.5”x8.5”. This can be done by typesetting your work in “landscape” orientation and fitting your text into two columns on each page before printing. An example can be found in the photo below.

Advance registration is required and this event is limited to 12 participants. Cost is on a pay what you can basis with a suggested donation of $50.

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This workshop is facilitated by writer-artist Erica H Isomura. A selection of Erica’s artist books can be viewed here. Erica has been making handmade books and journals for more than 10 years, using a wide range of materials and techniques. 

Erica’s creative practice combines written language, drawing, paper art, collage, and other mixed-media forms. Her work appears in Ruth Beer’s SEEP/SWELL (Burnaby Art Gallery, 2025), The Gate of Memory (Haymarket Books, 2025), The Raven Essays (University of Toronto Press, 2025), and elsewhere. Erica was the 2023 artist-in-residence at The Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency in Steveston, B.C. She currently resides in Tkaronto/Toronto, ON.

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