SpeakEasy Press ~ North Carolina
(Frank Brannon)

By Frank Brannon
Asheville, North Carolina: SpeakEasy Press, 2008. Edition of 90.

3 x 2.5"; 20 pages including two fold out pages. Letterpress printed on handmade papers with 11 point Garamond type and photopolymer illustrations.

Eleven vignettes featuring the potato — personal anecdotes, cravings, seasonings, varieties.
$135

Cherokee Phoenix: Advent of a Newspaper
The Print Shop of the Cherokee Nation
1828-1834, with a Chronology
By Frank Brannon
2005. Edition of 74

4 x 6.5"; 105 pages. Letterpress printed on handmade cotton paper using 11-point Garamond types. Handbound, modeled after the binding style of three circa 1830 quarter-cloth books published in Kentucky and Ohio. Muslin spine with handmade paper covered boards. Includes full size reproductions of the hand impressions of excavated New Echota type. (Six copies of the edition, specially bound in red quarter-leather, contained hand impressions of type found at New Echota. These special copies sold out immediately.) With Notes, Chronology, and Bibliography.

This important work is the first history of the Cherokee Phoenix, the newspaper of the Cherokee Nation, printed from 1828 to 1834 in New Echota, Georgia, the last capital of the Cherokee. It pays special attention to the type, printing press, and the paper used during the life of the Phoenix. The first issue was published February 21, 1828, using the eighty-five character Cherokee syllabary completed by Sequoyah just seven years earlier.

Research, writing, printing, papermaking, and binding by Frank Brannon. (Much of it while he was earning an MFA in Book Arts at the University of Alabama.)
$265 (Last three copies)

Egg Show
By David Kopaska-Merkel
2005. Edition of 55.

5.8 x 8.25" 12 pages including title wraps. Printed on handmade cotton rag and retted flax paper with 10pt Dante type. Bound in simple soft wrapper of translucent abaca. Illustration by Frank Brannon.

Collection of seven poems of which six are published here for the first time.

A couple of scantily clad yolks wobbled alarmingly
along a high wire no bigger than a thread,
then dove from the top of a tall ladder
into a tin cup hardly bigger than a thimble,
the Ringmaster egging them on all the while ...

And of course Humpty Dumpty,
no fool he, didn't mess around with
any brick walls, but jumped over a smoking
       frying pan of hot bacon
                                     grease.
$40   

Alone Together
By Naila Marilyn Alim
2005. Edition of 74.

Naila's life is much a microcosm of the late twentieth century. Integration, the Vietnam War and the role of women and African Americans in U.S. culture are all a part of Naila's life and poetry. The quiet manner in which Naila writes belies the intense nature of her work. Her poetry often focuses upon one's personal struggles in dealing with events much larger than the individual.

Naila Marilyn Alim was raised in Orangeburg, South Carolina, the daughter of public school teachers. Naila attended Spelman College, Smith College and completed her education at the University of Massachusetts. She has spent her professional life as an educator.

Alone Together is a collection of 19 poems spanning 30 years. The limited edition of 50 was letterpress-printed on handmade cotton rag paper in Dante type, with two pochoir illustrations [38pp, 13.5 x 22 cm]. The binding is a quarter-cloth case using silk cloth and cotton rag and includes silkscreened endsheets. All work done by SpeakEasy Press.
$115

Fables
By Maurice Manning
2002. Edition of 100.

14 x 17.5cm, 60 pages. SIGNED by Manning on the title page. Printed on handmade retted flax and cotton rag paper. Nine original illustrations by John Smith. Hand-set Bembo type. Handbound in limp gray paper. Six hundred sheets of retted flax and cotton rag paper were hand made to produce an edition of one hundred copies.

A selection of 39 poems of Manning's work which evolved from the poet's interest in the intersection between the natural and the human world.
$155

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