Everyone at MagNorth is talking about books...and I'm not missing out. But, this is different...
Don't you love a book that makes you pause before you start reading? The binding catches your eye. A fold suggests there's something waiting to be revealed. You find yourself wondering how it was made, and what might happen when you open it.
That curiosity is a good starting point for Liverpool Artists’ Book Fair, which is back at the Bluecoat on Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 October. Artists from across the UK will get together to share and sell their work, with free admission and prices starting at only £5.
For anyone whose autumn reading plans already include a literary festival, this is more than a tempting extension of the itinerary. And it's LIVERPOOL! Here, the book becomes part of the creative conversation: its materials, shape and construction can carry meaning alongside its words and images.
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The fair’s range includes handmade books, limited editions, fine bindings, illustrated stories, distinctive notebooks, altered books and book sculptures. It leaves plenty of room for discovery. We might arrive interested in illustration and leave thinking about binding; someone drawn to an unusual object might just find a story inside it.
Among the exhibitors are Felicity Bristow, Michelle Holland, Yulia Sharova, North West Book Artists and Elizabeth Godwin’s Quince Press. The pleasure of a gathering like this is the opportunity to meet the people behind the work. Questions that a finished object raises - why this paper, why this form, why this way of bringing the pages together - can become the beginning of a conversation that we might not be able to have with just anyone.
Quince Press offers one particularly intriguing connection with the concerns that run through so much northern writing and art. Its practice encompasses handcrafted limited editions, poem prints, book forms and other objects, exploring landscape, buildings and memory, and our relationships with built and unbuilt places. Those interests suggest how much a book can hold beyond a straightforward narrative: a sense of place, an act of remembering, a way of looking again.
For MagNorth, that meeting of literary and visual culture feels especially welcome. Our patch has room for the author on a festival stage and the artist working out what a page might become. Paying attention to both gives us a fuller picture of the people creating here, and of the many ways their work can reach an audience.
There's an invitation to make something yourself, too. Next door at our very favourite Cass Art, exhibitors will lead three workshops: Dragon Scale Books with Frances Day at noon on Saturday; Japanese Bookbinding with Ciarrai Samson at 2.30pm that afternoon; and Collage Pocket Books with Amy Sterly at 1pm on Sunday. Each lasts around 90 minutes and costs £10, with advance booking and age guidance to check before attending.
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Trying a technique can change the way you look at the next book you pick up. A fold, a stitch or a binding becomes a decision you understand better. It also offers us a satisfying possibility: coming home with the beginnings of your own book, as well as something made by another artist.
On the West side, Liverpool's offering a different pleasure for this literary October. Leave yourself time to browse, ask a question and follow whatever catches your eye. Sometimes a book begins its work before you have read a single word.
Then make sure you stop in at San's on the way home.
Liverpool Artists’ Book Fair takes place on Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 October 2026 in the Bluecoat’s ground-floor Sandon and Garden Rooms, School Lane, Liverpool, L1 3BX.
Doors open at 11am on both days. Entry is free.
