WELCOME TO THE BRIDGE BOOKS HOMEPAGE a book publishing division of Bridge
LAUNCHED IN 2022, Bridge Books was founded with the belief that books are the vascular systems of democracy, delivering the intellectual oxygen required for a body politic to actively, inclusively, effectively self-govern and thrive. Bridge Books strives to provide that oxygen through publication of interventionist titles in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, visual art, architecture, dance, couture, cinema, and the broad spectrum other artistic disciplines and related interests as defined by the concerns of the Bridge collective of artists, including work by its members, as well as new, relevant and vital voices when encountered.
News of upcoming Bridge Books and StepSister Press titles, calls for submission and more will be made through our newsroom page. You can also subscribe to our newsletter for news and other Bridge-related announcements, including calls for submission.
AVAILABLE FOR ORDER NOW
MAKING WAY: SAILING
INTO THE REVOLUTIONARY STORM
YOUNG ADULT BOOKS SERIES
AVAILABLE NOW — CLICK HERE TO ORDER
Written by Dick Farkas with drawings by M.A. Papanek-Miller and designed by Jessica Larva, Making Way: Sailing Into The Revolutionary Storm is an adventure story that takes place on the waterways of colonial America, on a schooner (sailing ship) named Commerce. The story embraces a group of unlikely teenagers who find each other, an experienced sailor and a dog who collectively embark on a life changing journey during the political upheaval that surrounded the start of a new country. The teens face uncertainty living in a society not yet crystallized and not yet framed by a clear value system, which creates questions and presents dilemmas as their lives unfold. The main characters are challenged to reflect on and measure their own simple logic and their moral instinct against the mores and discrimination of the society around them. With every chapter, the drawings are in conversation with the written story, and they provide a visual context for the revolutionary era time period. The story, drawings, and book design evolved as a creative collaborative project which gave rise to this book as an object to hold, read, see, and experience.
“Young adults today face challenges unimagined just a generation or two ago,” says Farkas. “The characters in Making Way: Sailing Into The Revolutionary Storm were also confronted by choices never anticipated in their world. In both, the pace of change is accelerating. Readers are coaxed to offer choices to their peers and begin to focus on the consequences.”
“As the last title in development by outgoing StepSister Press founder Annie Heckman, I was honored to have the opportunity to shepherd this title to fruition,” says StepSister Press / Bridge Books Publisher Michael Workman. “Our publication of Making Way: Sailing Into The Revolutionary Storm also marks the launch of our focus line of new Young Adult titles.
“I couldn’t think of a better way to launch our Young Adult line than with this moving story of Alan, Na, Nev, Chris, Rose and Bud’s teenage adventures on the waterways of colonial America. This story of struggle and survival, charged with the first encounters of a new world depicted in such classic young adult titles as Chandler Warner’s Boxcar Kids, while also recalling the moral development that takes place in Huck Finn’s travels on the waterways of the Mississippi.
“Brought to life by M.A. Papanek’s exquisitely wrought drawings throughout the book, and cohesively drawn together in an attractive book design by Jessica Larva, we expect Making Way: Sailing Into The Revolutionary Storm to transfix and thrill our target 12-18 age group, and Young Adult readers in general, for years to come.”
STEPSISTER PRESS
an imprint of Bridge Books
StepSister Press, an independent publishing company founded by Annie Heckman in 2007 to promote conversation on emerging art, literature, educational, and critical theory projects, became an imprint of Bridge Books in 2022. Originally based in Chicago, and now based nearby in Park Ridge, Illinois, the press coordinates projects and collaborations with artists and writers around the world. Click on the image above to visit the StepSister site.
Please note that while StepSister Press now operates as an imprint of Bridge Books, titles currently only remain available through its website. As the transition proceeds, backlist titles will eventually be integrated with and made available through the Bridge Store.
ARTIST’S BOOKS SERIES
AVAILABLE NOW — CLICK HERE TO ORDER
TREATMENTS: ANTHOLOGY OF WORK BY MAT RAPPAPORT WITH AN ESSAY BY MICHAEL WORKMAN, AND POETRY BY RACHEL JAMISON WEBSTER AND JOSH HONN.
For the closing reception on May 14 of Treatments 2019 / 2023 at Material, Bridge Books will also publish an anthology of the same name with the complete "Treatments" photographic series by Rappaport, made to accompany the exhibition, and as a stand-alone anthology of artistic meditations on spousal loss and grief. The volume includes an essay by Michael Workman, with poetry collections “The Well: Grief Poems,” by Rachel J. Webster, and Josh Honn’s “We Fall: Migration.”
Mat Rappaport's Treatments 2019-2023 is a deeply personal poetic meditation on illness, institutional space, and loss, documenting a body of photographic and installation works created over a two year timespan.
“This book collects some of the most challenging work I have made, and while difficult, it is a privilege to share and put it out in the world.” says Rappaport. “Treatments detail my observations of institutional spaces while navigating my partner’s experience with cancer. The journey coincided with our shared trauma of covid, during which she endured surgeries, radiation, chemotherapy and immunotherapy in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Los Angeles.”
“I know readers will be enthralled with this as a photography collection.” says Bridge Books publisher Michael Workman. “It recalls for me the institutional documentation of Mary Ellen Marks’ Ward 81, the objects of the institutional space captured here in a way only glimpsed between the frames in that artist’s series, which were mostly portraits. A perfectly tidy lunch tray and salt shaker here become the silver half-dome security mirror, the errant red wall outlet alongside the waiting room portraits of the art framed and hung for patients, often with messages of perseverance or similar up-lifting message. “
View the full press release here.
MAT RAPPAPORT: TREATMENTS
FEATURED FWD: MUSEUMS
BACKLIST TITLES
How do museums respond to the urgency of the moment?
In what ways can they be transformed to foster justice work? Fwd: Museums Journal, an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed publication, shares critical analysis, interventions, and dialogs focused on museums and other sites of cultural work. Our contributors reexamine, critique and challenge museums as socially responsive spaces.
In our fifth issue, themed "Home," you will find visual art, essays, poetry, research, reviews and other creative forms addressing:
>> The interrelatedness of baskets, weaving, and home
>> Decolonizing parklands and conservation
>> Ancestors who are howling, yet can teach us to survive every day
>> Sankofa journeys centering African American homes and history
>> University library exhibitions as feminist pedagogy
>> Transforming the white cube
Now it's your turn.
We're looking Fwd to continuing the conversation.
Click on the image above to visit the FWD Museums: Home page on the StepSister Press Site.
FEATURED STEPSISTER PRESS
BACKLIST TITLES
REBECCA KELLER: EXCAVATING HISTORY
Rebecca Keller started Excavating History with site-specific interventions in an anatomy theatre in Estonia in 2006. Her method has since become a course, a collective, and a series of exhibitions in historic sites in the United States and Europe. This book documents and expands on her pedagogical approaches, including numerous works from her student collaborators, and a section with advice for educators and potential excavators who want to pursue projects of their own.
Click on the image above to visit the Excavating History page on the StepSister Press Site.
MICHAEL WORKMAN: PERFECT WORLDS, VOLUME 1
AVAILABLE FOR ORDER NOW
Perfect Worlds: Artistic Forms & Social Imaginaries is a philosophical study of equality as binding principle by art-makers across disciplines, and how they view their work situated across unrestricted spectrums of social and ideological value. As source material for the tropes and themes of Workman’s interactionist and instructional choreographic work, they are intended as a recovery of under-represented discourses, scholarly research volumes, and critic’s “selected works.” It also aspires to trace the contours of what more life-like art may be present — or imagined — in today’s shifting social imaginaries.
Includes interviews with
Kurt Vonnegut
Jenn Freeman (aka Po’Chop)
Ayako Kato
Shirin Neshat
Jamal “Lightbulb” Oliver
Michelle Kranicke
Jose Santiago Perez
Karen Finley
Ginger Krebs
Precious Jennings
Pidgeon Pagonis
John Waters
Jacinda Ratcliffe
Bill Ayers
Jeez Loueez
Daniel Bozutzky
Rosé Hernandez
Young Jean Lee
Claire Tancons
Darling Shear
Laurie Anderson
J’Sun Howard
Allen Moore
Bebe Miller
Nic Kay
Aaron Hughes & Amber Ginsburg
Deborah Hay
Joshua Ishmon
Carole McCurdy
Kiam Marcello Junio
Kerry James Marshall
Click on the image above to visit the Perfect Worlds page on the StepSister Press Site.
