Jolynne Roord
Art in edition three.
Rachel Werner oversees a Dane County-based community arts endeavor with a big mission and a small name. The Little Book Project WI publishes work from artists and writers from underrepresented communities who don’t have master of fine arts degrees or the expendable income to enter their work in contests.
“It’s all about opening doors a little wider in our community,” says Werner, the project’s creative director.
Each issue focuses on a theme — “Advocacy,” “Mental Health,” “Places/Spaces” — and is sponsored by a designated organization that provides funding and other support. Past sponsors include Community Shares of Wisconsin, FairShare CSA Coalition and Project Kinect. The theme of edition 4, published in November and sponsored by the Monroe Street Arts Center, is “Community.” This edition features work submitted by young writers and artists age 19 and under. The majority of funding for The Little Book Project WI comes from Dane Arts grants.
Page counts of each edition have varied (edition 4 runs 20 pages) and the finished product — created using Risograph printing, a process similar to that of screen printing — gives off a zine vibe.
“I look at each book as an individual art project in and of itself,” says Werner, who also is a teaching artist for The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and Hugo House in Seattle.
The Little Book Project WI’s first edition arrived in March 2020, mere days before the world shut down. Getting copies in readers’ hands is the one piece of Werner’s strategy that “hasn’t really gone as planned,” she says. Copies of each edition are strictly limited, and the initial idea was to give them away at arts events. For now, the best way to obtain a free copy is to send an email to littlebookprojectwi@gmail.com.
Contributors receive an honorarium for their work, usually in the form of a gift card to a local business; some artists opt to donate their honorarium amount back to the project or to another nonprofit organization.
As far as Werner knows, no other state has an initiative quite like this, but she thinks the idea is ripe for replication. “I’ve had conversations with other writers I know in Colorado who want to try something like this there. I would love that,” she says. “I hope people will look at The Little Book Project WI as an awesome example.”
Miriam Bulcher
Rachel Werner: "It's all about opening doors a little wider."
The call for writing submissions for edition #5, scheduled for spring, is Jan. 17. The sponsor is ArtWorking (a Madison group that supports artists with developmental disabilities) and the theme is “Access & Representation.” The intent is for included work to offer “a unique perspective of living life with neurodivergence, developmental differences or an acquired disability.” Find out more at littlebookwi.com.
