Fall Press Update
Dear Friends & Supporters of First Bite Press,
We ended the summer by finishing up a Kickstarter Campaign and kicked off the fall printing a new limited edition book. Anne Covell has the pages of Victoria: A Bedside Table Tale down in San Diego and will be binding the limited and deluxe editions in time for the CODEX Book Fair 2026. We are finishing up the imposition for a poetry collection, and working out the paper engineering for a limited edition book translation of a work of Interactive Fiction.
More details on all of these upcoming fine press, limited edition books are below. Want to receive a prospectus for each of our books in the mail? Let me know!
Upcoming Limited Edition Books
A Gothic Horror Romance: The Token of Dorian Gray
Written by Theodore Gioia and illustrated by Laurelin Gilmore, this limited edition fine press publication is being hand printed on Arches Rives Lightweight Paper and bound in our bindery in materials that are elegant, tactile, and which reflect themes in the book, one of which is taxidermy. Photos of the limited edition book will be released on October 31st.
Summary: In a secluded mansion set in a wealthy San Francisco enclave, newly married designer Andy Little discovers that his husband may run much more than a venture fund. As Andy moves into his dream home, the euphoria of newlywed life turns into a chilling mystery as he discovers his husband’s peculiar art collection—which leads Andy on a terrifying journey toward the truth.
Theodore Gioia is a writer living in San Francisco. Mr. Gioia earned a B.A. in English at Harvard writing his senior thesis under James Wood. He currently works as a Director at Arion Press. As a critic, his essays on the evolution of California culture have appeared in The New Republic, New York Magazine, Virginia Quarterly Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The American Scholar. The Token of Dorian Gray is his first work of published fiction. Theodore is currently writing a novel based on the story’s universe.
Laurelin Gilmore is an award-winning painter, writer, and mixed-media artist, best known for her fantasy oil paintings. Gilmore holds minor degrees in Fine Art and Library Science. She has been featured in many print publications and has shown her art across the United States, including on Showtime’s ‘The L Word: Generation Q’, at the Crocker Museum for the 2022 Black Artists on Art exhibit, and on the cover of the Sacramento Open Studios guide. She is represented by Artize Gallery in Palm Springs, California, and she keeps a working studio at Sacramento’s Verge Center for the Arts. This is the second book she has illustrated for First Bite Press.
Babylon Songs Poetry Collection
First Bite Press is pleased to announce a forthcoming collection of poetry written by Colleen S. Harris. Babylon Songs presents the unsung voices of women, both real and mythical, from our present and past. The collection is divided into three sections: “A Prelude to Madness,” “These Inconvenient Women,” and “Perishable Truths.” Each section of the collection combines Harris’ lyrical poetry form of storytelling with relatable and reflective dialogue that feels like a personal exchange between the poetess and her reader. The illustrations in this edition are linocuts by French artist, Sandie Levent.
Harris is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. She holds an MFA in Writing, a PhD in Mythological Studies, and her Doctorate of Education (along with five other academic degrees). Harris currently serves as the Dean of the Sue & Radcliffe Killam Library at Texas A&M International University and is the author of four other poetry collections and three chapbooks. Among her poetry scholarship she co-edited Women Versed in Myth: Essays on Modern Women Poets (McFarland, 2016) and Women on Poetry; Writing, Revising, Publishing, and Teaching (McFarland, 2012).
Before We Say Ayon Mûya̤ Book with Paper Mechanics
Based on the biography and writings of fin-de-siècle Spiritualist Sara Weiss (1834-1904), this limited edition, fine press book written by Liza Daly is a fictional reconstruction of the story behind Journeys to the Planet Mars (1903), a supposedly-truthful account of Weiss’s out-of-body visits to the third planet. The real Sara Weiss overcame rural poverty and a coercive marriage to forge a second chance at love and a quiet middle-class home—until late in life, when she achieved an unexpected and quirky fame. Did Weiss, like many women of her generation, truly believe in spirits, mediumship, and life on Mars, or was her book an elaborate hoax? In Daly’s re-imagining, the reader follows Sara Weiss—from the parlor seances of St. Louis, to the depths of a Nevada silver mine, to the clouds above the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition—in search of the author’s vision behind her strange and singular work.
Daly has written the manuscript for this limited-edition book as a work of Interactive Fiction (IF), a digital story with affordances to reveal the secrets beneath the text—secrets hidden even from Weiss herself. First Bite Press has collaborated with Daly to translate her work of IF into a hand-printed and bound book that uses paper engineering to evoke the mutability of digital text. The illustrations in the book are reproductions of Weiss’ own drawings of Martian plant life.
Liza Daly is a creative coder and web-based storyteller. She founded the first real-time community for IF authors, served as vice-president of the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation, and has won numerous awards for hypertext fiction which she wrote or produced. Her major works include Harmonia (2017), Stone Harbor (2016), and a co-production of First Draft of the Revolution (2012) with story by Emily Short. Daly’s generative asemic writing piece Seraphs (2014) is featured in Output: An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text, 1953–2023, published by MIT Press.
The book will also feature an introduction by Aaron Reed, a writer, designer, and researcher whose fiction, games, and playable artworks have won recognition from a broad range of storytelling communities, including the Independent Games Festival, the ENnie Awards, and Kirkus Reviews. Aaron is a multi-time IndieCade and IGF finalist, and his work has also been shown at South by Southwest, Slamdance, and GaymerX; he has spoken about digital storytelling at PAX and PAX East, Google, WorldCon, NarraScope, and the Game Developer Conference. Aaron holds a PhD in Computer Science and a MFA in Digital Arts and New Media.
Other News
Kickstarter Fulfilled!
We shipped out the limited and deluxe editions of Banned Books Written by Women as well as the individual cards to all supporters of the Kickstarter Campaign. Having fulfilled those orders, we are working to finish the cards and boxes for outstanding orders for institutions and private collectors who preordered the book. Thank you to everyone who supported this project. Launching a Kickstarter for the first time was extra work, but we will be doing it again for upcoming books as a way to fund projects and meet new collectors.
Assistants and New Equipment at the Press
Fera Rose, an experienced bookbinder from Berkeley, has been working in the bindery once a week to finish the Banned Books Written by Women binding. She will be turning her attention to The Token of Dorian Gray bindings next.
Muskaan Dhingra, a graphic designer with experience letterpress printing at the studio at the School of the Art Institute at Chicago, is assisting in the pressroom with the printing of The Token of Dorian Gray.
We look forward to welcoming another Stanford University student this fall who has taken the Stanford Art Department’s book arts class taught by the talented book artist, Michelle Wilson. It is a privilege to be able to work with these students while they practice and learn more about making books.
Arion Press gifted First Bite Press the Victoria Parallel Platen Press that had belonged to The Grabhorn Press before being used by Arion. According to conversations I have had with many printers over the past few months, this press was operated by Jane Grabhorn (the press that The Colt Press gets its name from, as I was informed by Master Printer, Wesley Tanner), Sherwood Grover (who trained Felicia Rice to run a Vic), Andrew Hoyem, Larry Van Velzer, Chris Stinehour, Blake Riley, Brian Ferrett, and others. I’m grateful for the many printers who have reached out and guiding me in the operation and maintenance of this wonderful press, including Nicky Yeager, Li Jiang, Jim Gard, and other members of the Moxon Chappel.
We also added a large percussion press and a Chandler & Price Guillotine to a shed next to the bindery.
Mark Your Calendar
First Bite Press will be at the CODEX BOOK FAIR 2026 in February, and we are working now to have several books as well as lots of fun, affordable, handmade ephemera for sale. Hope to see you there!
