Can't Stop the Presses: Denver's Small Press Fest Returns

It was back in the days of innocence — in this case, that's 2015 — when the first Small Press Fest appeared on Denver's creative scene. The idea was to showcase zines, prints, art books, journals, periodicals and printed materials of any sort in the Savoy Ballroom. It was crowded, it was chaotic, it was joyful and it was exciting. And hot. It was damn hot. In both the awesome way, and the sweaty way. But by all accounts, it was a great event and won Westword's Best New Festival in 2016.

And it would have been just as inspiring in its follow-up event, which was initially scheduled for 2020. And then 2021. Of course, those were the pandemic times, but the festival finally returned in 2022, this time at the Center for Visual Art on Santa Fe Drive, 

Now the Small Press Fest is returning to Denver for another iteration, which will be at the Globeville Center from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, March 30. This third go-around will more than double the size of the original, boasting more than seventy unique zines, journals, comics, prints and more.
Kaela Martin is one of this fest's organizers, and she was there at the beginning too, as one of the early poetry editors for the CU Denver literary magazine, Copper Nickel. "I had a few zines of my own too," she says, "and at the time I was running Walled-In Magazines out of Black Eye Coffee. That's why I was brought to the table." Martin now works for the Museum of Nature & Science as a project manager for Exhibits and Construction. "I took a very different path in the years since that first show," says Martin, "but this is still a really fun thing to be connected to, and to help bring to the Denver artistic community."

Co-organizer Peter Bergman was part of that 2015 show as a vendor and has now moved up to help with organization. Bergman is a Metropolitan State University professor of Communication Design who participates in several zine fests and art book fairs across the country. "There's one of each in most major cities," he notes, adding that what's unique about the Small Press Fest is its focus on printed materials of all sorts. "It's not just publications. It's flatwork, fine art, printmaking, graphics — really just anything that is driven by art and literature."

Theinitial Small Press Fest was Bergman's first time tabling at any such event, and it was the start of a whole new era in his career. "Over the next four or five years leading up to the pandemic, I probably did fifty or more," he laughs.

As he dove ever more deeply into that specific press pool, Bergman recognized that Denver needed what he calls "a third leg for our stool" — the first being Denver Zine Fest, and the second the much-missed DiNK, which focused more on the comics medium. "I'm somebody who's very collaborative, and I thought I could help bring the Small Press Fest back around. Why reinvent something that's already been created, and was already a great idea?"

Part of that original great idea, he adds, was to keep costs low so that the artists, vendors and creators could spend as little as possible on reserving a table and maximize the money they netted from selling their wares at the show. "We ultimately wanted to support their work by helping the artists make a little income to support themselves," Martin explains. "And that's still the case this year; maybe even more, now. The show is there to celebrate the work itself, first and foremost, but it's also to help them in practical ways."
Martin promises the wares from table to table will be impressive. "And we have free tote bags for the first fifty people through the door," she laughs. "But seriously, drawing from the experience from that first event, the thing that makes the event successful is the fun atmosphere. We'll have music and a lot of people, a lot of energy. Some interactive programming here and there too, like a 'Make Your Own Zine' area. Just a place and a time that seems organically exciting."

Martin and Bergman both praise the Globeville Center as being the perfect place for the Small Press Fest to put down some roots and keep growing. Birdseed Collective has worked out of the Globeville Center since 2012, providing healthy food distribution, art projects and fine-art youth programs to the community —and in 2017, the non-profit was selected to operate the center as a whole. In association with Birdseed, the Small Press Fest will be running a canned food drive for its Healthy Living program.

Bergman says he's equally enthused about the range of vendors that the Small Press Fest will be hosting: "We have our first international, the 51 Personae Project out of Shanghai. We have Almighty and Insane Books from Brooklyn, Megan Major out of Detroit, Late Night Copies Press from Minneapolis. So we're getting more of a national presence at the show too."

Bergman also makes special mention of a former student and intern of his, Colorado-based artist Juno J. Heo. "This will be their first event tabling," Bergman says, "which is really exciting." No doubt Bergman might see his own story repeating itself in this first show by his former pupil...and wondering if this will be the first of dozens of shows they'll do in the coming years.

These are only a handful of the artists and presses that will be tabling at the 2024 Small Press Fest, but even this small group shows the depth of the talent and passion that the show will present — and the spirit of the event itself matches the work it celebrates. This is a medium that can often play fast and loose, with its own rules and boundaries. It's a form that contains surprise in the baseline of its nature, so it stands to reason that the event would do the same, gathering together a variety of print artists, including those who purposefully resist being pigeon-holed, and seeing what sort of beautiful cacophony of image and word, of paper and binding, can rise from it.

"Small press and zines are important in 2024 for a lot of the same reasons they have always been important," says Martin. "They're relatively easy for people to make and find, which is a great antidote to everything from gatekeeping to straight-up misinformation. When I think about it from a political standpoint, it's hard to silence something like a zine, and it's easy to access like-minded people via a zine they've made — so those are great things. From an artistic standpoint, the medium is such a cool one for expression because the barriers of cost and networks and sometimes even technical skill can largely be bypassed. Anyone can make zines, and that's my favorite thing about them."

The 2024 Small Press Fest, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, March 30, Globeville Center, 4496 Grant Street. The event is free; for more information, including a list of participating vendors, see the Small Press Fest website.