First Bite Press. Stephanie Kimbro Dolin. 228 Westridge Drive, Portola Valley, CA 94028, USA. Tel: +1 9106195530. Website: https://www.firstbitepress.com.
Miranda Culp and Jef Delman. The Canon of Aphrodisia in Four Volumes. 2024. Ca. 90 pages per volume. 146 x 80 mm. Perpetua and Johanna on Arches Rives Lightweight book with a full-page frontispiece per volume and a frontispiece before each of the 12 stories in the collection, hand-drawn by Laurelin Gilmore, and with ornaments unique to each volume based on the flower and border chosen by the artist for the theme of the volume. Printed on a Vandercook Universal III. 125 copies: 100 hardback in full cloth with stamping on the spine, each volume in the collection a different color, housed in a slipcase of handmade Cave Paper, price: $800; 25 covered in Cave Paper with leather spines (different colored leather for each volume), leather headbands, decorative stamping and titling, hand-marbled endsheets, the 4 full-page frontispieces hand-painted by Laurelin Gilmore, a portfolio in Cave Paper containing 5 hand-printed illustrations not included in the limited edition, housed in a telescoping box with an acrylic window to show the spines, price: $2100. All binding by Amy Borezo. The collection contains 12 erotic stories including Authors’ Notes with historical context following each tale. The authors use erotic scenes as a fresh way to explore familiar character arcs and thematic elements, taking great care to present each tale in the idiom and voice of the original author, so that each story might work on its own terms. The original stories were conceived in a patriarchal, hetero-normative context, but by shining an egalitarian light on each of them, unexpected dynamics emerge.