Side Conversations, the winning chapbook of the 2024 Center for Book Arts Chapbook Competition, is a tactile, multi-layered exploration of language and self by poet nar juicebox castle. Designed, letterpress printed, and hand-bound by artist-printer Sidney Renaud-Eberly in CBA’s printshop, the edition embodies the intimacy of handmade publishing. Each copy unfolds in unexpected ways—through hidden poems, fold-out pages, and nested text panels—mirroring the interior conversations and layered identities that animate the writing. Castle’s voice, both playful and raw, weaves together queerness, Blackness, and the slippages of everyday speech, transforming the physical act of reading into a performance of discovery. Side Conversations exemplifies CBA’s commitment to the book as a living art form: a work that invites touch, rewards close attention, and celebrates the power of craft in giving poetic voice material form.
Chapbook designed and letterpress printed by Sidney Renaud-Eberly at Center for Book Arts in honor of the winning manuscript of the 2024 Poetry Chapbook Contest, for which Rasha Abdulhadi was the judge. Edition of 100