Calls for Work

Through hands-on instruction and demonstrations in design, printing, and binding practices, as well as engagement with archival materials and models, participants will build an arsenal of book and binding models to explore how to make their own impactful publications reflecting the complexity of voices and experiences in our country and region. These publications would complicate the conventional models of “books” in content and materiality–as zines, chapbooks, and other unexpected formats–to activate and advance our literary voices. It will culminate in a public engagement project and an exhibition/book launch, to be determined by the collective. Upon completion, participants will be able to schedule time to use the community print resources at Poinciana Paper Press for their personal projects. 

Any person living in The Bahamas that can attend in-person sessions for six weeks at Poinciana Paper Press. Classes are hands-on and collaborative in nature; there are no online sessions. 

You don’t need any experience in publishing or writing, just a belief that books are powerful channels for the exchange of ideas; for liberation; for resistance. You might be a writer or artist, designer or activist, teacher or student, critical thinker, reader or researcher. Or you might have never felt comfortable with any title or label or place. Books or writing have probably saved your life. You might want to touch more paper and less screens. You might recognize that we are living in a time of cultural predicament, global trend of rising authoritarian power, and ecological precarity, and that it is urgent to respond to the people, machines, and algorithms that would prefer we consume in solidarity rather than create in community. You contain poems, stories, essays, art, ideas, inventions, dreams, radical imaginings, resources, manifestos, and guides that you know will make a difference. You’ve always “had a book in you.” I promise: you have more than one. 

Six Saturday sessions from 10am to 4pm (April 4, 11, 18 & 25, and May 2 & 9, 2026) and six Tuesday afternoons from 5pm to 8pm (April 7, 14, 21 & 28, and May 5 & 12, 2026). 

Thanks to a grant from the Caribbean Culture Fund covering materials, this course is free to all accepted participants. Participants are expected to commit to attending all weekly sessions and spend time on projects outside of sessions. If you are traveling from a family island, you are responsible for your own travel, accommodation, transport, and living costs. 

Draft a 500 word (one page) manifesto that tells me who you are; how your creative practice/outreach/work contends with our social and cultural realities; what role books have played in your life; why you’re interested in being part of “Radical Acts of Publishing”; and what you want to explore/imagine/create during the incubator. Please include any relevant experience in writing, design, or publishing. 

Send it in an email to sonia@poincianapaperpress.com with “Radical Acts of Publishing Manifesto” in the subject line. 

Potential applicants will be chosen based on the strength of their statements, their alignment with the goal of the incubator and Poinciana Paper Press core values, and how well the group would potentially work together, with the aim of gathering a dynamic collective of different perspectives, backgrounds, and creative practices which could come together in a socially-engaged publishing practice. 

Deadline: February 20th, 2026, at 11:59pm.