Held for the first time, the “CSUN Book Arts Festival” aimed to be a resource for people who want to have their work published or are simply interested in how books are made. The event served to connect those in the book-making community.

The festival was held on Saturday from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the USU East Conference Center. It was organized by the College of Humanities, in partnership with the Mike Curb College of Arts, Media and Communication and the University Library.

Faculty advisor for the “Northridge Review” and event organizer Sean Pessin said it is a celebration of the different skills, techniques and knowledge required to create books, while also serving as a learning environment.

“We have taken this to be a really expansive interpretation of what the book arts are and invited lots of people who have different perspectives,” Pessin said.

Pessin highlighted that one of the goals of the festival was to “strengthen the connections among bookmakers,” especially in regard to those involved with the university and in California.

The event featured different workshops and lectures. Publishing houses also tabled at the event, including What Books Press and El Martillo Press, alongside student literary publications like Directions from Pierce College and CSUN’s Northridge Review and Scarlet Review.

One workshop, titled “Personal is Publishable: A Zine Making Workshop,” had attendees create zines, which are self-created and self-published booklets. People were given magazines, construction paper, glue and other crafts material to cut out.

“How to Grow Bylines,” hosted by Stacey Park of Valley College, discussed tips for writers on getting their work published. Participants wrote bios and were given pointers for submitting a cover letter to editors at publishing houses. Some tips included keeping the letter between 75 to 100 words, brief summaries of one’s work and a sentence explaining why they chose to submit to that publisher, while including a cordial signoff.

Managing Editor of the Scarlet Review Maya Vasquez said they came to the event to support books as an artform and to give writers and artists a space to make themselves and their work known through the Scarlet Review.

“I’ve always said that art is the weapon, and I think it can create a lot of change in the world and it can speak to so many people without saying much,” Vasquez said.

The Scarlet Review publishes annually and takes submissions from current students, alumni and from international creators, according to Vasquez.

Directions Editor Lexie Vazquez said one of the reasons the literary magazine came to the event was to take submissions for their upcoming issue, whose theme is the “Seven Deadly Sins.” Submissions range from artwork, short stories and essays. Vazquez also mentioned attending the event was a way to integrate themselves with the CSUN community.

“It was very nice to connect with different communities and different people and just see what everybody else is working on,” Vazquez said. “It feels like a community here, and it’s a nice feeling.”

Several of the publishing houses at the festival also had open calls for submissions.

“If you have a manuscript, you have the opportunity to talk directly with the editors of those publishing houses and to ask questions that are sometimes hard to get answered if you don’t know who to ask,” Pessin said.

Pessin felt events such as the “CSUN Book Arts Festival” are important to have in order for more independent and university styles of publishing to be platformed.

“As a country, we face increasing difficulty around what we think of as what’s permissible to publish or who’s allowed to publish,” Pessin said.