SF Art Book Fair 2025 (July 10-13)

Minnesota Street Project Foundation presents
THE 2025 SAN FRANCISCO ART BOOK FAIR
July 10 – 13, 2025

Public Hours:
Opening Night Preview! Thursday, July 10: 6pm – 10pm – 1275 Minnesota Street
Friday, July 11: 11am – 6pm
Saturday, July 12: 11am – 6pm
Sunday, July 13: 11am – 5pm
Free and open to the public

1150 25th Street
1275 Minnesota Street
1240 Minnesota Street
1201 Minnesota Street
San Francisco, CA 94107

Preview: Thursday, July 10 – 6-10pm

For the third year in a row, Minnesota Street Project Foundation is pleased to present the San Francisco Art Book Fair (SFABF), returning July 10–13, 2025. One of the most anticipated, free, large-scale annual Bay Area arts events, SFABF celebrates art publishing and print culture, bringing together independent publishers, artists, designers, collectors, and enthusiasts from around the world.

PROGRAMMING

Curated by David Senior, Director of Library at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).

Friday, July 11

12pm –1pm
Books are Dead, with Alan Sobrino

In today’s world almost anyone can print their own book and soon there will be more authors than readers. On the other hand, the rise of digital libraries place millions of books just a few clicks away. The book, as we know it, is terminally ill and soon will disappear. What does it mean? What can we expect in the future? Which books will survive? Can we save the book?

Presented by Errant Press

1pm – 2pm
Growing a New Hope: The importance of publications on ecology and the natural world with Ocean Escalanti

Independent publishers are stepping up to the plate with books on sustainability, homesteading, and natural world know-how in a time of rising food costs and the loss of plant knowledge. We are post-pandemic and pre-recession civilians in a world where eco-nihilism is at an all time high and these publications are hoping to inspire folks to reconnect with community and nature. Come celebrate these publishers and join the conversation as we explore the many ways in which these zines, books, and monthly observers are upholding stewardship by teaching the community valuable tools on urban foraging, food growing, and counter urgency.

2pm – 3pm
Starting a community library from scratch with Matthew James-Wilson

Heavy Manners Library founder Matthew James-Wilson discusses the process of opening up his lending library, community space, and book store in Echo Park Los Angeles, and gives advice for those looking to start their own DIY space. Learn about common pitfalls, helpful resources, and community building techniques that have made Heavy Manners possible over the past four years.

3pm – 4pm
Design, Delivered: Ten Years of Publishing at Letterform Archive with Lucie Parker and Rob Saunders

To mark its 10th anniversary, Letterform Archive looks back at a decade of publishing innovation, from grassroots Kickstarters to worldwide distribution. Lucie Parker and Rob Saunders share how the Archive’s publishing program grew into a powerful tool for storytelling, education, and design preservation, offering a behind-the-scenes look at how they bring the past to life through print.

Presented by Letterform Archive

4pm – 5pm
Two or Three Things, an ongoing lecture series with Lindsey White and Jon Rubin

Roughly every three months, THE QUARTERLY REPORT selects seven contributors and asks them to provide material of what they are thinking about when they are not working. Each issue involves individuals from a variety of fields: artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, designers, scientists, travel show hosts, and even auto-shop mechanics. Two or Three things is an ongoing lecture series that expands upon the periodical and presents these experiences in front of an audience. This lecture will feature artist Lindsey White, who will discuss her ongoing collection of photos of comedian Phyllis Diller, and artist/educator Jon Rubin, who will discuss his premises for the ideal of the Art School.

5pm – 6pm
Love Letters with Kelly Ording and Maria Otero

Join artist Kelly Ording and Maria Otero, co-founder of Oakland’s independent publishing project, Land and Sea, for a conversation on Kelly Ording’s new book Love Letters. This book documents the artist’s four-year creative arc, highlighting the development of the artist’s unique style and mastery of their chosen medium over this period. The book captures the experimentation, shifts in technique, and refinement of themes that define the artist’s artistic progression.

Presented by Land and Sea

Saturday, July 12

11am – 12pm
Va a Llover Toda La Noche (It’s Going to Rain All Night) with Alicia Vera and Luis Cobelo

Join Alicia Vera and Luis Cobelo as they discuss Va a Llover Toda La Noche (It’s Going to Rain All Night), Alicia’s debut photobook and a deeply intimate exploration of memory, loss, and caregiving. The project centers on Alicia’s relationship with her mother, diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and unfolds through photographs, handwritten notes, journal entries, and Super 8 stills. Alicia and Luis will reflect on the process of transforming personal archives into a visual narrative—one that moves beyond the individual to touch the collective. The conversation will explore how visual storytelling creates space for vulnerability, love, and connection. Alicia Vera is a photographer based between Mexico City and Miami. Luis Cobelo is a photographer and founder of La Chancleta Voladora, an independent publishing house based in San Francisco.

12pm – 1pm
Story Time Window with Ebti and William Clark

What stories do windows tell?
Windows are witnesses who are watching life unfold.
What stories do windows have to tell?

This is the OG window, the window of all windows. One window that started a whole body of work going on for years in an artist’s practice. The stories Ebti will read are about these windows, what they mean and how the work developed from the OG window to a book like A Window In Time / فترة زمنية . After sharing her stories, Ebti will have a conversation with William Clark, Assistant Professor of English at San Francisco State University, about the window as a motif in literature and the arts, diving deeper into the history of the word, how humans have related to windows and how to work in repetition in long term projects.

Presented by ‘cademy

1pm – 2pm
Love Is The Drug: a film screening & book production discussion with Heather Edney, Liz Roberts & Zach Clark

Heather Edney is a first wave harm reductionist and drug user organizer. Love Is The Drug is a short film by Liz Roberts, combining Heather’s archive of community health education ephemera with contemporary 16mm footage filmed in Santa Cruz. Sucking Dick for Syringes is a collection of personal texts by Heather, published by National Monument Press. This program will include a screening of the film, followed by a discussion about the creation of multiple projects through cross media collaboration.

2pm – 3pm
Tuning Our Storyorgans with Patrick Michael Ballard

Through puppetry and performance, fool magician and artist Patrick Michael Ballard will be giving a demonstration of handcrafted dowsing tools, living objects, and paraversal playthings from his project Azguyaenquainan!—a wunderkammer of psychomagical parlor games. Among the collection will be the Ottodokki, a deck of cards and zine, which can be used to guide reflection, get to know a stranger, help structure a dream sequence in a tabletop role-playing game, or for telling collective stories with a twist.

Presented by Sming Sming Books

3pm – 4pm
DANCING ON THE FAULT LINE by Nick Haymes with Love Bailey

A conversation with Love Bailey and Nick Haymes about the deeply intimate visual memoir that traces 14 years of Love Bailey’s transition, her art, and the life-saving impact of gender-affirming care. Equally an entertainer and activist, Bailey is based in Temecula—a notably conservative region of Southern California—where she founded the Savage Ranch, a desert-based safe house, residence, and gathering place for friends, family, and extended members of the LGBT+ community. The book celebrates the resilience, beauty, and radical creativity of trans life. At a time when rights are under attack, this collaboration is a living archive of why we must protect gender-affirming care and uplift the legacy of queer art.

Presented by Kodoji Books

4pm – 5pm
Self Realization Fellows: Photography and Collaboration with Adrian Martinez of illetante books, Book & Job Gallery, and Josh Schaedel and Wyatt Naoki Conlon of The Fulcrum Press.

How does one sustain a personal photography practice? How about a publishing imprint—and why not throw in a gallery? The answer is with plenty of mutual support. Join two sets of photographers that are managing all of these feats (and more) between their respective lives in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. Above all else, the panelists hope to inspire and encourage a new crop of artists to endeavor similar aspirations in the ever-changing landscape of image-based work. Moderated by Alex Landry, Curatorial Assistant of Photography at SFMOMA. 

5pm – 6pm
Our commons are free, with Ben Kinmont

Ben Kinmont talks about his current art project, Our commons are free, which looks at the printing history of the San Francisco Diggers, the radical community actors who emerged within the countercultural movement of the 1960s. Discussing the group’s innovative street sheets and printing operations, Kinmont tracks the Diggers’ push for new societies based on “free” ideals of individualism, community care, and a rejection of consumer capitalism. Our commons are free is on view through August 10th at The Store House (Building D) at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture. During the exhibition, Kinmont will also activate his Street press in and around San Francisco, including at SFABF25 (Saturday, July 12, 12-4pm).

Sunday, July 13

11am – 12pm 
FREE WORMS: Artist Game Workshop with Alexandra Pink and Helen Shewolfe Tseng

The Bathers Library game series invites artists from various disciplines to create experimental instructions-based artworks, which are risograph printed in limited runs and presented in catalog envelopes. For this workshop, Helen and Alexandra will present their interactive publications and lead participants through the creation of a site-specific game called “The Worm,” which visitors can play during the fair.

Presented by Bathers Library

12pm – 1pm
Highlighting Artists’ Books of the Arab Diaspora: Storytelling, Memory, and Resistance with Maymanah Farhat, Andrea Shaker and Jennie Hinchcliff

This summer, San Francisco Center for the Book (SFCB) presents Mourning and Melancholy: Artists’ Books from the Arab World and Its Diaspora, an exhibition highlighting artists’ books, ephemera, zines, and video art. The show examines how artists connected to the Arab world use book forms to chronicle, protest, and subvert the modern conflicts that have devastated the region and displaced millions. This panel discussion, expanding on the themes of the exhibition, features the curator Maymanah Farhat and artist Andrea Shaker. Farhat shares her extensive expertise in contemporary Arab-American art and printmaking, while Shaker offers insight into her practice of reclamation and resistance. The discussion, moderated by SFCB’s Director of Exhibitions Jennie Hinchcliff, explores bookworks as sites of memory, identity, and activism.

Presented by San Francisco Center for the Book

1pm – 2pm
A Conversation with artists Ala Ebtekar, Binh Danh, and Stephanie Syjuco, moderated by Shana Lopes, Assistant Curator of Photography at SFMOMA

Through collaboration with Santa Fe-based nonprofit Radius Books, each artist has created a distinctive monograph that functions as an artist book. These publications are designed around the unique qualities of each artist’s practice, resulting in engaging works that serve as repositories for their creative processes. The conversation will explore how these artists transformed their practices into book form, examining the relationship between artistic vision and publication design. Join us as these artists share insights about their collaborative experiences and the unique challenges of translating visual work into the printed medium.

Presented by EXiT at Catharine Clark Gallery and Radius Books

2pm – 3pm
Are humans the only dreamers on Earth?: A conversation between Rodrigo Hernández and David Peña-Guzmán, moderated by Diego Villalobos

Marking the publication of the catalog (co-published with BOM DIA BOA TARDE BOA NOITE) for artist Rodrigo Hernández’s exhibition, with what eyes? (2023-2024) at the Wattis, join the artist and philosopher David Peña-Guzmán in conversation. Together, they will discuss the unique experience of a nonhuman animal and how it can transfer to the realm of visual art, allowing us to reconsider how we inhabit and perceive space. Like the exhibition and catalog, this conversation starts with the question posed by Peña-Guzmán: Are humans the only dreamers on Earth?

Presented by the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts

3pm – 4pm
Soft Core with Brittany Newell and Maria Silk

A conversation between San Francisco writer and performer Brittany Newell and artist Maria Silk. Newell and Silk, who are longtime collaborators, will discuss Newell’s most recent novel Soft Core (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2025). Soft Core is a love story centered on Ruth, a stripper who lives in San Francisco with her ex-boyfriend Dino until she comes home from the club one day and finds that he has disappeared. The book tracks Ruth’s everyday life and emotional landscape as she looks for Dino and becomes increasingly unmoored from reality. Following a reading from the novel, Newell and Silk will draw on their own shared experience as performers in the City’s drag scene to connect the book to larger topics related to performance, nightlife, and San Francisco. The conversation will be followed by a book signing.

Presented by Slash

4pm – 5pm
INCENDIARY TEXT: MANIFESTOS & OTHER MISSIVES THAT SURVIVE REGIMES with Kate Laster

From Magnus Hirschfeld to Queer Nation, from Taller de Gráfica Popular to JUSTSEEDS — artist, educator & critical historian Kate Laster presents an art history lecture that is meant to embolden community and highlight the webs of artist labor that connect anti-fascist movement work from the past to now.