Tom Virgin ~ Florida
(Extra Virgin Press)

Conversation
By Kari Snyder and Tom Virgin
Boca Raton, Florida: Extra Virgin Press, 2008. Edition of 20.

6.5” x 9” x .5”; 16 pages. Lino cuts. Letterpress printed. Complex quire binding with tackets. Cover of paper with Thai Banana on the outside and Japanese Katazone paper on the inside. Numbered. Signed by both artists.

“Conversation” uses a short series of quotations to mirror the conversation from which the book is derived.”

A gossip is one who talks to you about others.
A Bore is one who talks to you about himself.
And a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself. (Lisa Kirk 1925 – [1990])

Tom Virgin: "This book was born of a profound respect of the printmaking skills of Ms. Kari Snyder. A Florida Individual Artist Grant Winner, Kari’s intaglio prints of indigenous plants, birds, reptiles and other wildlife compelled me to ask her to collaborate on a book project.

"’Conversation’ was letterpress printed from linoleum plates, half from Snyder and half from Virgin. Each artist contributed five plates and hand colored the Rives Tan paper pages.”
$300

This is My Body
of Food and Freedom
By Edwidge Danticat
Coconut Grove, Florida: Extra Virgin Press, 2023. Edition of 47.

9.5 × 6.25 × .5”; 25 pages. Written by Edwidge Danticat. Design, drawing, printing, and binding by Tom Virgin. Timeline by John Ermer & Tom Virgin. Printed on French Paper’s Starch White Speckletone. Cover of vintage Cave Paper. Bound with a kettle stitch using waxed linen thread, reinforced with Okawara paper, and a katazome paper spine wrap. Drop spine structure comes from Karen Hanmer. Pages hand printed on a 1949 Vandercook 4 Proof Press using Adobe Caslon Pro, wood type, polymer plates, and linoleum plates Signed by Danticat on the author bio page. Signed by Virgin on a back free end page. Numbered.

“This is my Body, of Food and Freedom” was originally published in Plough Quarterly No. 20: The Welcome Table (an online journal) in 2019. This printing of the article includes a timeline printed in run that runs through the pages documenting major dates and incidents in the history of Haiti. The first date is the year 1492 stating “The Arawak/Taino people were the original Native Americans living on the island of Hispaniola, prior to the landing of Europeans in today’s northern Haiti.” The timeline runs to November 2022 when “US Secretary of Homeland Security extended and redesignated Temporary Protected Status for eligible Haitians for 18 months. [The Trump administration had ended Temporary Protected Status in 2017]”

Danticat writes about detainees and food in the immigration detention centers maintained by the US. She writes about gynecomastia developed within the male population, a resulting civil suit against the federal government but a jury found the government not liable. There are also words regarding force feeding and hunger strikes. Her words make powerful images of people in desperate circumstances.

“Do not count on my anymore, because I’m lost in the struggle of Life ..” Words written by Yolande Jean to her family. She was on a hunger strike in Guantanamo Bay in 1993.

Ford Foundation on Edwidge Danticat : “Edwidge Danticat is a writer whose moving and insightful works across many genres enrich our understanding of Haiti and the complexities of the immigrant experience. She was born in Port-au-Prince in 1969 and moved to the United States when she was 12 years old. Her novels, memoirs, essays, short stories, and children’s and young adult books evoke the intricate layers of community, family, migration, isolation, and belonging.”
$250

Questionnaire for Two Pussies [Q42P]
Poems by Denise Duhamel & Maureen Seaton
Coconut Grove, Florida: Thomas Virgin, 2021. Edition of 50.

9.5 x 6.25 x .5"; 25 pages. Letterpress printed. French Paper’s Poptone Bubblegum, with a cover that is white stained, maple veneer, laser cut, and attached to the book block with hand-sewn tackets. Bound with waxed linen thread, reinforced on the spine with Okawara paper and wrapped with pink bias tape. Hand printed on a 1949 Vandercook 4 Proof Press using Avenir Bold and Book (using polymer plates), wood type, and linoleum plates. Drawing, painting, and design by Mary Malm. Design, drawing, printing and binding by Tom Virgin. Signed on the title page by Duhamel and Seaton. Signed on the colophon by Tom Virgin and Mary Malm. Numbered.

Tom Virgin: "’Questionnaire for Two Pussies’ is the second of five books examining South Florida’s cultural landscape and issues. Q42P is funded by an Oolite Arts Ellies Creator Award. This book comes from collaborating poets Maureen Seaton and Denise Duhamel’s long term conversations around feminism and their shared experiences. Virgin worked with painter Mary Malm to create a visual story paralleling the conversation in the poetry, to support this compelling feminist treatise. Tom Virgin printed all the images in conversation with Malm and the poets, bound and covered the book in a laser cut maple veneer wrapper."

In the middle of Q42P is a quote from Muriel Rukeyser, “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.” While the world may not have split open, the answers and words shared certainly show the world from a woman’s point of view. The questions begin with “When did you first realize you were a girl?” and continues with “Did you ever cry on a date because you were afraid?”

Maureen Therese Seaton (October 20, 1947 – August 26, 2023) was an America lesbian poet, memoirist, and professor of creative writing. She frequently collaborated with fellow poets such as Duhamel.

Denise Duhamel is a professor at Florida International University where she teaches creative writing and literature. She says of her collaboration with Maureen Seaton, “Something magical happens when we write - we find this third voice, someone who is neither Maureen nor I, and our ego sort of fades into the background. The poem matters, not either one of us."

Mary Malm : “Originally from Connecticut, Mary Malm has resided in Florida for most of her adult life. Educated at Pratt Institute and the University of Miami, earning both her BFA and MFA at that institution, she has been a practicing artist and educator for more than 30 years.” Virgin says of their collaboration, “Over the course of a few months of reading, my collaborator brought tangible connections between images and text in the manuscript. After a month of printing color proofs of plates, Mary’s images, a mixture of painted abstractions based in her relationship to the text, merged with each of our drawings, and brought me to my own connections in the text.”
$250

Signs
By John Dufresne
Coconut Grove, Florida: Extra Virgin Press, 2019. Edition of 40.

9.5 in x 6.25 in x .5”; 25 pages. Printed on French Paper’s Speckletone True White. Pearl Gray Fabriano Murillo covers with an interior orange plastic cover sheath for the book block. Bound with a kettle stitch and multi-quire bindings using waxed linen thread. Printed with a 1949 Vandercook 4 Proof Press using Compressed Gothic Wood Type, polymer plates, and linoleum plates. Signed by Dufresne on the title page. Signed by Virgin on the colophon. Numbered.

Twelve flash fiction items by Florida writer John Dufresne with illustrations by Florida artist Tom Virgin. Each vignette pulls the reader into an instance of someone’s life, hinting at a fuller story, an ongoing story, sometimes funny, sometimes bewildering, sometimes achingly sad.

• “Cape Cod Afternoon”- the speaker is walking through a house that is silent and seems full of secrets and then he/she throws open the door to let the universe in.
• “Bewildered” – a Dear Abby letter in which “Bewildered in Boise” describes a husband that is writing his name on everything because he says “they’re mine”. He hasn’t marked her yet.
• “Eat” – an unsatisfactory birthday dinner at a restaurant with “penne, way beyond al dente” and so it goes.
• “Select Sires” – a conversation between two men by a pool about bull artificial insemination and a did a woman in the news really have Bigfoot’s son and how did that work.
• “Word Problem” – two lovers on different trains heading toward each other. One to say goodbye; one to propose.
• “Two Sunny Days” – at twelve eating breakfast of a bowl of Wheaties, running off to play see a baseball game and then at 27 in Paris with his wife.
• “The Second Viola” – Enis Murphy married two women both named Viola. Divorced the first one, married the second, divorced the second one, married the first.
• “Fragile” – the story of Kate’s patience and love for Mr. Hays.
• “Trust” – Alice commits adultery and expects forgiveness.
• “Escape velocity” – Father and son hiking down the Grand Canyon. And, then the mountain goat watches the amazing flying boy.
• “Still Life with Ray” – Ray is a painter, her mother has died. “She says if you look at anything for a long time, it melts and shatters”
• “Contains Lead” – two brothers, Slater shoots Clayton, puts him in front of a derelict gas pump, pisses on him, ends up in an asylum. Their filling station bull dozed, “End of Story”.
• “Nursing Home Nocturne (Room 37)” – sounds in the nursing home “the hush of the past falling away”

Interview The Jitney: “Mr. Dufresne compares the collaborative project to theater. ‘As I think of it, the writer/artist partnership is not unlike theater, another collaborative art form. There, I try to engage the imagination of the actors and directors and let them bring the script and the characters to life. Here, with ‘Signs,’ my job was to engage Tom’s lush imagination, and he did the rest.’”
$250