How we read books (for Stephen Emmerson) is a collaboration between Sarah Bodman, Stephen Emmerson, Artist’s Book Club at UWE and book friends.

Following Stephen Emmerson’s talk here at UWE Bristol in November 2025 our students, staff and visitors were thrilled to discover different ways into ‘reading’ and approaching books that suited their own paths and inspired new understanding and ideas.

We invited Stephen to run a workshop in January 2026 showing us some of his methods for reading books. We then set about making our own non textual readings or creating templates and using tools to create our pages for a collaborative book, and had a show and tell of our results together in February 2026.

Thank you very much to Stephen Emmerson for his inspirational work and guidance, and for allowing us to use some of his processes to make the artist’s book.

For more information on Stephen Emmerson visit his website.

The display that will be on show at Bower Ashton Library from Thursday 3rd Sept – Tues 27th October 2026 includes the original templates or working processes we all used to ‘read’ our chosen book and make a page each for the publication.

We hope the project will inspire others to find their own ways to ‘read’ books.

Our artist’s book printed in a limited edition of 150 copies, is shared between contributors and the library, launched at BABE in June 2026. There will be some free copies for visitors to take from the library during the exhibition (for as long as they are available).

The artists and writers who contributed to this project and publication are:

Ben Jenner (UK), Brian Norman (UK), Caren Florance (Australia), Clair Schwarz (UK), Csilla Bíro (UK), Daisy Hvnter (UK), David Dellafiora (Australia), Fran Cave (UK), Frans Baake (Netherlands), Imi Maufe (Norway), Jayne Marshall (Spain), Jeff Rathermel (USA), Jeremy Dixon (UK), Leonie Bradley (UK), Linda Parr (UK), Marian Crawford (Australia), Marian Kilpatrick (UK), Mel Joubert (UK), Morwenna Peters (UK), Nancy Campbell (UK), Noriko Suzuki-Bosco (Japan), Paul Laidler (UK), Sadie Pedersen Sharp (UK), Sara Elgerot (Sweden), Sarah Bodman (UK), Stephanie Black (UK), Stephen Emmerson (UK), Steve Parsons (UK), Sue Vallance (UK).

This exhibition is open to the public Monday – Friday 9am-5pm. No booking needed. The library is on the first floor of B block. Public parking on meters on main road or at Ashton Court.

For more information on Bower Ashton Library, visitor access and campus map, see the library website.

UWE Bristol, City Campus at Bower Ashton, Kennel Lodge Road, Bristol BS3 2JT.