Have you ever been curious about who makes the handbound books BatCat Press produces? This year, we’ll be introducing you to our new staff members that work year-round on creating our beautiful journals and publications! We hope you enjoy!
Name: Juno
AGE: 16
FAVORITE AUTHOR: Rebecca Lindenberg
FAVORITE BOOK: The Merciless by Danielle Rollins
FAVORITE GENRE TO READ: Suspense/Comedy
FAVORITE GENRE TO WRITE: Free verse poetry, typically dealing with religious themes
OTHER HOBBIES: Bookmaking, playing the piano and violin, and watching comedies
Juno, a junior, joined the staff of BatCat Press just this year. His first few months on staff have been incredibly successful; so far, he’s made over ten books and is currently working on another! As far as BatCat events, he has attended the 2019 Pittsburgh Zine Fair and hopes to go to Handmade Arcade.
Though Juno has a wide variety of talents in BatCat, he excels in bookbinding. He has learned about three different styles of bookbinding; his favorite of the three is long stitch binding because of “how much thought I have to put into the measurements.” All of Juno’s books are incredibly unique. For example, some of his covers are made with old, black-and-white Rembrandt images, giving his creations a unique flare.
He also has many goals that he hopes to accomplish during his time on BatCat. More specifically, he wants to learn how to carve linoleum blocks. “I wanna learn how to make posters with linoleum blocks. I’m not the best at drawing, but I do enjoy carving and whittling.”
A struggle that Juno has faced while on staff these past few weeks is finding the grain on certain elements of the book, such as the bookboard and the pages used within the book. Since he has been making so many books and is dedicated to perfecting the process, he thinks that finding the grain will become much easier for him in the future. He also is a perfectionist at heart, so bookmaking and its difficulties sometimes frustrate him. “I’m very particular about how my books turn out, but sometimes, things don’t always go as planned.”
In terms of the future and plans for college, Juno doesn’t have any specific universities picked out. However, he is very interested in majoring in Marketing, specifically Social Media Marketing. Though he has only been a staff member on BatCat for a short time, he has proven to be an incredibly fast learner who enjoys bookmaking and other crafts. With his meticulous work ethic and creative vision for books, he’s been a great addition to the staff, and we can’t wait to see what he creates over the next few months!
Written by Julia Aloi
BatCat Press 