How we read books (for Stephen Emmerson)

An exhibition hosted by Bower Ashton Library, Bristol

Until Tues 27th October 2026

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, 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.

The display 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.