The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu
Note: The Paper Menagerie is in stock and begins shipping today.
The Paper Menagerie is the first title in Short Stops, a new series from Conversation Tree Press dedicated to bringing exceptional shorter works of fiction to life through beautifully bound, letterpress-printed, limited editions that begin shipping immediately upon announcement.
Frontispiece by Scott McKowen
“I didn’t know this at the time, but Mom’s breath was special. She breathed into her paper animals so that they shared her breath, and thus moved with her life. This was her magic.”
Ken Liu’s The Paper Menagerie is a deeply moving exploration of cultural identity, belonging, and love. It tells the story of a biracial boy torn between his American upbringing and his Chinese heritage, embodied by the magical origami animals his immigrant mother brings to life. A poignant tale, and the only short story to win the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, it offers readers a reflection on family, belonging, and the threads that connect us across generations.
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Edition Information ❦ Short Stops ❦ Artwork ❦ Typography ❦ Printing ❦ Ken Liu
Edition Information
The Paper Menagerie is a limited edition of 300 unnumbered copies, letterpress printed by Hand & Eye Letterpress in London, England. It features a frontispiece illustration by Scott McKowen, also printed via letterpress. The book is quarter-bound in Fancy Linen book cloth and custom hand-marbled paper from Paperwilds in a tiger eye pattern. The endpapers are GF Smith Colorplan with a linen finish.
It measures 6 x 9 inches with 28 pages including front and back matter, and all copies are signed by the author and artist.
US$110 plus shipping.
Short Stops
Books in our Short Stops series are a little different from the editions we’ve published so far. They will:
- Only be announced and offered for sale when they are completely finished with shipping beginning on the same day orders are made.
- Feature shorter works of fiction.
- Have a trim size of 6in by 9in, slightly smaller than the 6.7in by 9.5in books we’ve done before like Peter Pan and the upcoming edition of Solaris, and do not include a slipcase.
- Have no rights associated with them.
- Always be offered to current Deluxe and Lettered rights-holders first, even though they have no rights attached to them. Rights holders may skip it entirely without losing rights to the next book from the Press, and having a copy of the most recently published book in the Short Stops series does not give any rights to the next in the series.
There are a number of books in the Short Stops series in the works, including a haunting tale by Ray Bradbury.
Availability
Copies of The Paper Menagerie are now available to collectors who pre-ordered Deluxe copies of Foundation numbered #1-150 and all Lettered copies. An email has been sent with a private link to order and copies will begin shipping later today. If you did not receive an email then you do not have a copy of Foundation with "publisher rights", i.e. rights to pre-order a matching number/letter of the next title - Solaris.
The private pre-order period ends at 12pm ET on Friday October 18th, at which point remaining copies will become available to the public.
Roughly two thirds of the limitation been bound and these are being offered for sale with shipping beginning immediately. The remaining copies will be made available on the website when binding is complete and they are in hand.
All copies ship from Ontario, Canada.
Artwork by Scott McKowen
Scott McKowen has contributed a beautiful scratchboard illustration of the paper menagerie for the frontispiece, printed via photopolymer plate.
Scott is an award-winning illustrator and graphic designer. He works in scratchboard, an engraving medium in which white lines are carved into a black surface with a sharp blade. McKowen has illustrated a number of titles for a wide range of publishers. Based in Stratford, Ontario, he operates the design studio Punch & Judy Inc., which creates theatre posters and graphics for leading performance art companies across North America.
Typography
I’ve typeset The Paper Menagerie in William Text, a contemporary interpretation of Caslon, and TT Rationalist, a slab serif with a modern look.
Printing
We are proud to be collaborating once more with Phil Abel and the team at Hand and Eye Letterpress. Hand and Eye has a distinguished history of not only letterpress-printing their own editions, but collaborating with Folio Society, No Reply Press, Lyra’s Books, and, of course, with Marcelo Anciano on their very own Areté Editions.
Ken Liu
Ken Liu is an American author of speculative fiction. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, he wrote the Dandelion Dynasty, a silkpunk epic fantasy series (starting with The Grace of Kings), as well as short story collections The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories and The Hidden Girl and Other Stories. He also penned the Star Wars novel The Legends of Luke Skywalker.
Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Liu worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. Liu frequently speaks at conferences and universities on a variety of topics, including futurism, machine-augmented creativity, history of technology, bookmaking, and the mathematics of origami.