Part Renaissance Man.
Part insomniac.
When you ask Aaron Parrett what he’s up to, he’s likely to tell you just a few of his recent pursuits among a dizzying array of his artistic and academic endeavors.
He writes fiction and nonfiction books; teaches Latin at Carroll College and English as a full time professor at the University of Providence in Great Falls; and he prints books at his Territorial Press, which does letterpress printing.
He also serves as executive director of Drumlummon Institute; writes regularly for four different publications; and plays fiddle in the band Balled in Burlap.
There’s a lot more — but you likely get the picture.
“When I sit down and think about it, I don’t know how I do all of this,” he admits.
Tonight at 6:30 he presents "Maple & Lead: The Making of a Book" at Lewis & Clark Library.
He’ll be reading one of his short stories from it and talk about the old-fashioned letterpress printing he does at Territorial Press, which is a relief printing process that presses the lettering and illustrations into each page.
Territorial Press’ main focus is books and literary-related works.
“Maple & Lead” brings together Parrett’s passions for writing and bookmaking as an art.
And it’s Parrett’s unique blending of art forms to “arrive at new artistic possibilities” that earned him a Montana Arts Council 2017 Artist's Innovation Award.
“Maple & Lead” is both beautiful to look at and to touch, but also immediately engaging as you turn the pages and read the words.
“These are all short stories I wrote over the past 15 years” that were published in a variety of publications, he said in a previous IR interview.
The illustrations are striking woodblock prints by Helena artist Seth Roby.
Printing was limited to 100 copies, ranging in price from $100 to $300.
“Maple & Lead” was produced on Parrett’s newer Vandercook Press, which uses polymer plates — a letterpress process that is less labor intensive than Parrett’s other printing jobs.
For Parrett, the labor and the end product of the printing process are deeply interconnected to his writing process and the reader’s pleasure in the book.
“Once I resolved to make a book of my own writing using century old methods, I determined that the composition itself would influence every aspect of the ultimate product, and that the challenge would be to learn how the physical process of choosing letters one at a time from the typecase would influence the thought process behind what I write, both at the level of the sentence as well as the level of the subject matter itself,” he wrote to the Montana Arts Council.
“This method of bringing my own stories to life by setting the type, then printing the pages, then folding the sheets into signatures and sewing and binding them in a single, seamless effort of literary production compelled me to consciously interact with the composition in ways no writer I know of has purposefully written.”
The $3,000 MAC award couldn’t have been more timely, since Parrett had just traveled to Berkeley, California, in January to purchase $10,000 worth of lead and wood type and equipment from fine-art printer Peter Koch.
Parrett and he jokingly call it “The Great Type Migration.”
The type was originally used to print Montana newspapers but had migrated West in the 1970s with Koch when he left Missoula for the Bay Area.
Parrett plans to put the type back to work at the Territorial Press in Helena, where his list of printing jobs — some of them books — is so long that he’s not sure he’ll live long enough to get to the end of it.
For 80 percent of his jobs, he uses handset wood and metal type. But for bigger book printing projects, he uses a polymer plate letterpress process.
Parrett and his Territorial Press are part of a much larger international movement.
“There’s a huge renaissance right now of letterpress,” both nationally and internationally, he said.
“My whole point in doing these talks...,” said Parrett, “is to make people aware of what letterpress is and how integral the making of a book is to the reading of it.
“Until I got into printing, I didn’t realize that layout and the typography of a book can dramatically affect your experience of it.
“I’m trying to convey to people that a really well made book affects how you respond to the language.”
The MAC award is just one way Parrett is gaining wider Montana recognition.
His book “Maple & Lead” is one of three finalists for the High Plains Book Award in the short stories category.
The winners will be announced in October.
Corby Skinner, a book awards committee member, said of Parrett’s stories, “What strikes me — what’s so wonderful about Aaron’s work is the diversity in it — stories that are hysterically funny and witty and clever and also stories that are melancholy and touching and personal. They still have all the same voice. They’re very much his stories.
“I just think he’s a very special person,” said Skinner, “and just amazingly talented in so many different ways.”
In addition to hearing Parrett speak at the library, you can listen to a recent interview with him on Montana Public Radio’s “The Write Question,” at http://mtpr.org/post/oddities-and-endings-aaron-parretts-maple-lead.
And you can check out his Territorial Press at territorialpress.com.
“Maple & Lead is also available in paperback.
Other books by Parrett include: “Literary Butte,” “Montana Then and Now” and “Montana Americana Music.”