Asymmetry Publishers Festival
Asymmetry Publishers Festival (Pub Fest) is an international gathering dedicated to the people, practices, and infrastructures that sustain independent publishing. Bringing together publishers, writers, editors, translators, designers, and readers from London and across the world, the three-day festival explores publishing as a way of shaping language, preserving memory, building communities, and creating the conditions through which ideas travel. Through conversations, workshops, readings, performances, and a collective bookshop, the festival will turn the entire Asymmetry HQ into a lively publishing commons, offering a rare opportunity to encounter the relationships, forms of labour, and modes of collaboration that underpin contemporary publishing.
The mornings begin with breakfast and coffee in our communal reading room, setting a slower rhythm as the programmes unfold across the building. Visitors are invited to move freely between events, spending time with publications, lingering, meeting like-minded people, and exploring the surrounding neighbourhood of London Fields.
Conceived as an alternative to the traditional art book fair, Pub Fest creates space for connection, exchange, reflection, and discovery beyond the format of a conventional marketplace. Alongside the public programmes, the central bookshop will bring together publications from all participating presses, with books available to browse and purchase throughout the festival.
The participating publishers work across distinct yet interconnected terrains. Their practices range from translation as a durational literary process to feminist and relational publishing infrastructures; from experimental approaches to art book design to self-organised poetry and political publishing. Others bring research-led perspectives on ecological thinking, while some focus on the often-invisible distribution networks that enable independent books to circulate across borders and languages.
Participating publishers are: 51 Personae; Jordan, jordan Édition; Kayfa ta, Mediabus, Pamenar Press, Plant South Salesroom, Rabbits Road Press, Silver Press, and Tilted Axis Press.
Full programme will be announced soon.
Graphic design by Jeremy Siyang Chen, Digital and Communications Coordinator.
Access Information
The festival and the public events take place across our ground-floor and first-floor spaces. Please note that the first floor is not step-free accessible. The ground floor is fully step-free and includes an accessible, all-gender bathroom.
Please feel free to inquire with info@asymmetryart.org if you would like to discuss any access needs. Please kindly be advised that requests should be made one week in advance of the event, and we will try our best to make accommodations subject to availability.