BOOK EX MACHINA

Overall, The Letters Page Vol. 2 is an immaculately presented and edited book. Each world of its letters gives us that much needed breath, that Mavrou cites in the beginning. An oxygen not of the body, but of truth. The writers might give us worded copies of their worlds, but they are clad in electric clarity; commensurate to their talent. By diving into these letters, we can step outside of our fake news, social media and advertising for a beat, and find a gamut of life.

The epistolary form is currently enjoying a revival. The Letters Page, a literary journal, has reversed the digital trend, publishing a selection of letters from its previous online issues in a print edition. Freed from the confines of the screen, this project revels in its materiality: the paperback edition is accompanied by printed facsimiles of featured letters, tied with string that resembles the border stripe of an airmail envelope, and contained in a clamshell box of letterbox red.

Letter writing may be a dying art, but the imaginative and creative range of this collection shows there’s much life in it yet.

A letter always arrives from the past… You wait for a letter to arrive. You wait for a reply. In the time it takes for the letter to reach its destination, anything can happen: minds be changed, lives lost, loves discovered.

— Jon McGregor

There is a relationship formed in writing and reading letters which is so intimate like peering into someone else’s window. As someone who used to love exchanging letters so much, it’s thrilling to see this form being kept alive in such a creative format as The Letters Page.

—Eric Karl Anderson

Have you ever loved a story so much that you wished you could put it in your pocket and carry it around with you forever?

—Mag Culture

The stories are short, crisp and atmospheric, and they make good use of pacing (an important line break will often be followed by the turn of a page, making the words all the more emphatic). As soon as I started reading the stories, I immediately wanted to pass the matchbooks to different friends: it’s rare to find a magazine that you want to give away not because you don’t like it, rather because it’s so special that you actively want to share it.

Books as Objects Should Be Beautiful.

—Ioanna Mavrou talks to The Review Review about Matchbook Stories.

When I pick up a literary magazine I’m usually filled with a certain degree of anticipation. But I’m not usually grinning as I sit down to read. Matchbook Stories is as unique a magazine as you are ever likely to find. “The tiniest literary magazine in the world,” Matchbook Stories is, as the name suggests, designed to look like a matchbox. Inside each small box are four stories, each printed on its own tiny matchbook, with cover art designed specifically for each. As expected, the stories are very short, but what a delight they are to read, not just because they are well-written, but because the magazine is three-dimensional, thereby making the act of opening the box and choosing which story to read first, much different than opening the covers of a more traditional magazine. Plus, it’s just plain fun.

—Sandy Ebner, The Review Review

Matchbook series strikes a chord

—The Bookseller

This Mag Is On Fire

—Sweet

Friends in Flash: Matchbook Stories

At first glance, the most striking (pun so intended) aspect of the Matchbook Stories is its unique make-up. Yes, these stories are contained within actual matchbooks, and yes they are absolutely adorable, and yes your friends will squee with delight when they bear witness to such tiny cuteness. But Matchbook Stories isn’t just a gimmick. The stories are equally as compelling as their packaging. Book Ex Machina has created an art object that assures both style and substance.

—Smokelong Quarterly

The Last Divided Capital in Europe

In 2014, forty years since the division of Cyprus and twenty-five since the fall of the Berlin wall, the embassy of Cyprus in Berlin organized the photo exhibition Die letzte geteilte Hauptstadt Europas (The Last Divided Capital in Europe) featuring pictures from our book Nicosia in Dark and White.

Ioanna Mavrou and Thodoris Tzalavras talk to Phedias Christodoulides of The Cyprus Weekly about all things Book Ex Machina

Capturing Art in Books

—The Cyprus Weekly

Thodoris Tzalavras talks to Jacinda Russell of The Postcard Collective about Postcard Stories

I am drawn to “Fall” because of the exoticism of place and the carefree nature of the activity that screams summer. It is magical because it offers me, a viewer on the other side of the world, a form of escape. I didn't know I longed for this place until I saw your photograph.

—Jacinda Russel

A haunting story about an abandoned place

In a number of photographs, Tzalavras captures a person moving past a window and intellectually we can read this blurr as his subject that is moving during a long exposure. Nevertheless, this reads of a ghost, spirit or memory that haunts this place, representing the melancholy that encircles this sad monument

—Douglas Stockdale

In the Shadow of the Black Sun

Thodoris Tzalavras's pinhole images headline American Photo feature on sun-capturing photographers.

In 1939, Ansel Adams created a famous image using overexposure solarization. Today, a new generation of photographers are adding to this tiny subgenre, drawing on equipment that spans decades to create images that are surreal and sublime.

—John Mahoney, American Photo