Masked hours from 11am–12pm on both days.
The 2025 edition of the fair is sponsored by the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Visual Arts News, and C Mag.
HABF is a gathering for art publishers and art book enthusiasts. There is a significant art book history in Halifax that has largely gone unnoticed - HABF wants to bring Atlantic art books out in the open and foster a space for new friendships, connections and ideas.
The fair is book focused. Our mandate prioritizes artists' books, catalogues, monographs, periodicals, zines, or related printed material. Visitors can also expect programming about the art book and its surrounding concepts.
The co-directors of the fair are Andrew Hill & Marite Kuus, who can be contacted through email and Instagram. The board of the HABF is composed of Alek Green, Alex Turgeon, Bryne McLaughlin, Craig Leonard, and Rebecca Young.
The fair takes place in Mi'kma'ki, on the unceded and stolen territory of the Mi'kmaq people. We are grateful to live, work, learn and play on these lands.
The fair will always be free to attend.
Friday, August 22
12:00 — 1:00pm
The Cloud Factory
A structured conversation around Chris Donovan’s latest photobook The Cloud Factory (GOST Books, 2025) The book is derived from his photo-documentation project of the same title (2014-ongoing) about his hometown of Saint John, New Brunswick—a small, heavily industrialized city which is home to Canada's largest oil refinery, one of the country's wealthiest families, and one of its highest rates of child poverty. Anton Lee will situate the publication in the long lineage of social documentary photobooks with particular focus on environmental justice and community engagement. Together, Donovan and Lee will explore the realities of managing such a long-term project, the observer’s embeddedness in his subject matter, different modes of narrating through photographs, and the experience of making a photobook.
1:00pm — 2:00pm
Citymouse
Combining memoir elements, illustrated architectural spaces, portraits of loved ones and text, Eleanor Hannon’s “citymouse” feels at once like a family album, time capsule, secret diary and a poem, reflecting the ebb and flow of her experiences straining to stay present while running in circles that bring constant reminders of the past.
Join Eleanor on an interactive neighbourhood walking tour that brings Citymouse off the page and into the streets.
2:00pm — 3:00pm
Kelly Mark
Artist Kelly Mark fused nineties NSCAD conceptualism with her own working class roots, to produce a body of work that is witty, clever, and grounded in the everyday. Her internationally acclaimed practice included text works, installation, performance, drawings, video, sculpture, photography, and artist multiples. For the Halifax Art Book Fair, Sackville-based artist and curator Dave Dyment will speak about her celebrated practice, and their ill-fated collaboration.
3:00pm — 4:00pm
MSVU - Lesbian Pulp Fiction Read-a-long
Join librarians from the University of Mount Saint Vincent as they guide us through a selection of texts from their collection of Lesbian Pulp Fiction.
4:00pm — 5:00pm
Ray Fenwick’s Le Moat Juice
Le Moat Juice is a group of short, inter-related performance works (bits) somewhere between experimental comedy and performance art. The pieces in Le Moat Juice focus with absurd intensity on moments when language seems intent on reminding us how weird, obstinate and unknowable it is. Topics include: internal field recordings, stage whispers, "the customer is always right" proposition, ANGELS ARE REAL, SPEECH SPEECH SPEECH and much more.
12:00pm — 1:00pm
The Covert Caches Project
Gregor Chiasson is a multidisciplinary artist and NSCAD graduate that employs humour in much of his work. His most recent is The Covert Caches Project, where he selected ten found books and deposited them into various Little Free Library boxes across Halifax. Each book was hollowed out to house various utilitarian objects; many of which formed a dialogue with the book’s title, artwork, or subject matter.
1:00pm — 2:00pm
I WONDER: ART+CARE+DEMENTIA
Cathy Busby
Grounded in Cathy Busby’s personal and artistic relationship with her late husband Garry Neill Kennedy, her book, I WONDER: Art + Care + Dementia (Art Metropole, 2025) outlines the experience of living and making art through Garry’s dementia decline.
In the book, Cathy looks at art practices Garry returned to later in his life; speaks about the projects which carried them through his time in long-term care; and expands on I WONDER, a wall-text painting started in Garry’s room at Parkview care facility (Vancouver) that was subsequently fully realized at Art Metropole (Toronto, 2021) after his death. This book uses curiosity, art practice, and lived experience as entry points to address the potential of creativity to enhance dementia care.
Cathy will speak about and read from the book, and play excerpts from a 1990 audio interview by Norma Ready with Garry about his life and work.
3:00pm — 4:00pm
Phase Variations and Queer Memory
This program brings together artist Lou Sheppard, publisher Jayme Spinks (Copy Shop Books), and curator-archivist Robin Metcalfe to explore Phase Variations—Sheppard’s recent exhibition and its accompanying publication. Robin will share images from the Passage Memory Project, a non-institutional queer archive for Atlantic Canada developed from over four decades of collecting historical documents, books, artworks, and ephemera. Lou and Robin will then discuss how the exhibition emerged from this archival context. Jayme and Lou will also discuss the publication, with Lou reflecting on how the book relates to and extends the ideas of the exhibition.
4:00pm — 5:00pm
Will Write A Book
Ben Denzer is an artist, designer, and publisher. He will talk about recording, repetition, obsession, commitment, and meaning making. He will write a book.