Yorkshire bookbinder is among those creating a hand-bound edition for Booker shortlisted novels
Tomorrow evening will see the announcement of the winner of the 2024 Booker Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards, at a ceremony in London. This year’s shortlist is significant in that it features the most women in the Booker’s 55-year history with five women and one man being represented. The books competing for the prize are Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner, Held by Anne Michaels, James by Percival Everett, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden and Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood.
One of the lesser-known highlights of the event is that each of the shortlisted authors is presented with a unique hand-bound edition of their nominated works, created by Fellows from the Designer Bookbinders Society. One of the six binders this year is East Yorkshire-based Glenn Malkin who has been busy working on his design over the past few weeks.
“I have been a member of the Designer Bookbinders, who have been working with the Booker Foundation for 30 years, for quite a while but this was the first year I was eligible to apply for this after being elected a Fellow in 2022,” he says. “You have to express an interest and send examples of your work and then six of us are selected.”
There are around 25 stages in the hand binding of a book and by the end of the project, the binder will have spent around 150 hours on the work. The challenge for the binders on the Booker project is that they have to read, design and produce a hand bound fine binding in the short period between the shortlist announcement and the award ceremony. “Normally this sort of binding would take a few months to complete. In this case it is a few weeks – so that’s quite a difference,” says Malkin. “What happens is that the Booker send us a copy of the book – a paperback copy and specially printed notes. We are working with the raw copy – we fold them and trim them and put them together and bind them.”
The shortlisted book that Malkin has created the special binding for is Orbital by Samantha Harvey. The novel tells the story of six astronauts rotating above the earth in their spacecraft who come to understand and value their home planet better, and feel its pull, as they observe it from afar. “I was quite lucky because that was the book I wanted to do – it was my first choice,” says Malkin. “You can express a preference but there are no guarantees. I was really interested in the subject matter and I think because of that I found that coming up with the idea for the design took the least amount of time. Thinking about what would suit the book only took me a couple of days and then it was around five weeks in all to complete the work.”
Malkin set up as a professional bookbinder back in 2008 after having previously worked as a management consultant. It was quite a career change. “I wanted to do something more creative,” he explains. “I had never done any bookbinding before but I knew straight away after the very first course I went on in April 2007 that I had found what I wanted to do. It was a real moment of inspiration.” He didn’t waste any time – nine months later he founded his business Signature Bindings. He has a log cabin at the bottom of the garden at his home in Hornsea where he does all his work. “I am fortunate to be in the position now to pick and choose what I do a bit,” he says. “What I really enjoy is the design side and special projects.”
He also runs regular monthly workshops. “I enjoy teaching and there are so many people within the book binding community who have helped me with advice and support over the years that I feel a responsibility to feed back into the community,” he says. “We need more people to get into it because it is one of the traditional heritage crafts that might disappear otherwise.” The good news is that there does seem to be a lot of interest, his courses fill up very quickly.
“When I read about how the number of bookstores is increasing, particularly independent bookshops, I feel more optimistic,” he says. “I think people like to own books as objects. With design book bindings such as the Booker one, it is on the cusp of an artwork and a book. It is nice to look at and handle, as well as to read.”
The winner of the 2024 Booker Prize will be announced at a ceremony at Old Billingsgate in London tomorrow (November 12). For more information about Glenn Malkin visit signaturebindings.co.uk