OctoberWorks is the product of collaboration between Jeanne Criscola and Deborah Cannarella, long-time colleagues who met while working for the Taunton Press, in Newtown, Connecticut, a publisher known for its high-quality, illustrated books and magazines about skilled artisan craft.
Criscola and Cannarella established OctoberWorks in 2000, making use of emerging technologies to publish and produce works by a diverse range of artists and writers. With the benefit of extensive experience with both print-on-demand and conventional practices, the studio offers at full range of design and editorial services—from conceptual development and line editing to graphic design, production, and final delivery of digital and/or print editions.
Design
Jeanne Criscola has built her professional reputation by integrating her deep experience as a designer, artist, and educator. She collaborates with individuals and with international organizations on projects that feature both arts and culture and social justice initiatives. Her artworks, which have been exhibited internationally, take the form of the book, drawing, photography, moving image, installation, generative art, and performance. Jeanne's most high-profile publications and exhibitions are the many award-winning projects she has created for the Soros Foundations, one of which is in the Franklin Furnace collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
Jeanne's design practice, Criscola Design, LLC, works with many artists and authors to publish their works. Her initiative, Useless Press, was conceived to publish and distribute the works of artists, authors, and children as on-demand multiples. In 2016, Jeanne founded the Ely Center of Contemporary Art in New Haven, CT to continue the testamentary vision of Grace T. Ely for the John Slade Ely House Galleries in New Haven, CT. She co-founded Else Foundation, a global consortium of artists, scholars, and institutions publishing an occasional peer-reviewed journal of its creative research initiatives in experimental and alternative works, projects, and thematic research working with and in the space in-between.
Jeanne earned an MFA from Transart Institute, University of Danube, her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and an AS degree in Art from Endicott College.
Jeanne is an associate professor of Graphic/Information Design at Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, CT.
Editorial
Deborah Cannarella is a writer, editor, and translator. She has written and edited nonfiction books for adults and children, was editor of two national magazines and various nonprofit publications, and was editor and publications manager for museum exhibition catalogues. She has collaborated with scholars, artists, artisans, and writers to help them best articulate and present their ideas, their work, and their processes. She holds a BA in English literature from Boston University and an MFA from Columbia University in the City of New York in Nonfiction Writing and Literary Translation.
She received the 2014 nonfiction prize from Crazyhorse journal, and her essay/review of Short: An International Anthology of Short Prose, appeared in the fall 2015 issue of Italian Poetry Review.
