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Chapbooks

The Foundry has produced a variety of written projects, most of which were done in the form of chapbooks. A chapbook is, according to Webster's Third New International Dictionary, is a small book or pamphlet of a kind formerly sold by chapmen containing popular tales, treatises, ballads, or nursery rhymes. A chapman was a merchant, trader, peddler or hawker of an itinerant nature, from ceapman (Old English) meaning trade (more at cheap) and man. 

The Foundry's main written projects have been the Yellow Snow Chapbooks. The Yellow Snow Literary Group was begun as a "serious joke," a kind of humourous rival to Black Ice Books, a publisher of some rather interesting material. It was the perception among certain parties that the Black Ice folk took themselves a bit too seriously, something frequently observed in the avant garde art world. Much discussion took place and a course of action was arrived at. On the night of a Black Ice signing and party at a local bookstore a group of conspirators arrived with the first Yellow Snow chapbook in hand and name tags sporting the moniker "Anon." A chilly reception ensued and Yellow Snow was off and running.

Black Ice, Yellow Snow, just a play on words, but it has provided an avenue for many different creative ideas, and so has taken on a life of its own, enduring long after the single event for which it was conceived. Yellow Snow has produced nearly a score of chapbooks since its inception, with more projects brewing. Michael's collaborators include Larry Mori and Charles Browning, among others.

What follows is a list of titles for every chapbook produced thus far, even several done before Yellow Snow came into being. More information will be added shortly, and some of the chapbooks will be posted in 2015.

  • The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
  • Ys01 ...one of our airheads is missing
  • Ys02 Incredibly Strange...
  • Ys02a StrangePrisoners
  • Ys03 Physical Geology
  • Ys04 X's Disease
  • Ys05 Capsule
  • Ys06 Quake of all of me
  • Ys07 Sunday
  • Ys08 The Yellow Snow Colouring Book
  • Ys09 Dairy No. 1
  • Ys10 What is the smallest letter?
  • Ys11 Theseus & Ariadne/Labyrinth
  • Ys12 World Service Dada
  • Ys13 The Nadir
  • Ys14 Dadamasna
  • Ys15a Young Master Organization
  • Ys15b texts to accompany Young Master Organization
  • Ys16 Baba Yaga