Varamo Press embraces the unexpected and values the arbitrary circumstances in which writing comes into being. Snatching, wording, printing, it gives a paper form to various kinds of literature that have a fleeting life elsewhere.

Varamo Press is an artist-run, independent publishing house founded in 2018 by Mette Edvardsen and Jeroen Peeters. It takes inspiration from César Aira’s character Varamo, a clerk whose chance encounter with a trio of publishers in a bar inspires an unlikely collaboration that yields a masterpiece of experimental literature. ‘The time had come to reap the benefits of his inveterate, impractical habit of holding on to every piece of paper that came into his possession. He need only copy his notes out, string them together somehow, and allow them to form a book.’

In 2022 Varamo Press launched the series Gestures, small format books that come with a grey cover and a unified design. The series experiments with the essay genre and provides a platform for shorter texts we’d like to make available for wider readership and unexpected encounters. Gestures include commissioned essays as well as translations, reformulations and yet other alternative editions of existing material.

Each book having its own mind and gravity, Varamo Press develops publications on a case-by-case basis with the care they require. We collaborate with various partners to produce and distribute our books. The income from book sales is invested in future publication projects.

Mette Edvardsen and Jeroen Peeters are the editorial team, assisted by regular collaborators working behind the scenes on graphic design, copy-editing, website, distribution and administration: Michaël Bussaer, Patrick Lennon, Cillian O’Neill, Heiko Gölzer, Hedvig Bergem Søiland and Norma Traversini.