Hey! Have You Heard of hard liver?
I talked to Anita about hard liver, the beauty of print as process, and how putting work online can be its own kind of publishing.
hard liver is Anita’s way of proving you don’t need permission—or a saddle stitcher—to publish. Through her independent press-practice-process, she treats each project like it matters, showing that anything can be a book if you hold it with care.
I’m Anita. I’m based in Vancouver, though I’ve moved around a lot over the years. I work in independent publishing, spend my days with books, and keep a personal library I love to share.
My work is research-driven and process-focused. I’m less interested in outcomes than I am in the connections made along the way. After years of doing very specific things in the art world, I’ve learned that everything eventually becomes something, whether you plan for it or not.
On Starting hard liver
My background is in fine arts—I studied Interdisciplinary Arts at university, with a focus on book arts and fashion, which is definitely not a traditional combination. But I was able to bring elements of bookmaking into my fashion work, and clearly that led somewhere, because I ended up working in corporate fashion for many years (though I don’t anymore).
Books have always been part of my life. I did my first hand-bound book project when I was 16—my high school art teacher was a bookbinder, so I got an early peek into that world. From there, it snowballed. I studied bookbinding in university, did a lot of hand-binding projects, and that became a core part of my creative practice. Paired with the fact that I’ve always loved to read—I was that kid who always had a book at the dinner table, in the car, everywhere—it makes sense that books became such a constant throughline.
As for hard liver, I think the seeds of it were always there, even if I didn’t have the name yet. I’d been circling around the idea for a while. Then, in the summer of 2023, I went to Mexico City with two friends, and they gave me an ultimatum: before we left the airport, I had to tell them what I was going to call it. They were like, “You can’t let the name be the thing that stops you.”
At one point during the trip, we visited a library, and I spent the afternoon pulling every book I could find by or about this Mexican conceptual artist I love, Ulises Carrión. I wasn’t even thinking about the name anymore—I was just following this self-guided research trail. And then I came across a scanned letter in one of the books. In it, there was this line: “Hard worker, hard lover.” I lifted hard liver from that.
It felt right. Some people hear it and think of a medical condition, but to me, it’s about how you move through life—with intensity, with heart. That name was the little push I needed. For whatever reason, once I had that title, I felt like I could actually share what I’d been working on with more intention.
On What Drew Her to Independent Publishing
For me, it started with the love of reading—taking in stories, narratives, information—and pairing that with the craft side: actually making books. I loved the idea of physically constructing the thing I cared about, whether it was a journal, a notebook, or something else. Those two things just clicked.
Then I started learning about artists whose medium is the book—not writers, necessarily, but artists who make books as their art form. That opened up a whole new world for me. I realized that this thing I loved wasn’t just a quirky combo—it had a name, a lineage, a place in the art world. It wasn’t “I’m a painter” or “I’m a photographer,” labels people immediately understand. Saying you make books tends to confuse people. They’re like, “Oh, so you write?” And I’m like, “No. Never wanted to.”
Learning more about book arts gave me the language to talk about my work—not just internally, but in a way that made sense to others. And discovering that publishing could be done independently was huge. I could’ve gone the route of working at a big art publishing house like Taschen or Rizzoli, but I was never interested in that kind of commercial path. What really moved me was realizing that artists and collectives were making and distributing work themselves. That felt exciting. Special. Like, oh—anyone can do this. I can do this.
On Letting Materials Decide the Method
One of the biggest things I always come back to is how something feels. People will come to me and say, “I want to make a big 12-by-12-inch book,” and I’ll ask, “Okay, but why?” Is it about taking up space? Being eye-catching? Wanting it to feel monumental wherever it ends up? I think those emotional and tactile intentions matter just as much as the object itself.
So much of my process is research—gathering references, collecting ideas, letting myself be informed by what already exists—and then figuring out what actually makes the most sense for this idea. Sometimes, it turns out the idea doesn’t even want to be a book. Maybe it should be a stack of prints. Maybe it should be tiny. Maybe it’s audio, or a sculpture. That’s what I love: not forcing it, but letting the concept guide the form. I never want to start with “I want to make a book” and stop there. I always want to ask—why?
On Form as Feeling
I think there’s a pretty fixed perception around what a “book” is supposed to be, especially when it comes to visual creators. Like, photographers often default to thinking their work should live in these beautiful, glossy photo books on heavy paper. And that’s totally valid, but I’m more interested in breaking open those assumptions.
I remember talking to a photographer who only identified as that—a photographer—and I thought, that feels like such a missed opportunity. Because yes, you take photos, but that doesn’t mean your work only gets to exist in one format. You don’t have to make a photo book to share your ideas.
People don’t know what they don’t know, right? So much of what I care about is helping people see new possibilities—connecting new dots they didn’t even know were there. If I can share what I’ve learned in a way that helps someone realize their own vision more clearly, that’s the part I love most.
On How Scale Alters Intention
Working on a smaller scale lets me be more intentional with what I’m making—whether it ends up being a book or something else entirely. The size of a project can really shape what you’re able to say or explore. Most of the collaborations I’ve done have had editions capped at around 300, which is actually a lot for me. I’ve also done runs of just five, and of course, something that small means I can do more by hand, which I love. Even 300 is still considered a small run in the broader publishing world, but it’s big for what I do.
There’s something really satisfying about knowing who has a copy—like, where the work ends up living. It’s kind of twofold. Zines and print culture are meant to be accessible, and I really resonate with that. But at the same time, I don’t feel the need to produce something at mass scale. It’s just too big—it doesn’t feel necessary. Small runs feel more human.
On Fleeting Forms with Lasting Stories
I think there’s a really interesting relationship between the temporality and the almost permanence of paper. Like, yes, something like a flyer or a movie ticket is made for a specific moment, but once it’s removed from that original context, it becomes something else. People save these things—parents, grandparents—little memory boxes, drawers full of paper bits. They weren’t meant to last, but they do. And over time, they start to tell a different story.
What I find most compelling is how, as a removed observer, you can still connect dots and build a narrative from someone’s ephemera. It’s like looking at someone’s closet and getting a sense of who they are, just through what they’ve held onto. A collection of paper can offer the same glimpse—it’s just another way of knowing a person.
And I think another really cool thing, especially when you brought up the digital reference, is that so many printed ephemera have these little time stamps—dates, locations, moments captured in ink. They’re so specific to a moment, and yet they can move through time and take on new meaning. The context shifts, and suddenly it’s not just about the original event anymore—it becomes part of a bigger story.
As more of our lives move online, I think the physicality of ephemera becomes even more important. People think of paper as fleeting, but in a lot of ways, digital things disappear faster. Like, you try to revisit a website, and it’s just gone. But with physical things, they stay. You can carry them with you through time. That endurance makes them feel even more special.
On The Gentle Persistence of Print
I think a big misconception people have—and some have even said this to me directly—is that because I care deeply about print and tangible formats, I must be anti-digital or resistant to things like AI. But that’s just not true. Liking one doesn’t mean I’m rejecting the other. Physical and digital formats will never be one-to-one. They’re fundamentally different.
Take a book, for example. The physical version holds certain weight—literally and figuratively. But online, that same book might be represented by a product image, maybe a little flip-through video if the website’s fancy, and a description. That’s not the same thing, but it is a version of the same object made to work in a digital space.
So the question isn’t whether one is better. It’s: how do we let things live in both places, in ways that make sense? How do those representations shift over time? What does the digital version look like now compared to ten years ago?
For me, print will always be a constant. I don’t think it’s going anywhere. If anything, digital is the variable—it’s the thing that moves around and adapts to the physical, not the other way around. I’m not interested in pitting them against each other. They’re not interchangeable. They’re just different. And both matter.
On Digital Intimacy on TikTok
I spent a lot of time in denial about sharing on the internet the way I do now. For years, I was mostly observing and consuming. I probably wasn’t ready to share—at least not in the way that feels natural to me now. But over time, I gathered enough information about myself, about how things work, and about others. And I finally reached a point where I felt ready.
Sharing anything takes vulnerability. Sharing consistently, on any kind of platform, takes care and responsibility. I don’t think that gets talked about enough. It’s not easy to put yourself out there and be perceived. That anxiety? It usually just means you care. You want your intention to be understood the way you meant it.
Something I’ve been learning is to give myself the validity of like—girl, you know a lot. And you know a lot because you’ve put in the work. So why keep waiting until something feels perfectly ready to share? I’d rather put it out there, stay open, and let new feedback or information inform what comes next. That’s still part of the process. That’s still research. That’s still care.
As for the behind-the-scenes of my own process, I try to be as transparent and grounded as I can. I’m actually very Type A, very Virgo, very much someone who wants to control everything. So I’ve had to unlearn some of that—let go of the script, post the one-take, trust that it’s enough. Embracing all of that has made sharing feel more possible and more like me.
On The Process as the Point
What I’ve realized about myself through all my time creating is that I care so much less about the final product than I used to. I’m not really outcome-oriented. If someone told me I needed to spend a year working on something and then it didn’t work out, I’ve reached a point where I can honestly say—I don’t really mind. I’m invested in the process. What happens up to that point, what you learn, what takes shape along the way—that’s what matters most to me.
So when people ask how I know when something’s ready to share, I don’t always have an answer. I don’t think there has to be a neat finish line. I think it’s important to share the process itself. Sometimes it’s just a feeling. Like—okay, this is where it’s at.
On Leaving a Trace
A core idea in my work—especially when it comes to creating tangible, printed materials—is this concept of autonomous artifacts. On a more conceptual level, I think of publishing as the act of making information public. That could be visual, textual, a compilation of references—whatever form it takes, publishing is about sharing.
And when you look at history, so many things have been taken out of context. People’s work has been misinterpreted or repurposed in ways that strip it of its original meaning. That’s part of why creating something tangible now feels so important to me. When you self-publish, you're able to put something into the world with intention—to give it context, to claim authorship in a way that’s grounded in the present.
Of course, you can’t control how something will be viewed 50 or 300 years from now. But you can create an artifact that speaks clearly to this moment. Something that’s yours—autonomous, self-defined, and rooted in now.
On Publishing Without Permission
There are so many forms books can take, but I think a lot of people just don’t know what’s out there. That’s where imagination comes in. Like, maybe you see some medieval leather-bound book and think, okay, that’s not for me—but there’s something in the structure or technique that can be reimagined with different materials or for a totally different idea. That’s why research and referencing are so important. You don’t know what you don’t know—but once you start digging, the options open up.
And sometimes the answer is really simple. Maybe the right form for your idea is just a stack of paper held together with a binder clip. Maybe it’s one hole punched through and held on a key ring. That still counts. That’s still binding. I think the fun part is learning the rules so you can break them—and then realizing there are a million ways to put paper together. It’s just about exploring until something clicks.
On Design Beyond the Default
When it comes to more conceptual designs, I think because of the research and references I hold in my brain, it doesn’t feel that experimental to me. But I get that for a lot of people, it might seem new or different, mostly because they just haven’t seen it before or tried it themselves. It’s not radical in the context of artist books or the history of publishing. People have done really cool things for decades—it’s just that not everyone knows to look for them.
It’s kind of like music. If you grow up only hearing what’s on the radio, you might think that’s the full extent of what music is. But then you stumble into something more alternative, and suddenly your whole palette expands. You discover an artist you love, or a genre you didn’t know existed. That’s what I hope conceptual design can feel like for people—it’s not about reinventing the wheel, it’s just about stepping outside the default and realizing there’s a whole other world to explore. You just have to tune into a different frequency.
On Letting the Self Shift
I think over the last few years, I’ve really focused on working with others—helping shape their narratives, their stories, whatever they’re trying to bring into the world. And that’s been really rewarding. But I do feel like, at least in book form, I haven’t had the space—or maybe the whatever—to make something for myself. It’s been on my mind more lately. I think a lot of my thoughts are showing up in different mediums right now, like through sharing online in small ways. But yeah… you kind of calling me in here, because you’re right—I’ve been meaning to make something, and I just… haven’t yet.
That said, one of the most important things I’m learning is giving myself the affordance to know that no single format is the only thing that defines me. If I spend the next five years making things, connecting with people, and sharing ideas—and none of that happens to be in book form—that doesn’t mean I don’t love books. Or that I’ve abandoned what I know or care about. It just means I’m letting ideas take the shape they need to, in the moment they’re ready.
I don’t want to feel like I have to prove I’m still in it—like, “Oh no, I still read, I still bind, I still care!” My version of authentic sharing includes the possibility that maybe I don’t want to do things the same way anymore. Maybe I want to start cooking. And I should be able to do that without it needing to be a whole identity shift. Obviously, it’s a privilege to have that kind of space—but right now, I do have a little more room than I’ve had in the past. And I’m trying to trust myself enough to use it.
On Everything Mattering Eventually
If I had to sum it all up, it’s this: everything matters. Like, truly—every experience, every interest, every detour can end up connecting to something else, whether that’s today, or five years from now. Even if it doesn’t make sense in the moment, there’s often this serendipitous feeling that shows up later, when something clicks into place. And sometimes… it’s just not meant to click right now. And that’s okay.
On Kindred Spirits Through a Screen
I’ve always liked to believe that there are people out there—like, kindred spirits kind of vibe. And I’ve felt that through Instagram for years. I’ve made so many internet friends who became real-life connections, people I’ve met while traveling, people who made new places feel less unfamiliar. That kind of connection always felt more social.
But with TikTok—ironically, a platform I swore I’d never use because I thought I was too old or whatever—I’ve found something different. I’m honestly an advocate now. The algorithm has surprisingly worked in my favor, helping me connect with people who are also looking for something. Sharing ideas, interests, even feelings—it’s shown me that the world I always hoped existed kind of… does.
It’s validated this sense I’ve always had that those invisible threads of connection are closer than we think. People really are out there, looking for alternative ways to connect, to share, to feel seen. And if you’re willing to put yourself out there—even just a little—you might find exactly what you didn’t know you were looking for. And that’s kind of beautiful.
On Putting Memory Back Where It Belongs
The sentimental part of me would want to give something back to my grandparents. There’s this one photo of my mom’s parents—my grandfather passed away when she was seven, so I never met him—and it’s one of the only photographs that exists of them together. It’s been passed around the family for years. At one point, I had it because I was scanning and digitizing old family photos, and eventually I framed it for my mom to keep in her home.
But I always think about how powerful it would be to give that photo back to them—to hang it in the home they built together, the one that’s since been gentrified and torn down. That image, returned to its original context. It feels like a movie scene, right? But also like the perfect example of what a tangible artifact can hold. We have it now as an object of memory, but imagining it placed where it was always meant to be—that would be really beautiful.
On How Hope Moves Between Strangers
Honestly, I think we forget to ask each other the simplest things—like how are you, really? or what’s been on your mind? Most people are just waiting for an opportunity to share something personal, something meaningful. But it’s a two-way street. You have to ask in order to receive. You have to offer something up before someone might feel safe enough to meet you there.
One-to-one connection—taking that extra moment to say, I thought about you, or this reminded me of you, maybe it’ll mean something to you too—that goes such a long way. And we miss the plot when we underestimate what that can feel like. Sometimes it’s as simple as just being open, just saying yes. If you feel disconnected, it’s worth asking yourself gently: Did I try? Putting yourself out there looks different for everyone, but connection is often just one small step away.
Even the tiniest moments matter. Like being at the grocery store, and a stranger recommends something they love. Suddenly, your day feels lighter. You feel more grounded, more hopeful. Those small acts—little bridges—are everything.
You can find hard liver on Instagram, TikTok, and the web. River—a very cool digital diary—is also worth a follow, both on Instagram and online.
You can keep up with me on Instagram. P.S. A v fun announcement is coming Monday!!