Bear Scratch Press
About Bear Scratch Press
Bear Scratch Press is UM's book arts studio. In conjunction with the UM Press, Art department, and Creative Writing department, UM offers Book Arts courses in which students can learn skills to operate the mechanical press, print their own broadsides, and learn the history of the literary art form.
Our first press, brought into its new home in Schreiber Gym, was the 1936 Hacker Test Press. It is a hand cranked press with an optional motor that was used to produce some of Peter Koch's finest work, including the Lost Journals of Sacajawea, a collaboration with UM's own Debra Earling.
On the Hacker and our other presses, a 1957 Vandercook SP-20 and a 1961 Vandercook SP-15, students of the Book Arts program have collaborated with local artists and visiting authors alike to create unique works of art.
Bear Scratch Press is also home to the Montana Institute for the Book Arts (MIBA), a new program that brings renowned artists and book lovers from all over the country to teach and learn in Western Montana.
The first session of MIBA 2026 will take place on campus, in the Bear Scratch Press studio. The second session will be held at the Flathead Lake Biological Station, a historic University-owned lodge.
Make sure to check out the Montana Institute for the Book Arts page below for updates and a list of our visiting artists.
Who's Who at Bear Scratch Press?
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Head printer and founder of Bear Scratch Press, David also founded Eastern Oregon University's basalt magazine. He is the author of ten collections of poetry, mostly recently, Skiing with Dostoevsky: New & Selected Poems, published in spring 2024 by Lynx House Press. He is also the author of two collections of nonfiction; most recently, The Eclipse I Call Father: Essays on Absence (Oregon State University Press, 2019).
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Alexandra Ore grew up between northern Colorado and southwestern Montana and received her MFA in fiction from UM in 2023. She is the print assistant for Bear Scratch Press.
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Erin O'Regan White is a printmaker and writer from Missoula. She was a student of the inaugural Book Arts Practicum at Bear Scratch Press in 2023 while working towards her MFA in poetry and has been a print and teaching assistant since 2024. Erin was the 2022-23 editor-in-chief of CutBank, UM's graduate literary magazine, and she won the 2024 Merriam-Frontier Prize. Her writing can be found in Outskirts Literary Journal, Deep Wild Journal, and Ragaire Literary Magazine, amongst others, and is forthcoming in The End of Solitude: A Montana Anthology and the Literary Field Guide to the Rocky Mountains. Erin is also the Development Writer at the University of Montana Foundation.
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Robert Stubblefield is the UM Press Director and Director of the BFA in Creative Writing. He teaches Creative Writing fiction and nonfiction and is the faculty advisor for The Oval, the undergraduate literary magazine at the University of Montana.
Left to right: Erin, David, Alexandra.