Chris Fritton is a poet, printer, and fine artist, who has over two decades of experience writing, printing, and making his own books, in addition to collaborative efforts with other authors and artists. He is the former Studio Director of the Western New York Book Arts Center in Buffalo, NY, and has been a panelist to judge the New York Foundation on the Arts Fellowship in Drawing, Printmaking, and Book Arts (2014). He co-founded the highly-acclaimed Buffalo Small Press Book Fair with Kevin Thurston in 2007, and organized the fair solo from 2009-2016. Currently, Fritton is working on a long-term project called The Itinerant Printer, where he’s visited over 200 letterpress print shops throughout North America in ten years, covering over 150,000 miles and making over 50,000 prints on the road. He recently culminated the journey in an over-sized coffee table book featuring all the places, prints, and people from along the way.

As a former designer and printer for Mohawk Press at the Western New York Book Arts Center, Fritton was lucky enough to create gig posters for dozens of bands, including Sleater-Kinney, Waxahatchee, Dead Kennedys, Bonnie Prince Billy, Okkervil River, Wu Tang Clan, Ice Cube, Rasputina, Deerhoof, of Montreal, Mastodon, Dillinger Escape Plan, GWAR, Tegan and Sara, and First Aid Kit, as well as international events like the World Maker Faire. He has also had the good fortune to make work for artists like the eccentric Crispin Hellion Glover, and design a watch for the renowned Mr. Jones Watches in London.

Fritton has collaborated directly with influential American artist Richard Tuttle, Pulitzer Prize-winning poets Carl Dennis and Gregory Pardlo, esteemed printer Amos P. Kennedy Jr., and renowned type designer Richard Kegler. His books are in various collections throughout the U.S. including The Library of Congress, the Letterform Archive, The Ruth & Marvin Sackner Archive of Visual & Concrete Poetry, Fleet Library Special Collections at the Rhode Island School of Design, The Poetry Collection SUNY at Buffalo, University of Wisconsin at Madison Rare Books Collection, Special Collections at Houghton Library at Harvard University, Maryland Institute College of Art Special Collections at Decker Library, SMFA at Tufts Tisch Library, and the Jaffe Center for Book Arts at Florida Atlantic University Libraries.

He has been an artist-in-residence at Alfred University (2024) and AS220 in Providence, RI (2011), the Denbo Fellow at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center (2015), a TEDx Buffalo speaker (2017), a main presenter at Typecon (2019), the featured speaker at the 10th Annual Los Angeles Printers Fair, and an instructor/visiting artist/presenter at numerous institutions, including the Library of Congress, the Letterform Archive, the Penland School of Craft, MIAD, RISD, MICA, VCU and the School of Visual Concepts. Fritton has been featured in Uppercase magazine, Pressing Matters, Carrier Pigeon, and others. He holds a BA in Philosophy (1998), a BA in Poetics (2000), and a BA in Art History (2010) from SUNY at Buffalo, as well as an MA in Poetics from the University of Maine at Orono (2005).