Press Play 2025

New York, NY, November 20, 2025—Pioneer Works is pleased to announce the sixth edition of Press Play, the organization’s annual weekend-long fair dedicated to books, independent publishers, records, art, ephemera, and vital conversations. Press Play 2025 will take place December 13–14, 2025, and will be held in conjunction with the closing weekend of Raúl de Nieves: In Light of Innocence and Tega Brain & Sam Lavigne: How To Get To Zero, as well as Pioneer Works’ monthly Second Sundays program, during which its current cohort of Visual Arts and Music Residents open their studios to the public.

Taking place in December, Press Play offers an alternative to both the fall’s major book-fair circuit and the city’s holiday-market landscape, centering artists and publishers working at the edges of contemporary culture.

This year’s edition will feature over 130 exhibitors, along with a full schedule of talks, readings, and workshops that highlight new approaches to publishing, listening, creating, and complaining about culture today. With curation led by Micaela Durand, Pioneer Works Associate Director of Publishing, this year’s program confronts the complexities of desire, from sadomasochism and online subcultures to loneliness, sex, and what it means to connect today. What happens when bodies and desires collide with technology and communion? Who gets to write about whom? How do we transform intimacy into art? In this new hellscape, what radical actions are possible?

The featured exhibitor for 2025 is Khajistan, an archive dedicated to overlooked and suppressed media from the Islamicate world. At Press Play, Khajistan will present a reading room featuring Karachi, After Midnight Vol. 1—drawn from a gay man’s blog in early 2000s Pakistan—and will debut Smut of the Middle World Vol. 1: Pakistan, a collection of banned erotic magazines from the 1960s–2000s. Khajistan will also release a limited-edition Khajistan x Press Play bag, produced exclusively for the fair.

Additional highlights include a zabuton-inspired lounge installation by Zabu, a special edition of the Press Play show paper by Gunk, a live broadcast of all programs by Montez Press Radio, and an early release of Broadcast Issue 03—Pioneer Works’ annual print publication—featuring Miranda July and Marshall Allen, rats in space and talking bees, Chris Kraus on girlhood, Catherine Lacey on useless photographs, and more.

Press Play 2025 is organized by Pioneer Works, whose publishing arm comprises Pioneer Works Press and Broadcast magazine. All programs will be free and open to the public on Sunday as part of Second Sundays. Saturday admission is ticketed; bundle options are available.

For the full schedule and most up-to-date details, please visit the Pioneer Works website.

About Publishing at Pioneer Works

At Pioneer Works, publishing is essential to artistic practice. Pioneer Works Press is PW’s award-winning imprint, dedicated to supporting pathbreaking work from leading artists and writers in contemporary culture. Broadcast is PW’s online magazine of arts and science, featuring essays, fiction, poetry, and prose from emerging and established writers across the disciplines. Through its imprint, magazine, and programming, PW aims to showcase and nurture the most urgent voices of our time. Joshua Jelly-Schapiro is Pioneer Works Director of Publishing. Micaela Durand, Associate Director of Publishing, serves as lead curator of Press Play.

About Pioneer Works

Pioneer Works (PW) is an artist and scientist-led 501(c)(3) nonprofit cultural center in Red Hook, Brooklyn that fosters innovative thinking through the visual and performing arts, technology, music, and science. PW provides visual and performing artists, musicians, scientists, technologists, community organizers, and educators with the resources and platform they need to expand their practices. PW’s approach encourages experimentation and empowers curious minds across diverse communities, knowledge bases, and frames of reference; in so doing, PW aims to accelerate culture through the free exchange of ideas and information for all.

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Press Contacts

Yume Murphy
Digital Marketing and Communications Manager,
Pioneer Works
press@pioneerworks.org

Allison Brainard
Associate Director, Cultural Counsel
Allison@culturalcounsel.com

Jane Drinkard
Senior Account Coordinator, Cultural Counsel
Jane@culturalcounsel.com

Lara Xenia Mashayekh
Account Coordinator, Cultural Counsel
Lara@culturalcounsel.com