Earlier this year, we had the pleasure of visiting Ulysses Rare Books in Dublin, Ireland. We were so thrilled to see some of the most interesting rare first editions of the most significant works of Irish literature in the shop, from those of W.B. Yeats to James Joyce to Seamus Heaney. We were lucky enough to learn a bit more through an interview with one of the shop’s co-owners, Aisling Cunningham, who runs the bookstore with her brother, David.
Gary Ackerman is the current President of the Book Club of Washington. A self-proclaimed fan of used bookstores, Gary's collecting interests are varied: his personal collections range from art and architecture to golf to Ludwig Bemelmans. With the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair right around the corner (October 14-15), Gary generously shared his collecting insight and gave us a great look at the Book Club of Washington in the following interview.
Heavenly Monkey is set to release its latest fine press publication: Aurora Teardrops. The book—a collection of poems by legendary musician Harold Budd and batik paintings by artist Jane Maru—has been in production for over two years, but the collaboration between author and illustrator is something that’s existed for longer still. Indeed, the entirety of Aurora Teardrops proves to be the perfect melding of different parts—each shining bright on its own but glowing when combined.
Rollin Milroy and Heavenly Monkey worked closely with Harold and Jane to hone the overall concept and ensure the final product was the right combination of materials, methods, and presentation. Both Harold and Jane were kind enough to sit down and answer some questions about Aurora Teardrops, their work as individuals, and their collaborative efforts. We hope you enjoy this extra insight into a truly phenomenal work. As a limited edition, we’d encourage you to reserve your copy today.
There’s an exciting new project at the University of Virginia that highlights the significance of the book as a physical object and the individual histories of library books. At a moment in which the physicality of university libraries (and others across the country) are under threat of depletion due to the looming presence of the electronic text, we couldn’t imagine a more compelling project than Book Traces. It’s a crowd-sourced web project sponsored by NINES at the University of Virginia, and it’s led by Andrew Stauffer, a professor of 19th-century literature at UVA. We had a chance to catch up with Professor Stauffer to ask some questions about the origins, current uses, and futures of Book Traces.
When you think of a brewer, you don’t normally associate him or her with a sparkling literary career. But when you think of a brewer, you may not think of Brooklyn Brewery's brewmaster and author Garrett Oliver either.
For Oliver, beer is something more than a fizzy, alcoholic beverage we pull from the back of the fridge after a hard day at the office, or something we guzzle on Sunday afternoons while watching our team battle it out against a rival opponent. Beer is his life’s work and the subject of numerous essays, articles, and two highly-regarded books on the history and styles of beer, The Brewmaster’s Table, in 2003, as well as the uber-comprehensive, encyclopedic The Oxford Companion to Beer in 2011.
The Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia has a fantastic dust jacket collection. We had the chance to talk with David Whitesell, a curator in the Special Collections library and faculty member at Rare Book School, about some of the many dust jackets the university owns and the significance of these items.
On the corner of Klapparstígur and Hverfisgata, located in the heart of downtown Reykjavík, sits the last remaining antiquarian bookstore in Iceland. Bókin, the bookstore itself, is located on the first floor, but the owner has more rooms upstairs with books that haven’t yet been shelved. Downstairs, the books are in order by genre...sort of. Sections include, for instance, “Poetry,” “Novels,” “Icelandic authors,” and even a nebulous portion entitled “Mixed books.” Upstairs, the texts have been placed as they’ve come in, and the book hunting becomes even more exciting. I happened to spot a number of first and early editions, in the original Icelandic, of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Halldór Laxness. In addition to books in Icelandic, the shop has a number of titles in English and Danish.
When setting out to tell a really great story, the saying goes ‘write what you know, write what you love.’Quaint as that adage may seem, noir writer Josh K. Stevens has made the most of it. Stevens, 33, has been an avid reader and advocate of crime fiction and devoted much of his late-teens and adult life to pursing his dreams of noir stardom while working a number of jobs to pay the rent, including that of an independent bookseller in his hometown of Woodstock, Illinois.
In 2004, Mark Eisner's edited bilingual collection of Pablo Neruda's poems, The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems, was published by City Lights. It has gone on to receive much acclaim, and indeed is the bestselling edition of Neruda's poetry in America. Eisner is currently at work on an important documentary on the late Chilean poet, The Poet's Calling. We had the opportunity to interview him about the process of editing and translating Neruda, as well as the work he has been doing on the documentary film that's currently in production.
We were fortunate enough to interview David Pascoe of Nawakum Press--a publisher of unique, handcrafted books. David has collaborated with an impressive group of writers and artists, including Barry Moser and Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Paul Muldoon. His books have been collected by many important institutions, including the Library of Congress, Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book Library, Stanford University's Cecil H. Green Library, Harvard University's Houghton Library, and many others. In this interview, David shares with us the story of Nawakum Press: its origins, inspirations, and notable collaborations.
