National Collegiate Book-Collecting Contest Winners Announced
The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress and the Library’s Rare Book and Special Collections Division, along with the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America (ABAA) and the Fellowship of American Bibliographic Societies (FABS), have announced the winners of the National Collegiate Book-Collecting Contest. The organizations assumed leadership of the contest in 2010 with major support from the Jay I. Kislak Foundation.
Established in 2005 by Fine Books & Collections magazine to recognize outstanding book-collecting efforts by college and university students, the program aims to encourage young collectors to become accomplished bibliophiles. The magazine conducted the annual competition before turning over leadership to the new institutional partners.
The winners will receive their awards during a ceremony on Friday, Oct. 17, at 4:30 p.m. in the Montpelier Room, located on the sixth floor of the Library’s James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. The event is free and open to the public; no tickets or registration are required. The event includes remarks by writer Nicholas Basbanes, whose several books include "A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes and the Eternal Passion for Books" (1995). He currently is a columnist for Fine Books & Collections magazine.
The winners, and their areas of book-collecting, are:
?? First Prize: Katya Soll, University of Kansas, "Dictatorship, Recovery and Innovation: Contemporary Theater of the Southern Cone"
?? Second Prize: Hanna Kipnis King, Swarthmore College, "‘Plucked from a Holy Book’: Ashkenazim on the Margins"
?? Third Prize: Audrey Golden, University of Virginia, "Pablo Neruda and the Global Politics of Poetry"
Missouri native Katya Soll is a doctoral candidate in theater and Spanish at the University of Kansas. Her collection focuses on how theater has been a conduit through which citizens in South America’s Southern Cone have protested and recovered from dictatorship and oppression. Many parts of the collection were purchased during research trips to Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.
Hanna Kipnis King is a student at Swarthmore College and the winner of Swarthmore’s A. Edward Newton Book Collection Competition. Her collection deals with the disenfranchised members (transgender, bisexual, gay and lesbian) of the Ashkenazi Jewish community and how they have dealt with lack of acceptance within its culture and traditions.
Audrey Golden is a doctoral candidate and the first-prize winner of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia’s biennial Student Book-Collecting Contest. Her education in law led to her research in law and contemporary literature. The development of her collection was inspired by her previous appreciation of Neruda and his role as a leftist politician.
In 1815, the Library of Congress acquired the personal library of Thomas Jefferson, the basis of its future development. Later collectors such as Lessing J. Rosenwald, John Boyd Thacher and Otto H. Vollbehr, among many others, conveyed their book collections to the Library, where they are conserved and made available in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. More recently, the Library received the gift of the Jay I. Kislak Collection of rare books, manuscripts and other early American materials. The reconstructed library of Thomas Jefferson and selections from the Kislak collection are on view in the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building.
The Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (www.abaa.org) is a trade association of more than 450 professionals who specialize in fine and rare books and printed matter. Members are united in a passion for books and related material and are bound by a code of ethics.
The Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies (www.fabsbooks.org) is an association of collecting organizations whose mission is to communicate, share and support bibliocentric activities, experience and ideas among member clubs for mutual benefit and pleasure.
The Jay I. Kislak Foundation (www.kislakfoundation.org) is a nonprofit institution engaged in the collection, conservation, research and interpretation of rare books, manuscripts, maps and indigenous art and cultural artifacts of the Americas and other parts of the world. It exists to advance knowledge and understanding of cultures and history through its collections and programs.
The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds more than 158 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill and through its website at www.loc.gov.
The Library’s Center for the Book, established by Congress in 1977 to "stimulate public interest in books and reading," is a national force for reading and literacy promotion. A public-private partnership, it sponsors educational programs that reach readers of all ages through its affiliated state centers, collaborations with nonprofit reading-promotion partners and through the Young Readers Center and the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress. For more information, visit read.gov.
