Northampton Book and Book Arts Fair Scheduled for Dec. 2-3
Northampton, Massachusetts - The region’s leading used & antiquarian booksellers and fine letterpress printers, book binders, paper makers, and artist book makers will be showcased at the second edition of Northampton Book and Book Arts Fair on Friday, December 2, 2016, 5 to 9 pm and Saturday, December 3, 2016, 10 am to 5 pm at the Smith College Campus Center.
In addition to an exhibition and sale, the fair will feature a keynote address on December 2nd at 4 pm by Ruth R. Rogers, Curator of Special Collections in the Wellesley College Library. Rogers will talk on Layers of Perception: The Unwritten Language of Artists’ Books at the Smith College Nielson Library Browsing Room. An opening reception will follow at the Campus Center Wilson Atrium.
On December 3rd, Readers and Writers, Live will feature a day-long series of readings, talks and book signings by fiction writers, graphic novelists, poets, children’s book writers & illustrators, publishing and culinary historians, and independent publishers. There will be demonstrations of letter carving & displays of other books arts, including hand papermaking, custom bookbinding, and letter press printing.
For more information, go to: www.northamptonbookfair.com
Keynote Talk: Friday, December 2, 4 to 5 pm at Smith College, Nielson Library, Browsing Room Ruth A. Rogers: Layers of Perception: The Unwritten Language of Artists’ Books.
Rogers’s talk will focus on how we “read” artists’ books by deconstructing them to understand how they affect our perception. Rogers says she, “will examine the contemporary artist book as provocateur and siren, offering multiple modes of reading--through text and image, and material and form. Book historian Roger Chartier has emphasized that our understanding of a text is mediated through complex paratexts: physical form, language, typography, image, and cultural nuance. At a time when the dissociation of text and physical book is rapidly expanding through digital media, artists’ books continue to engage the reader’s senses in ways that are both ancient and novel: meditative, haptic, and associative.”
Ruth R. Rogers is Curator of Special Collections in the Wellesley College Library where she develops the collection and lectures on the evolution of the book as material culture, visual communication, and artistic form. Her interests include the critical reading of artists' books and their research potential in the academic curriculum, and she has curated several national exhibitions, including Seductive Alchemy:
Books by Artists. March 24-April 15, 2016, Lesley University College of Art and Design, March 2016, "Reading with the Senses." In May 2016, Rogers delivered the Arthur P. Williams Lecture at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia.
Readers and Writers, Live! - Saturday, December 3, 10am - 5 pm at Smith College Campus Center and The Poetry Center at Wright Hall
A day-long series of readings, talks and book signings by fiction writers, graphic novelists, poets, children’s book writers & illustrators, publishing and culinary historians, and independent publishers. There will be demonstrations of letter carving & displays of other books arts, including hand papermaking, custom bookbinding, and letter press printing.
10am: Some of the Pioneer Valley’s most celebrated children’s book writers and illustrators will be reading from and signing their new books, including: Mordicai Gerstein, The Sleeping Gypsy (Holiday House) and I Am Peter Pan (Roaring Brook Press) Richard Michelson, Fascinating: The Life of Leonard Nimoy (Knopf Books for Young Readers) Leslea Newman, Ketzel, the Cat Who Composed (Candlewick Press) Jane Yolen, On Bird Hill, illustrated by Bob Marstall (Cornell Laboratory Publishing Group)
11am: Novelist John Crowley, of Conway, will read from Chemical Wedding by Chrstian Rosencrentz, a November release from Small Beer Press, of Easthampton.
Noon: Antiquarian bookseller and Culinary Historian Tom Nealon, of Roslindale, MA, will read from his first book: Food Fights and Culture Wars: A Secret History of Taste, published by the British Library and Overlook Press.
1pm: Children’s book historian Leonard Marcus, of Brooklyn, NY, will talk about his new book: Comics Confidential: Thirteen Graphic Novelists Talk Story, Craft and Life Outside the Box, just published by Candlewick Press, in a panel discussion with graphic novelists.
2pm: Paris Press publisher and poet Jan Freeman, of Ashfield will read from her new collection Blue Structure, just published by Calpyso Editions.
3pm: Jedediah Berry and Emily Houk, Editors of Nine Pin Press, of Amherst, MA and Catskill, NY will introduce contributors for a tasting menu of micro-readings from their first two publications: The Family Arcana , a story published in the form of a poker deck and Cosmogram, an anthology of horoscope stories.
The fair is produced by Book Arts Promotions, in association with community sponsors Smith College Libraries and the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Media sponsors are: New England Public Radio and the Valley Advocate. Book Arts Promotions, based in Shelburne Falls, is a collaboration between Mark Brumberg, of Boomerang Booksellers and Duane A. Stevens, of Wiggins Fine Books.
For more information, go to: http://northamptonbookfair.com
