The APHA conference program committee is pleased to announce that writer and journalist Alix Christie will be the keynote speaker at the American Printing History Association’s 40th annual conference: “Printing on the Hand Press & Beyond” to be held at RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection, Rochester NY, October 23–24. 

Ms. Christe’s debut novel, Gutenberg’s Apprentice  was published in September, 2014. For the past thirty years she has reported for newspapers in California and from Europe as a foreign correspondent, including the Washington Post, Guardian of London, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Salon.com. She currently reviews books and arts for The Economist. Early in her career she was trained as a letterpress printer at Yolla Bolly Press in California.

Jeffrey Groves has also confirmed as the conference plenary speaker. Dr. Groves is professor of literature and dean of the faculty at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. His interest in nineteenth-century American publishing led to his current work in letterpress printing, and he is the founder of the First-Floor Press at the Claremont Colleges Library. He will speak on his recent sabbatical work in building a replica of Isaiah Thomas’s wooden common press, based on the model at The American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass.

Conference excursions are planned for Wells College Book Arts Center and the Bixler Letter Foundry.

Proposals to speak are due by March 15, 2015. PDF