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2025 Conference

Celebrate printing history with APHA in San Francisco! Join us at our 50th annual conference for an engaging weekend filled with talks, tours, and in-person and virtual paper and panel presentations. Conference lectures and presentations will explore diverse private press legacies, from unsung San Francisco and California printers, the modern Chappel Movement and German typography, to specific small presses like the Allen Press of Lewis and Dorothy Allen, Mills College’s Eucalyptus Press, the Taller Martín Pescador in Mexico City, and Pazifische Presse’s anti-Holocaust work in Los Angeles. Other panelists and paper presenters will discuss descriptive bibliographies and fine press printing, women private press printers, leisure crafts and social theory, privately printed Black genealogies, Jack Stauffacher’s letterpress revival, anarchist printshop praxis, and European privately printed Bibles.

Questions? Please contact the APHA Conference Planning Committee at conference@printinghistory.org.

Registration   |    Conference Venues    |   Travel and Accommodations   |   Schedule  (COMING SOON)   |   Speakers and Presenters   |   Sponsors and Partners

Registration

Registration is now open and available on APHA’s secure payment page. Registration fees, which have been kept low to make the conference accessible to a wider audience, are set as follows: $65 for current APHA members and $85 for non-members; $35 for current student members and $45 for student non-members.

All registrants, whether in-person or virtual, will have access to live-streamed keynote talks and paper and panel presentations. Members may register up to two virtual guests at the member rate. Non-members may register an unlimited number of virtual guests at the non-member rate. Cancellations may be made through October 10. 

Conference registrants who are not current members are encouraged to join APHA ($60/year for individuals and $30/year for students) to take advantage of lower conference registration rates for members and to receive other membership benefits, like APHA’s semi-annual journal, Printing History, and access to local chapter events throughout the country.

To attend some of our in-person events in San Francisco, separate reservations will be required. Please register for the conference first, then head to the RSVP links to secure your in-person spots. This helps organizers make accurate arrangements with host venues. Keep in mind that in-person event registration may be limited for some events and venues.

Conference Venues

APHA’s primary venue for in-person panel and paper presentations will be the Special Collections & Archives department at the J. Paul Leonard Library of San Francisco State University.

Conference organizers will also draw from San Francisco’s rich cultural landscape, with tours, demonstrations and workshops to be scheduled at Arion Press, The Book Club of California, San Francisco Public Library’s Book Arts & Special Collections Department, San Francisco Center for the Book, Letterform Archive and other local venues. A complete schedule of events coming soon! 

Travel and Accommodations

San Francisco, our host city, is easily accessible via San Francisco International Airport (SFO), with additional regional options at Oakland (OAK) and San Jose (SJC) airports.

Conference organizers recommend staying in downtown San Francisco, particularly around Union Square. This location offers convenient access to public transportation, including Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) and Municipal Railway (Muni), and is within walking distance to most conference venues, including the Book Club of California, San Francisco Public Library, and the American Bookbinders Museum. San Francisco State University is easily accessible via the Muni “M” train  from downtown San Francisco (Montgomery, Powell and Civic Center stops) to the 19th Avenue & Holloway Avenue stop, which is two blocks from the university’s J. Paul Leonard Library. For detailed directions and information on all venues, please see the Eventbrite reservation links in the “Tours, Workshops and Other Events” section below.   

The primary conference venue, San Francisco State University, provides a comprehensive webpage for visitors featuring recommended local hotels (including several in downtown San Francisco), public transportation details, directions, parking information, and local dining suggestions.  

Schedule

COMING SOON! 

Lieberman Lecture and Opening Speaker

 

ALASTAIR JOHNSTON

Golden Slumbers: California’s Dormant Fine Press Scene 

IN-PERSON AND LIVE-STREAMED EVENT: Book Club of California, Thursday, Oct. 23, 6 pm PDT (preceded by an opening reception starting at 5 pm; space is limited, reserve to attend in person on this online form after registering for the conference)

Building on themes from his book, Dreaming on the Edge: Poets & Book Artists in California (Oak Knoll Press, 2016), Alastair Johnston explores overlooked figures in the history of printing in the Golden State. Johnston’s work was the first in 80 years to assess the impact of small and fine presses on the culture of California, challenging the long-held notion that the state’s printing was dominated by just three figures: John Henry Nash and Edwin and Robert Grabhorn. Johnston argues that it’s time to move past this “printerly atavism” to uncover a spirit of innovation and creativity that mirrors the pioneering drive of 19th-century railroad barons and 20th-century tech giants. For Johnston, a true fine press isn’t merely about good printing—that’s a given—but about being innovative, creative, and original.

Alastair Johnston co-founded Poltroon Press with artist Frances Butler in 1975. A prolific scholar, Johnston has compiled bibliographies for notable San Francisco small presses, including Auerhahn (1975), White Rabbit (1985), and Zephyrus Image (2003). His extensive published works include co-editing Nineteenth-century American Designers & Engravers of Type (Oak Knoll Press, 2009) with Stephen O. Saxe; conducting interviews for Hanging Quotes: Talking Book Arts, Poetry & Typography (Cuneiform Press/University of Houston, 2011); and authoring Typographical Tourists (2012) and Transitional Faces (2013), which details the lives of type-cutter Richard Austin and wood-engraver Richard Turner Austin. Johnston also translated Max Jacob’s Omnia Vanitas, Poems of Max Jacob (Thyrsus Press, 2018) and compiled and annotated the three-LP set Ngoma: the Soul of Congo (Planet Ilunga Records, 2023).

Closing Speakers

 

AMELIA GROUNDS & KATE LASTER

Bound Together: Printing Community and Identity in Contemporary Bookmaking

Building on our own experience as book makers, interpreters, collectors and stewards, we aim to contextualize the current boom of book making, printing, and dissemination with an eye to historical legacies of craft and community, especially that of the private press. There are a multiplicity of book and printing fairs and communities active in the Bay Area—zines, ephemera, print, art and fine press book fairs all flourish here—what does it mean to move between these communities as artists, collectors and curators? What do the nuances of language around our crafts of making and expressing through books and printing mean as we examine the legacy of the private press in the 21st century? Through conversation from both sides of making, collecting and curating, we will focus on themes of transmission and preservation alongside explorations of access, public(s) and how communities express and self-select as part of a rich, multi-variant book community.

Amelia Grounds is an Oakland-based librarian, writer and book person. She received a BA from Lawrence University, an MA in Medieval Studies from the University of York and an MA in Library and Information Studies from University College London, all of which focused on the art historical examination of book history. For the last twenty years she has worked to preserve, collect and contextualize books and archives in institutional collections. She is especially interested in the materiality and history of book making from manuscripts through to contemporary artists’ books and concrete poetry. Currently Grounds is the Head of Acquisitions and Collection Control for the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley.

Kate Laster (she/they) is an artist, educator and critical historian. Born in Anchorage, Alaska (Dena’ina land), Laster received a BA at Evergreen State College in 2015 and in 2019 she received a MA+MFA in History & Theory of Contemporary Art and Studio Art with an emphasis in Printmaking at San Francisco Art Institute. Laster has worked with Booklyn, Letterform Archive, and with her collaborator, Steph Kudisch, at Clear as Schmutz Press. Laster focuses on accessibility and dismantling structural inequity in the arts through donation-based art history classes, ranging from urgent political printmaking, environmental crisis, and the power of resistance towards cultural erasure. She also teaches at San Francisco Center for the Book, has been a studio assistant at Hospitality House’s Community Arts Program, and currently works at NIAD Art Center as a studio facilitator and personal support specialist. Laster’s agitprop artwork and cultural worker organizing has recently been featured in Hyperallergic, Hey Alma and KQED.

Tours, Workshops and Other Events

Panelists and Paper Presenters

 

PaMELA BARRIE

Theory of the Leisure Crafts: T.B. Veblen, William Morris, and the Meeting that Never Was

Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class saw publication in 1899—three years after the death of William Morris. What makes the timing more than coincidental is that Veblen pointedly included Morris’s Kelmscott books among his examples of “conspicuous waste”. Veblen’s critique is complicated by his admiration of Morris’s poetry and their shared interest in socialism and Norse literature—any or all of which may have spurred him to seek out Morris the summer of 1896. This paper investigates this unlikely meeting of minds and revisits Veblen’s argument with Arts and Crafts ideals—still relevant to the contemporary book arts.

Pamela Barrie teaches literature at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago, with emphasis on the relation of text and printed image. She has been a member of the Chicago book arts community for many years as a teacher, researcher and maker, issuing broadsides and chapbooks as Hellbach’s Press.

SAMANTHA CAIRO-TOBY

Private Presses at the Turn of the 20th Century in San Francisco: A Comparative Analysis

San Francisco has a rich history of both printing and bookselling. While most people are familiar with some of the later printers of the 20th century, there are some from the turn of the century that deserve to be re-examined and highlighted for their endeavors. This paper will focus on some of the bookseller-publishers working from 1880-1920 in San Francisco including: William Doxey, Elder & Shepard, H.S. Crocker, and A.M. Robertson; looking into their unique styles and the printers they used: Edward DeWitt Taylor, Charles A. Murdock, Stanley-Taylor Company and book designers such as Porter Garnett, Gelett Burgess, and John Henry Nash.

Samantha Cairo-Toby is a Special Collections librarian and archivist in the Book Arts & Special Collections department at the San Francisco Public Library. She specializes in the history of the book and cataloged the majority of the Library’s fine press collection. Cairo-Toby also directs the Library’s popular Halloween and Valentine Broadside Printing programs, where patrons experience printing on the historic Albion handpress. She is an active member of the Hand Bookbinders of California, the Guild of Book Workers, and Friends of Calligraphy, occasionally showcasing her work in historic bindings and scripts. Cairo-Toby holds an MA in Medieval Studies from Western Michigan University and an MLIS from Wayne State University.

ZAZILHA CRUZ

Letters in Flight: The Typographic Art of Taller Martín Pescador

This presentation aims to highlight the most relevant aspects of Taller Martín Pescador (TMP), a typographic publishing workshop led by Juan Pascoe, a former apprentice of Harry Duncan at the Cummington Press. Pascoe is one of Mexico’s most respected printers, with over fifty years of experience, widely regarded as a reference and inspiration for many in the field. TMP is known for creating handcrafted books and other printed materials, composed and printed by hand on special papers, in limited editions, with a strong emphasis on the recovery of traditional techniques and craftsmanship.

Zazilha Cruz holds a bachelor’s degree in Design and Visual Communication and a PhD in Arts and Design from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), as well as a master’s degree in Editorial Production from the Autonomous University of the State of Morelos (UAEM). She is a full-time Research Professor at the Interdisciplinary Research Center in Humanities (CIIHu), UAEM. Her work focuses on design and editorial production, with a particular interest in letterpress printing in 21st-century Mexico.

MEREDITH ELIASSEN

Paul Elder and Company: The Legacy of Letterpress Printing from ‘Les Jeunes’ o Come Out of Earthquake Country

This sequel to Eliassen’s online article from early 2024 will focus on the impact “Les Jeunes” (The Youth), a bohemian group driving the West Coast Arts and Crafts Movement before and after the 1906 earthquake and fire. Paul Elder and Company consolidated family-oriented literature in the stylistic evolution of local media with talent from local letterpresses to create vernacular Western reading material for younger readers in region and far beyond. Eliassen will also examine the economic recovery of Bay Area letterpress after 1906, Elder’s efforts to rebuild the printing community for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, and the stylistic evolution of youth reading material produced by presses including the Grabhorn Press and Adrian Wilson’s Press at Tuscany Alley.

Meredith Eliassen is special collections librarian and university archivist at San Francisco State University. She received her MSLIS from Simmons University in Boston and a BA from San Francisco State University in broadcast communications arts. Eliassen has an interest in local history, folklore, and design. She has also contributed to encyclopedias, including Encyclopedia of Women in American History (2002), Ideas and Movements that Shaped America (2015), and American Myths, Legends, and Tall Tales (2016). Eliassen is the author of Helen Keller: A Life in American History (2021) and San Francisco State University (2006).

PAMELA E. FOSTER

Publishing Ancestral Home: The Legacy of Privately Printed Black Genealogies

This paper will examine small, independently published Black genealogies as significant, yet often overlooked, artifacts in American printing history. Unlike commercially prominent works, these compact books—emerging from the 1800s and flourishing in the early 1900s—do not envision a world free of “isms” like racism or classism. Instead, they powerfully demonstrate how real individuals, in real times, transcended such challenges. Drawing on a content analysis of twenty-first-century examples, the presentation will reveal how these books, echoing early religious printing, primarily serve as vehicles for family-centric solace, edification, and identity.

Pamela E. Foster, PhD, specializes in Black genealogy books and the intersection of Black history with country music. She actively curates African-ancestored family heritage books, a particularly relevant endeavor as 2026 marks both the 50th anniversary of Alex Haley’s Roots and America’s 250th anniversary. Foster developed the Agapic Agency Theory of twenty-first-century African American genealogy books, and her research was featured in the Journal of Communication. She is also the author of four books, including an Episcopal church history, her own family’s heritage book, and My Country: The African Diaspora’s Country Music Heritage (1998).

SETH GOTTLIEB

The Pazifische Presse of Los Angeles: Fine Press Against the Holocaust

Founded in Los Angeles in 1942 by German Jewish refugees Felix Guggenheim and Ernst Gottlieb, the Pazifische Presse aimed to reclaim German culture from Nazi erasure through fine printing. Though its partnership with Saul Marks’s Platin Press is often a footnote, Pazifische Presse’s very existence, publishing eleven titles by exiled German writers, represents a significant, yet overlooked, legacy at the intersection of American book history and the Holocaust. The press ceased operations in 1948, its founders believing their mission complete after the Third Reich’s collapse.

Seth Gottlieb (no relation to Ernst Gottlieb) is a historian of technology focused on printing and the construction of knowledge. His research is motivated by an interest in exploring the complex relationships between people and the technologies the create and rely upon. He is currently the Collections Curator (contractor) at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

JERRY KELLY

Das Buch als Gesammtkunst (The Book as a Total Work of Art): The Private Press Work of Three 20th Century German Typographers, Rudolf Koch, Gotthard de Beauclair, and Hermann Zapf

This paper sheds light on the overlooked private press work of renowned 20th-century German typographers and designers: Rudolf Koch, Gotthard de Beauclair, and Hermann Zapf. While celebrated for their calligraphy, type design, and commercial book design, their private press ventures—such as Koch’s Rudolfinische Druck, de Beauclair’s Trajanus Presse, and Zapf’s Z-Presse—remain largely unknown. The presentation will explore the history, aesthetic achievements, influence, and business challenges of these neglected presses, also touching on related German private presses and their connections to San Francisco’s fine printing tradition, notably through the Grabhorn brothers and Jack Stauffacher.

Jerry Kelly is a calligrapher, book designer, and type designer. Before starting his own business in 1998, he was Vice President of The Stinehour Press and a designer at A. Colish. Since 1977 he has maintained a small fine-printing operation, The Kelly-Winterton Press. His book designs have been selected over thirty times for the AIGA “Fifty Books of the Year”, and he received the Goudy Award in 2015. Kelly has served as an officer and board trustee of the American Printing History Association and president of The Typophiles. He is the author of numerous articles and books on typography, including A Century for the Century (1999), The Fine Art of Letters: The Work of Hermann Zapf (2000), The Art of the Book in the 20th Century (2011), and The Noblest Roman: The Centaur Types (2015), co-authored with Misha Beletsky and winner of the 2016 Bibliographical Society of America Prize.

ROBIN S. KLAUS

Ink and Ideology: Anarchist Praxis and Gender Politics in the Stelton Printshop

In 1915, New York anarchists founded a commune in Stelton, New Jersey centered on the Modern School—the longest-running experiment in anarchist living and learning in U.S. history. Creative workshops, including a printshop, were core to its curriculum. This paper explores how the Stelton printshop served as a site of anarchist worldmaking. Using a digital humanities approach and an original database of the Voice of the Children magazine—a publication written, illustrated, and printed entirely by students—it analyzes anarchist childhood, gender politics, and social reproduction at the Modern School to demonstrate how students’ collaborative creative labor both enacted and challenged the values of the broader anarchist movement.

Robin S. Klaus, PhD, is an art historian specializing in late-19th- and early-20th-century print culture. She earned her doctorate degree from Duke University, where her research examined the intersection of anarchist politics, radical pedagogy, and children’s art within the Modern School movement in the United States. She currently works as assistant curator at the Asheville Art Museum and has curated exhibitions including Iron and Ink: Prints from America’s Machine Age (Asheville Art Museum, 2025) and Anarchism and the Political Art of “Les Temps Nouveaux” 1895-1914 (Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, 2019).

KAJA MARCZEWSKA

Making Visible: Private Press at UCL Special Collections

This paper details a current project at University College London (UCL) Special Collections to preserve and enhance the visibility of its private press holdings. It examines how historical collection policies influenced the management of these materials, focusing on efforts to identify publications held outside of Special Collections and their subsequent transfer. The presentation will discuss the impact of these changes on the care, discoverability, and use of these items in teaching and research, highlighting the complexities of managing private press legacies within institutional contexts and the challenges that this material poses to standard special collection policies and practices.

Kaja Marczewska, PhD, is the Rare Books Librarian at University College London, where she curates UCL’s expansive rare printed collections (1467 – present) and oversees all aspects of object-based teaching and learning at UCL’s Bloomsbury campus. The author of The Iterative Turn (2018) and co-editor of The Contemporary Small Press (2020), she has written extensively on experimental writing and small press publishing. Her work has been published by, among others, Edinburgh University Press, Bloomsbury, Full Stop, and Chicago Review. She is a member of editorial collective, information as material, a small, experimental publisher based in York, UK.

RONALD PATKUS

The Privately Printed Bible in Europe: A Preliminary Report

During the twentieth century, many private, fine press, and deluxe editions of biblical texts were published in Europe, but the scale and course of this trend is not well known. In this short paper I hope to give an overview of this activity and also offer some details about how it played out in certain places. My focus is on the texts that were selected, and the roles played by designers, illustrators, and printers.

Ronald Patkus is Head of the Archives & Special Collections Library and College Historian at Vassar College. He is also a member of the History Department, holding the Frederick Weyerhaeuser Endowed Chair in Biblical Literature and Bibliography. His teaching and research interests focus on the history of books and printing, and the history of Vassar. He has published bibliographies of the Thornwillow Press and the Red Hen Press. In 2017 his book The Privately Printed Bible: Private and Fine Press Editions of Biblical Texts in the British Isles and North America, 1892-2000 was published by Oak Knoll Press.

TODD SAMUELSON

Afterlife of a Printing House: The Allen Press, Stephen Pratt, and the Legacy of Printing Technology

The 1993 donation of the Allen Press collection, including a Columbian press and an 1882 foolscap Albion press, was instrumental in the development of the University of Utah’s book arts program. My presentation traces the lasting influence of Lewis and Dorothy Allen, from their book production and printing handbook to their iron handpress. A key part of their legacy is the 1882 Albion press, which craftsman Stephen Pratt replicated. These Pratt presses are now used in many public history programs across North America, from the Benjamin Franklin Printing House in Philadelphia to the Grandin Printshop in Palmyra, New York. Their widespread use demonstrates the vitality of the Allens’ contribution to the art and technology of printing.

Todd Samuelson (PhD, University of Houston) is the Associate Dean for Special Collections at the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library, where he leads forty archivists and curators in building and providing access to the Library’s manuscript, multimedia, and antiquarian print collections. Samuelson’s research interests focus upon the technologies of historical book production. At the Book History Workshop, a week-long intensive at Texas A&M University, Samuelson has served on the faculty since 2007. A letterpress printer and relief illustrator, Samuelson produces fine-press books and broadsides under his Fat Matter Press imprint, including the artist’s book Ferment (2023).

NINA SCHNEIDER, CAROLEE CAMPBELL & PETER KOCH

Descriptive Bibliographies and Fine Press Printing: Ensuring Future Legacies

A literary or artistic legacy is established through intentional actions. One example is when the works of an author or publisher are described in a bibliography, becoming an important reference for scholarship. Yet descriptive bibliographies of book artists and fine press printers aren’t common. In an attempt to rectify gaps, Nina Schneider has written three in the past decade. Schneider and the subjects of two of these publications, Ninja Press’s Carolee Campbell and the printer and publisher, Peter Koch, discuss what went into the successful completion of their publications, how these bibliographies helped to establish their catalog of record, and how creating bibliographies of living, fine press printers differs from that of antiquarian bibliographies or bibliographies of literary figures.

Nina Schneider is the Rare Books Librarian at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. During her 18-year tenure, she has purchased, cataloged, exhibited, taught, and stewarded the library’s important collections of fine press books. In addition to writing the bibliographies for Campbell and Koch, she wrote her first bibliography for Russell Maret, a New York-based book artist, typographer, and printer; she edited the Americas’ issues of Parenthesis, the journal of the Fine Press Book Association from 2000-2004; and has served in a variety of capacities for APHA, both locally and nationally.

Carolee Campbell, a Los Angeles native, had an early career in stage and television acting, winning an Emmy in 1976. Her interest and experience in photography, sequential imaging, and early photographic processes evolved into bookbinding and eventually letterpress printing. Ninja Press was inaugurated in 1984 by Campbell, focusing on the work of contemporary poets and poetry. Ninja Press books are collected by many of the world’s great libraries, including The Getty Research Institute, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, and The British Library. Her archive is held at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Peter Koch recently retired from over fifty years of printing and publishing under his eponymous imprint. Born and raised in Montana, and currently living in Berkeley, he has produced commercial and limited fine press publications throughout his career. Recognizing the need to preserve and promote the contemporary handmade book as a work of art in the broadest possible context, Koch founded The CODEX Foundation in 2005, along with paper conservator, Susan Filter. Koch was honored with a retrospective exhibition of his work at Stanford University in 2017, and in 2019 a day-long seminar at the Grolier Club in New York. His publications are collected worldwide and his archives are held at the University of Delaware and Stanford University.

CASEY SMITH

The Modern Chappel Movement

This paper explores Liz and Ben Lieberman’s Modern Chappel Movement, a largely unknown network of hobbyist printing social clubs that predated APHA, beginning with California’s Moxon Chappel in 1957. Though Ben Lieberman envisioned thousands of “chappel companions” preserving democracy through private printing, their output, often whimsical ephemera, largely avoided contemporary social and political issues. The presentation will draw from oral histories and the Lieberman archives at the University of Delaware, revealing a movement marked by efforts to include women and a surprising lack of engagement with its turbulent times.

Casey Smith is the Executive Director of the Frederick Book Arts Center in Frederick, Maryland. He earned his doctorate in English Literature from Indiana University in 2006 and continues to research, write, and lecture on 19th and 20th-century print-culture history. For the past five years, he served as Chair of Liberal Arts at the Delaware College of Art and Design. Previously, from 1997 to 2016, he taught at the Corcoran College of Art + Design and George Washington University, where he spearheaded the development of the innovative “Art and Book” MA program.

PINO TROGU

Jack Stauffacher and the Rebirth of Letterpress at San Francisco State University

Inspired by the legacy of Jack Stauffacher’s teachings at institutions like Carnegie Tech, San Francisco Art Institute, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Berkeley, the letterpress course at San Francisco State University’s School of Design was revived in 2016 by Pino Trogu, with guidance from Nancy Noble. The course has also benefitted from guided visits by Meredith Eliassen to the Frank V. de Bellis Collection and other Historic Collections within San Francisco State’s J. Paul Leonard Library. This presentation will showcase specimen books and broadsides produced in the course, more recently taught by Monique Comacchio, highlighting their direct connections to Stauffacher’s pioneering work and pedagogical approach.

Pino Trogu teaches data visualization, drawing, and letterpress at San Francisco State University. He received a BFA from Istituto Superiore Industrie Artistiche in Urbino, Italy, and an MFA in graphic design from the Rhode Island School of Design. He is the author of “The Shop at 300 Broadway”, in Only On Saturday: The Typographic Prints of Jack Stauffacher  (2023); “The Image of the Book: Cognition and the Printed Page”, in Design Issues (2015); and “Jack Stauffacher, a typographer and printer who mixed classicism and the avant-garde”, in Domus (2017).

KATHLEEN WALKUP

Your Hands Will Always Be Covered with Ink!: Legacies for New Generations of Printers

This paper traces the pioneering role of women in private press printing, beginning with Rosalind Keep’s establishment of Mills College’s Eucalyptus Press in 1930, a time when solo women proprietors were rare. It highlights influences like Elizabeth Corbet Yeats’s Cuala Press and Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press, and explores the East Coast’s Distaff Side coalition led by Edna Beilenson, as well as West Coast figures like Jane Grabhorn. The presentation demonstrates a continuous lineage from these early, determined efforts to the equally determined experimentation of new generations of young women printers in book arts programs, even as the craft evolved significantly.

Kathleen Walkup is Lovelace Family Professor of Book Art Emerita, Mills College (Northeastern University). Her most recent writing focuses on women and the private press movement, including California Women of the Private Press (Book Club of California, 2022) and “Potluck Books and the Women of the Distaff Side” (in Making Impressions, Legacy Press, 2020). Her curatorial work includes a proposed exhibition of private press printing in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1970s for the Grolier Club. She currently lives in the Hudson Valley where she is co-chairing a month-long celebration of the creative women of Croton-on-Hudson in March 2026.

Sponsors and Partners

 

MOVING PARTS PRESS

 

ARION PRESS

 

 

 

Questions? Please contact the APHA Conference Planning Committee at conference@printinghistory.org.