The American Printing History Association is pleased to introduce members who have agreed to serve as officers and Trustees on the APHA board. This dynamic group of talented people will grow our organization and keep APHA thriving. We’re excited they are joining us.

The Nominating Committee
E. Haven Hawley, Chair
 Richard Minsky; Robert McCament; James Ascher; and Hosea Baskin

J. Fernando Peña, President

J. Fernando Peña, as of 2022, is the President of APHA. He has worked in the rare book world for many years and in various capacities—as a librarian, educator, and senior specialist in a major auction house. From 2001 to 2011, Fernando was curator and librarian at the Grolier Club in New York City. As director of the Rare Books Program at the Palmer School of Library & Information Science of Long Island University from 2011 to 2019, Fernando advised students and regularly taught courses on rare books and special collections librarianship, descriptive bibliography, archival description, and the history of the book. From 2019 to 2021, he was Senior Specialist in the Books and Manuscripts Department at Christie’s in New York City, where he focused on early printing, color-plate books, and cartography. Since leaving Christie’s in 2021, Fernando has started a consulting business, Bibliomane Appraisals & Consulting LLC, which specializes in appraising and valuing printed books, manuscripts, and maps, and provides collection advisory and collection management services.

Fernando became active in APHA in the mid-2000s, first in the local New York Chapter and then as APHA secretary from 2008 to 2012. Besides APHA, Fernando has been active in the Rare Books & Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the American Library Association, for which he was elected Member-at-Large and then Section Chair; and in the Center for Book Arts of New York, where he served as board member and treasurer from 2006 to 2015.

Secretary, First Term

Ana D. Rodríguez is the Digitization Coordinator & Registrar of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She manages the digital transformation and care of one of the most comprehensive textual collections in the nation. She received her MA in Art History from the University of Florida with a thesis on Lorenzo Homar’s linoleum print “El Obispo de Ponce,” from the Las Plenas portfolio, plus a certificate in Latin American studies. She also has a master’s degree in Library and Information Science. She attended college at the Universidad de Puerto Rico – Colegio de Mayaguez before working in GLAM settings for the past 24 years, in areas dedicated to special collections, digital collections, and descriptive metadata. Her academic interests include Latin American graphic printing, description of visual materials, and digital collections.

Treasurer, First Term

Jim Kuhn is Associate Director at the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin. He has held special collections leadership positions at academic and independent research libraries. He holds master’s degrees in philosophy and in library science, is a member of the Grolier Club, and has held appointed and elected positions in the American Library Association. He currently serves as board member of the Austin Book Arts Center, as board chair of the Texas After Violence Project, and as a volunteer mental health first responder in UT Austin’s Victims Advocate Network. He was a long-term treasurer of the Friends of the Takoma Park Maryland Library and currently serves on the Finance and Stewardship Committee of the Friends Meeting of Austin, a faith community where he is a member. He also participates in the Internet Archive’s “Great 78 Project.”

Vice President for Membership, First Term

Diane Dias De Fazio is Editor in Chief of RBM: a Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage, the scholarly journal of the Rare Book and Manuscript Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries. She has advocated for bilingual content in such journals and been instrumental in public engagement efforts of the APHA Board, on which she has served in roles including Trustee and Chair of the Award Committee. Her expertise as a curator spans manuscripts to ‘zines. She holds a master’s degree in Art History, is a Certified Archivist through the Academy of Certified Archivists, and a Public Librarian Professional Certificate from the New York State Library.

Vice President for Programs, Second Term

Danelle Moon has worked as a Special Collections Librarian and Archivist at Yale University, San Jose State University, and at University of California at Santa Barbara. She works closely with the College of Creative Studies at UCSB and is active in the book arts community as an educator and artist/printmaker. She has extensive experience curating exhibits focused on print history and book arts, as well as expertise in 20th-century U.S. history with a focus on women and social and political movements. She holds an MLIS and an MA in History, and she has published numerous articles and presented research in history and library venues. She currently serves as APHA’s Vice President for Programs.

Vice President for Publications, Second Term

Josef Beery is a book designer, educator, and printmaker. In 1995 he co-founded the Virginia Arts of the Book Center, which is now a dynamic book arts community within the Virginia Center for the Book. Josef’s own work has focused on letterpress broadsides for writers and poets. He has produced pieces celebrating the work of Gary Snyder, Wendell Berry, Charles Wright, Rita Dove, and Natasha Tretheway, among many others. As a printmaker he has worked with botanical relief prints in wood and linoleum. After many years as a visiting artist at the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School demonstrating 18th-century printing techniques on a replica common press, he designed and began manufacturing the BookBeetle Press, a small desktop replica of the 18th-century screw press. This teaching press has become quite popular at universities for use in classes and centers teaching the history of the book and printing. Recently he has begun designing fonts and abstract shapes cut in wood on the CNC router for use in educational programs.

Trustee, First Term:

Melanie Leung currently works as the Image Request Coordinator of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. In addition to her work in the imaging department, she teaches letterpress workshops using the Folger Library’s common press. She has contributed to conference reports for the APHA website and is a member of the Chesapeake Chapter. She holds a MLS/MA in Archives Management and History, with special interests in food, book, and maritime history, as well as cross-cultural interactions, to name a few. She tries to include book art-related excursions when and wherever she travels.

Trustee, First Term:

Pranav Prakash is a Junior Research Fellow and Director of Studies at Christ Church, and an Associate Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford, UK. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Andrew Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School, University of Virginia. As a cultural historian, he specializes in the comparative study of book arts, literary cultures and religious traditions in Persian and South Asian societies. His research focuses on the transregional history of scribal communities, manuscript cultures and printing technologies in India, Iran and Central Asia. His publications elaborate upon the ethos of creative imagination, scribal subjectivity and interreligious interaction in early modern and colonial societies.

Trustee, First Term:

Larissa Randall is the Curatorial Associate for American Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR.  In her role, Randall cares for the nineteenth and twentieth century art collection and organizes exhibitions. She prioritizes interdisciplinary curatorial projects that better situate art museums as spaces for dialogue and social justice. Her research interests are primarily U.S. visual art, print culture, and image circulation with an emphasis on works on paper and book arts. She previously held positions at the High Museum of Art and the Oglethorpe University Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia.

For remainder of Diane Dias De Fazio’s Second Trustee Term (2 years):

Amanda Stuckey is Assistant Professor of English at Central Penn College. Her research focuses on disability studies, disability pedagogy, and nineteenth-century literary history and has appeared in Printing History, Studies in American Fiction, Disability Studies Quarterly, Criticism and forthcoming in American Periodicals. She is currently working on a book project that recovers the experiences of vision-impaired readers in residential U.S. schools and is co-editing a collection about pedagogy and archive studies. At Central Penn, she is the Gamma Beta Phi faculty advisor and a member of the President’s Commission on Diversity and Inclusion. She is active in her community, leading book discussions for the YWCA and serving on the South Western school district’s Education Foundation. She holds a PhD in American Studies, an MA in English, and Online Teaching Certification.