The Iowa City Book Festival is a three-day celebration of books, reading and writing presented by the University of Iowa Libraries on July 15, 16 and 17. The Book Festival will begin on Friday with an author dinner in the Main Library. Saturday is festival day in Gibson Square with booksellers, music, children's activities, food vendors, book arts demonstrations and readings and panel discussions. Sunday will be "A Day in the City of Literature." Local businesses of all kinds throughout Iowa...

Final Project Graduate Work  by UI Center for the Book Students Jill Kambs Lee Marchalonis Julia Skinner Zach Stensen Please join us at this reception. Musical entertainment by Peter Balestrieri. Refreshments will be served.

Exhibits from UICB studio classes in calligraphy, papermaking, bookbinding, artist books, and letterpress printing will be on display. Food and drink will be served—all are welcome!

Peter and Donna Thomas have worked collaboratively and individually, making paper, letterpress printing and book binding, to create books, since 1976. They are currently traveling around the country in their Gypsy Wagon Artists-Book Mobile. Come meet the Thomases, hear what they have to say about life as book artists, and tour their gypsy wagon.

Suzanne Gossett (Univ. of Illinois, Chicago), “The Temptation of Originality,” Thursday, April 21, 3.45 pm, 304 EPB (English and the UICB) How do scholarly editors make decisions about a new edition when working with the various printed versions available of a work? What does an editor—tasked with making a new edition—do when there are good editions available? Shakespeare editor Suzanne Gossett will discuss these matters in her talk Thursday.

Gordon Campbell (Univ. of Leicester, UK), “Celebrating the 400th Anniversary of the King James Bible,” Monday, April 18, 7.30 pm, 40 Schaeffer Hall (Religious Studies, English, and the UICB) The printing history of arguably the most influential work of literature on modern English is full of surprises. To name one: there is the famous “Wicked Bible” of 1631, a printing of the KJV which, for the Ten Commandments, omitted the “not” in “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Certainly a variant reading...

Walden's Carbon Footprint: People, Plants, Animals, and Machines in the Making of an Environmental Classic Returning Thoreau’s work to its material origins, Eric Slauter’s talk will focus on the natural history and labor history of how Walden—the book—was made. Slauter’s research places this literary classic associated with environmentalism, manual labor, solitude, and idealism within the global supply chain of raw materials and amongst the wide cast of characters that made up mid-nineteenth...

Spring Workshops with Book and Tool Maker Shanna Leino Metal Working for Bookbinders: March 25, 26, 27 Bone Tool Making: April 2, 3 Metal Working for Bookbinders March 25, 26, 27 Friday 5pm–8pm, Saturday 10am–5pm, Sunday 10am–5pm $120 ($100 for UI Students) plus $40 materials fee Using simple methods and tools we will produce a number of brass closures and embellishments that are based on historic examples. This is intended as an introduction to metal working for book makers, and a...

Spring Workshops with Book and Tool Maker Shanna Leino Metal Working for Bookbinders: March 25, 26, 27 Bone Tool Making: April 2, 3 Metal Working for Bookbinders March 25, 26, 27 Friday 5pm–8pm, Saturday 10am–5pm, Sunday 10am–5pm $120 ($100 for UI Students) plus $40 materials fee Using simple methods and tools we will produce a number of brass closures and embellishments that are based on historic examples. This is intended as an introduction to metal working for book makers, and a...

Spring Workshops with Book and Tool Maker Shanna Leino Metal Working for Bookbinders: March 25, 26, 27 Bone Tool Making: April 2, 3 Metal Working for Bookbinders March 25, 26, 27 Friday 5pm–8pm, Saturday 10am–5pm, Sunday 10am–5pm $120 ($100 for UI Students) plus $40 materials fee Using simple methods and tools we will produce a number of brass closures and embellishments that are based on historic examples. This is intended as an introduction to metal working for book makers, and a...

Spring Workshops with Book and Tool Maker Shanna Leino Metal Working for Bookbinders: March 25, 26, 27 Bone Tool Making: April 2, 3 Metal Working for Bookbinders March 25, 26, 27 Friday 5pm–8pm, Saturday 10am–5pm, Sunday 10am–5pm $120 ($100 for UI Students) plus $40 materials fee Using simple methods and tools we will produce a number of brass closures and embellishments that are based on historic examples. This is intended as an introduction to metal working for book makers, and a...

Spring Workshops with Book and Tool Maker Shanna Leino Metal Working for Bookbinders: March 25, 26, 27 Bone Tool Making: April 2, 3 Metal Working for Bookbinders March 25, 26, 27 Friday 5pm–8pm, Saturday 10am–5pm, Sunday 10am–5pm $120 ($100 for UI Students) plus $40 materials fee Using simple methods and tools we will produce a number of brass closures and embellishments that are based on historic examples. This is intended as an introduction to metal working for book makers, and a...

The Morals of Mixing: Cassettes, Home Taping, and the Emergence of the Intellectual Property Defense Industry IDA CORDELIA BEAM DISTINGUISHED VISITING PROFESSOR LECTURE ADRIAN JOHNS, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO "The Morals of Mixing: Cassettes, Home Taping, and the Emergence of the Intellectual Property Defense Industry" The era of the cassette tape plays a central role in popular histories of the digital revolution. When looking for antecedents for the freedoms that they...

Recent work by faculty and staff during the Spring Gallery Walk.

Please join us at the closing reception for UICB@25: The Future of a Legacy Friday, February 18, 2011 North Exhibition Hall UI Main Library 5:25pm - Guided Exhibit Tours 6:00pm - Shambaugh Auditorium - 4-5 presentations by UICB colleagues, six minutes, forty seconds per talk in Pecha Kucha 20x20 style (20 images x 20 seconds): the fastest history of the Center on record 6:40 - Reception in the North Exhibition Hall, refreshments will be provided.

Garrett Stewart, James O. Freedman Professor of Letters University of Iowa An illustrated lecture on the appropriated, altered, and installed books of recent Conceptual Art practice, Prof. Stewart's talk examines how artists are drawn today with growing frequency to the book's fragile medial presence as a source of great visual inspiration. With reference to artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Robert The, and Ann Hamilton, his talk reflects on mediations of the book format in both gallery space and...

Rory Sparks will give a talk on her just-completed residency at Hamilton Wood Type Museum and her founding of the Em-Space Book Arts Center in Portland, OR. She is driving straight here from Two Rivers, WI (home of HWT) and will have prints and type specimens on hand. Rory is a studio artist living in Portland, OR. She has held residencies at Oregon College of Art and Craft and the Hamilton Wood Type Museum. She interned with Daniel Kelm at the Wide Awake Garage and ran ByDesign, the teen book...

Saturday, Jan. 29, 2011 Two half-day sessions 9:00 a.m.–noon or 1 p.m.–4 p.m. $45 UI students and $55 nonstudents To enroll, email Emily Martin at: emily-martin@uiowa.edu Please make sure to specify which session you prefer. If you’ve ever wanted to make your own envelopes, or cut your printed pieces into shapes without having to do each one by hand, this class is for you. Dies can be used hundreds of times to give you both cuts and scoring lines for any shape that you can imagine. Using a...

The Brownell lecture by Eric Slauter on Thoreau and 19th-century book production; visiting artist, workshop leader, and letterpress printer Roni Gross; Garrett Stewart on contemporary gallery- and museum-based book art; a weekend workshop with book and toolmaker Shanna Leino; book historian and intellectual property scholar Adrian Johns; and historian of English bible publishing Gordon Campbell.

Exhibits from UICB studio classes in calligraphy, papermaking, bookbinding, artist books, and letterpress printing will be on display. Demonstrations will be ongoing throughout the afternoon. Special audio/visual performance about the future of artists books at 6pm. Food and drink will be served—all are welcome!

Melody and Jim Croft live on a 5-acre homestead in the foothills of the Bitterroot Mountains of northern Idaho. Living “off the grid” they have mastered the ecologies, skills and crafts of sustainable living. Jim has also mastered medieval bookbinding technologies and done this in a context of traditional living which lends great authenticity to his book work. Over the years his understanding has deepened with skills of medieval paper making, bone tool making and wood hewing. Jim provides week...

“ Jensen Bindery, BookLab, Inc. and BookLab II: How I Learned to Bind Books” Texas-based fine edition binder and owner of BookLab II, Craig Jensen is one of America’s most respected bookbinders. For the last three decades he has dedicated himself to the craft and the history of the book. In 1981, Jensen moved to Austin to head the new conservation lab at the University of Texas at Austin. He left there in 1984 to begin the Jensen Bindery which became Booklab, Inc. Booklab II started in 2002 and...

Medieval stampers: construction and use in pulp preparation for hand papermaking After more than 30 years exploring the craft of papermaking, Jacques Brejoux came to the conclusion that further improvement of his papers depended on building a full scale set of medieval stampers for pulp beating. Years of work and 30,000 Euros later, Mr. Brejoux has realized his goal and the accomplishment is one of the most significant events in contemporary hand papermaking. In this lecture he will describe...