On Wednesday, Oct. 11, at 4:30 p.m., Kimberly Toney, Coordinating Curator of Native American and Indigenous Collections, Brown University Library. “Up-Biblum God: The Algonquian Bible, Native Labor and Indigenous Futures.” Jointly sponsored with the Bowdoin College Library. At Hawthorne-Longfellow Library (Bowdoin College), Special Collections & Archives Learning Lab, Room 317A and on Zoom.
On Wednesday, Sept. 13, at 7 p.m., Rachel Church, book artist and winner of the Baxter Society Prize for Excellence in the Book Arts (2023), will speak on her book, “The Women of Windy Hill” at Glickman Library (USM) and on Zoom.
The Baxter Society Prize for the Book Arts was awarded at the May Meeting of the Society, held at the Baxter House Museum, and the Baxter Memorial Library in Gorham, Maine. The four judges (Marieke van der Steenhoven at Bowdoin College Library Special Collections; Sarah Baker, Curator of the Maine Women Writers Collection, UNE; Josh Bodwell from David R. Godine Publishing; and Fannie Ouyang from Colby College Libraries) had a real challenge in selecting only three winners from the impressive submissions received.
The prize winners are:
Women of Windy Hill, Rachel Church (grand prize)
Bestiary, Brian D. Cohen (honorable mention)
Wonder, Jan Owen (honorable mention)
The Grand Prize book was designed, printed, and assembled by Rachel E. Church, 2022 Book Artist in Residence at Maine Media Workshop + College, where it was produced in the Charles Altschul Book Arts Studio on a Vandercook Universal III letterpress and in the Haas Lab for Historical Photographic Processes. The paper used is 90 lb white Legion Stonehenge, 140 lb Winsor & Newton Professional Hot Press Watercolor, and Moab Lasal Photo Matte 235. The images were printed in cyanotype and inkjet. The type set is Bembo.
Thank you to Maine Media Workshop and College for their generous support to create this project, as well as the Women’s Group of the North Vienna United Methodist Church, and especially Barbara, Debbie, Donna, Jean, Katie, Laura, and Millie, for sharing their recipes, photos, and stories.
On Wednesday, May 10th, the Baxter society will meet at 6:00 pm, in person at the Baxter House Museum, beside the Public Library, 71 South St., in Gorham, to celebrate our 40th anniversary and our namesake, bibliophile James Phinney Baxter, twice mayor of Portland, thirty-year president of the Maine Historical Society, and donor of libraries in Portland, Maine and in his birthplace, Gorham, as well.
The meeting, in person at the library, will include refreshments, a tour of the adjacent Baxter House, the awarding of the Baxter Prizes in Book Arts, and the cutting of the Society’s birthday cake.
On Wednesday, April 12, at 7:00 pm, the Baxter Society will host Julia Bouwsma, the Poet Laureate of Maine, in an online meeting over Zoom.
Julia Bouwsma is a poet, a farmer, and a small-town librarian. She lives off-the-grid in the Blue Mountains of western Maine. The author of two poetry collections: Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017), she is the Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield, Maine.
Julia is the recipient of the 2019 and 2018 Maine Literary Awards for Poetry Book, the 2016-17 Poets Out Loud Prize, the 2015 Cider Press Review Book Award. She contributes poetry and reviews to Cutthroat, Poetry Daily, Poetry Northwest, RHINO, River Styx, and other journals. A former Managing Editor for Alice James Books, she currently serves as an instructor at University of Maine at Farmington and on the Community Advisory Board for Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance.
On Feb 8, 2023, FABS member societies from opposite ends of the continent gathered via Zoom for “The Nation Bracketed,” a joint quadragennial celebration. “Forty is a fine and promising number and it bodes well for the future of the clubs and the Republic of Books to which we all belong,” said Reid Byers, President of the Baxter Society, as he opened the festivities. For his part, Book Club of Washington President Gary Ackerman noted that “Invention is brought about by necessity,” and explained how BCW’s online programs, a response to the pandemic, have enabled the club to host speakers from around the world. Membership in both clubs is thriving, as each pursues a combination of online and in-person programming.
Eliot H. Stanley, past President of the Baxter Society, told of the club’s beginnings on a cold and wintry night in 1983. He happened to be walking down the street in Portland, Maine and stepped into Cunningham Books, a little shop that was open late and had a wood-burning stove. The meetings of likeminded book lovers there grew into a full-fledged society with bylaws and ambitious objectives to advance the quality and diversity of libraries, promote excellence in the book arts, and support those who make, preserve and collect books. Stanley displayed the official bookmark of the Baxter Society, with a capital B designed by W. A. Dwiggins, as well as the first certificate of membership, which was letterpress printed with the names of founding members.
The Baxter Society is named for James Phinney Baxter (1831-1921), historian, book collector and benefactor of Portland, Maine. Among the activities of the Society during its 40-year history, highlights include talks by illustrator Leonard Baskin and Rare Book School Director Terry Belanger, many summer trips around Maine to visit printers and book artisans, and an active publication program including The Mirror of Maine: One Hundred Distinguished Books that Reveal the History of the State and the Life of its People (2000). The club was able to place this list of important books from the Colonial Era to 2000 in school libraries throughout the state.The Mirror of Maine: One Hundred Distinguished Books that Reveal the History of the State and the Life of its People. Edited by Laura Fecych Sprague. University of Maine Press: 2000.
Gary Ackerman explained that The Book Club of Washington was preceded by a group of 1970s booklovers called The Bibliovermis Club, of which Seattle native Kim Turner, “a voracious collector with an encyclopedic memory,” was a member. The Bibliovermis Club owed its origins to University of Washington extension classes on advanced book collecting taught by George H. Tweney, himself a noted collector of Americana including material on Lewis & Clark. His students’ desire to continue their book camaraderie after classes ended resulted in the creation of the Bibliovermis Club, many of whose members later migrated to the more formal and ambitious Book Club of Washington when it was organized.
Dennis Andersen, a founding member and past President of BCW, took up the tale at this point, relating how national perceptions of Seattle as a “cultural dustbin” stuck in the civic psyche during the 1970s, but during the decades that followed, the culture of the book stepped into the light. The Book Club of Washington was formed in 1982 on the model of The Grolier Club and The Book Club of California. The first meeting took place in an art gallery owned by Carolyn Staley, and was attended by booksellers, librarians, the head of the University of Washington Press, conservation experts and local collectors. A lively era of publications, keepsakes, lectures and convivial dinners ensued. Among the many publications of the Club was The Washington 89 by George H. Tweney (Sagebrush Press, 1989), issued in commemoration of the Washington State centennial in 1989.
Cindy Richardson, assisted by Tim Schmidt, presented a slide show of images from the early days of BCW, whose archives are held in Special Collections at the University of Washington. These included the inaugural address by founding BCW President Robert D. Monroe on “Building the Book Club of Washington,” an early recruitment poster printed by Day Moon Press, publications including The Quarterly and the Journal of the Book Club of Washington, and the first and current BCW logos.
To close the celebration, Presidents Byers and Ackerman read lists of the founding members of each society, copies of The Mirror of Maine and The Washington 89 were exchanged as gestures of ongoing fellowship, and the assembled members drank a toast “to the founders of our clubs, and to the future of bibliophily, the love of books that binds us together.”
The March meeting of the Baxter Society will take place on Zoom, on Wednesday, March 8 at 7 p.m. “Building Books” will be presented by members of New England Book Artists. This meeting will be co-sponsored with the Kate Cheney Chappell Center for Book Arts. It will be available only on Zoom. Registration will be needed. Please register here.
NOTE: Registration is required. Please click here to register.
On Wednesday, February 8 at 7 p.m. the Baxter Society will join in a combined Zoom meeting with The Book Club of Washington [state], both groups celebrating their 40th anniversaries with a sharing of stories and histories, stretching all the way across the country. This is a virtual meeting taking place only on Zoom.
At the December meeting of the Society, the following new officers were elected for 2023:
The annual Holiday Party will take place on Wednesday, December 14, at 7 p.m. It will include election of officers, a cheery in-person and Zoom get-together with hors d’ouevres and cash bar at the Cumberland Club. All members are asked to have in mind some book that they would like to recommend as a holiday gift (or which they would like to receive.)
