The speaker at our March meeting will be Spencer W. Stuart, internationally-known collections advisor. Spencer will speak on the stages of collecting in a talk entitled Emerging, Expanding, & Legacy: Three Perspectives on Collecting. This talk will be entirely on Zoom.
Spencer’s recent book is Contemporary Issues in Rare Book & Manuscript Collecting: A Handbook for Collectors and the Trade.
The February Meeting of the Baxter Society will be held at 7:00 pm, Wednesday February 7, on Zoom. Held jointly with the Kate Cheney Chappell ’83 Center for Book Arts, the meeting’s speakers will be Rebecca Goodale and Carrie Scanga on the topic of “Making Books Together.”
A visit to Pettengill Farm, a study site stewarded by the Freeport Historical Society, inspired Back Then and Now, their third collaboration.
To receive a link to the Zoom meeting, please register at the link sent to you in this month’s email from the Baxter Society.
Because of the closure of Glickman Library during the time of our meeting, the January meeting, our annual Show-and-Tell, will be held on Zoom only. Please check your email for the link or contact us through this website’s contact menu.
Unless otherwise noted, you may attend either in person at room 423-424 Glickman Library, U. of Southern Maine, Portland, or on Zoom, at 7:00 pm.
The public is welcome.
Wednesday, Jan 10, at 7:00 pm, Annual Show-and-Tell. At Glickman Library, and on Zoom.
Wednesday, Feb 7, at 7:00 pm, Rebecca Goodale and Carrie Scanga - "Making Books Together", held jointly with the Kate Cheney Chappell Center for the Book Arts. On Zoom only.
Wednesday, Mar 13 - Anne Bromer - "Miniature Books Deserve More Respect."
Wednesday, April 24 - Rebecca Romney - "Next Generation Book Collecting.
How Gen-Z is Joining the Centuries-Long Tradition."
Wednesday, May 15 - Veronique Plesch - "The Many Paradoxes of Tom Phillips’s A Humument."
For Zoom meetings: the link will be sent to members via e-mail both in advance and on the morning of the meeting.
Please remember that Baxter Society membership runs on the calendar year. Please pay your 2024 dues by January. Thank you.
On Wednesday, Nov. 8, at 7 p.m., our speaker will be Nicholas Basbanes. Nick is the author of A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books, as well as nine other critically acclaimed works of cultural history, with a particular emphasis on books and book culture. He is an NEH Public Scholar, and he will speak on his work in progress, Before Paper.
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.
