The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale

Jerry Kelly is a calligrapher, book and type designer. His work has been honored many times - his designs have been selected more than thirty times for the AIGA “Fifty Books of the Year.” In 2015 he was presented with the Goudy Award from The Rochester Institute of Technology. Kelly has served as Chairman of the American Printing History Association, and President of The Typophiles. He is an active member of several committees at The Grolier Club. He has written many articles and several books on calligraphy and typography, including The Noblest Roman: The Centaur Types (co-authored with Misha Beletsky; winner of the 2016 Bibliographical Society of America Prize). Kelly has taught typography at Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design, and has lectured on the subject for The Cooper Union and numerous other organizations. Before starting his own design business in 1998, Kelly was Vice President of The Stinehour Press, preceded by a decade as designer at A. Colish. We met at The Grolier Club in New York to discuss some of the great type and book designers Jerry writes about in A Century for a Century. The two other books of special interest to collectors mentioned during our conversation are The Best of Both Worlds: Finely Printed Livres d Artistes, 1910 2010, and The Art of the Book in the Twentieth Century

McNally Jackson Books is an independent bookstore based in New York City owned and operated by Sarah McNally, a former editor at Basic Books and the daughter of Holly and Paul McNally, founders of McNally Robinson Booksellers based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Sarah opened her first of seven stores in 2004 as a branch of McNally Robinson. In August 2008 she established McNally Jackson as an independent company. In October 2019 she met me.  We consorted in the basement of her flagship store. Two thirds of the way through our conversation we were jointed by Jeff Deutsch, Director of Chicago's Seminary Co-op Bookstore. Among other things, our discussion covers chocolate bars, delegation, Sunday emails, rents & real estate, the procreation of bookstores, Sarah's stationery, aversion to irrational travel rules, reading not changing the world, smugness, Trevor Noah's book, mutual respect, civic missions, retail in Paris, mobs of tourists, visuals, the importance of cover designs, the retreat of criticism, Instagram, bugs, Bison Books, offices, seminary students, lines on the floor, browsing, tables and buying-energy, matcha and mouldy mugs. 

Chip Kidd is an American graphic designer best known for his book covers. Based in New York City, Kidd is arguably the most famous dust jacket designers in the world. He has been credited by many as having spawned "a revolution in the art of America book packaging,” despite having no recognizable style. In fact, he says that “A signature look is crippling… [because] the simplest and most effective solutions aren’t dictated by style.” It has been said by many that the history of book design can be split into two eras: before Kidd and after.  He went to work at Knopf in 1986. Today he is associate art director and freelances widely, designing in total, some 75 dust jackets a year.  We met in his offices at Knopf in New York to discuss his book Chip Kidd: Book 2. In so doing we talk about Meryl Streep, Haruki Murakami Martin Amis, the Eisner Awards, French kissing Neil Gaiman and connecting with authors, Alfred and Blanche Knopf, Sonny Mehta, D.A. Dwiggins, Paul Bacon, Geek Love, die cuts, Glamorama, the Yale Review, Chip's late husband poet and Yale Review editor J. D. McClatchy, Chris Ware, the Factory record label, Peter Seville, New Order album covers, the importance of dust jackets and identities, ebooks, death, being paid for your ideas and much more.  * This interview was recorded in October, 2019. Sonny Mehta died in December, 2019. 

Bay Area letterpress printer, designer, and publisher Peter Rutledge Koch is recognized as one of the most accomplished printers and typographic designers of his generation. Here he is in his own words: "For the past thirty-two years I have cultivated a cross-media dialogue between art, philosophy and literature. I have conducted my business as a fine-art printer as a means of creating and transmitting my own ideas about language and form, both by creating my own work and by designing and directing collaborative publishing projects with others. In pursuit of my art, I am deeply committed to the crafts of typography, papermaking, printing, bookbinding and the design of books and I support these crafts as intensely as I can. A duality of commitment defines my art. I firmly stand on the side of the argument that there is no art without craft. Art without craft denies the difficult beauty of a thing well made, the elegant simplicity of an idea. Through craft and the precision of design, I seek to bring the rich civilization of the printed book with me to the forge of meaning." We met in New York just prior to him presenting a talk on his craft to The Grolier Club, which, at the time was hosting a 45 year retrospective of his work. 

Classical Pursuits is a cultural and educational travel company based in Toronto, Canada, specializing in small group literary travel and learning vacations. It provides adventures for the mind and travel for the soul - to places like Hemingway's Paris, Joyce's Dublin, Dante Alighieri's Italy, and Flannery O’Connor’s Savannah and the Andalusia family farm in Georgia. It offers both scheduled small group tours and private educational group travel planning for existing groups. Ann Kirkland is the president and founder of the company. I caught up with her at Toronto Pursuits, an annual gathering where over 100 people from across Canada and the U.S. get together on the garden campus of the University of Toronto’s Victoria College to discuss great books.

Steven Heller wears many hats and has written and/or published many books (190+ to date). For 33 years he was an art director at the New York Times, originally on the OpEd Page and for almost 30 of those years with the New York Times Book Review. Currently, he is co-chair of the MFA Designer as Author Department, Special Consultant to the President of SVA for New Programs, and writes the Visuals column for the New York Times Book Review. We met at his office in New York to talk about Jackets Required: An Illustrated History of the American Book Jacket 1920-1950, a book he co-wrote with Seymour Chwast in the 1990s. We start off discussing this eloquent description "At once seductive, informative, and ephemeral, a book jacket is designed to evoke - and promote - the contents of a book"; and then move on to Art Deco, futurism, Bauhaus, de Stijl, constructivism, typography, lettering and book collecting. Designers covered include Paul Rand, Alvin Lustig, E. Mcknight-Kauffer, W.A. Dwiggins and George Salter. 

Charlotte Gray is one of Canada’s best-known writers, and author of ten acclaimed books of literary non-fiction. Born in Sheffield, England, and educated at Oxford University and the London School of Economics, she began her writing career in England as a magazine editor and newspaper columnist. After coming to Canada in 1979, she worked as a political commentator, book reviewer and magazine columnist before she turned to biography and popular history. She's been a judge for several of Canada's most prestigious literary awards, including the Giller and Cundall Prizes; has five honorary doctorates and how won numerous awards, including the Pierre Berton Award for distinguished achievement in popularizing Canadian history. We met at her home near the Governor General's grounds in Ottawa to riff off renowned LBJ biographer Robert Caro's latest book, Working. We talk about, among other things, Caro's practice, Pierre Berton, Charlotte's latest book Murdered Midas; A Millionaire, His Goldmine and a Strange Death on an Island Paradise, a biography of the Canadian mine owner Sir Harry Oakes, research methods, academics, adding voices to the mix, academics, the teaching of history, the removal of Sir John A. MacDonald's statue, local historians, and the current dearth of Canadian historical novels. 

Marc Côté is the publisher of Cormorant Books, "a literary house noted for the discovery and development of Canadian writing talent and the publishing of Québécois fiction translated into English." He has won Canada's Libris Award for Editor of the Year twice and Cormorant has won the Libris Award for Small Presses three times. At Cormorant, Marc has acquired and edited many award-nominated books.  Prior to taking over at Cormorant in 2001, Marc cut a wide swath through the halls of Canada's book publishing industry, holding positions, many of them short lived, at, among other places, the Canadian Book Information Centre (marketing arm of the Association for Canadian Publishers), Books in Canada, the World’s Biggest Bookstore, the Ontario Arts Council, the Literary Press Group of Canada (a sales and distribution co-op for small presses), the Canada Council, Dundurn Press, and Stoddart Publishing.  We talk about all of these organizations. In so doing Marc provides a fascinating, provocative survey of Canadian book publishing, past and present. 

Serge Loubier is President and CEO of Marquis Book Printing, "Canada’s number one monochrome book printer," founded in 1937. As Serge puts it: "Along with my love of book printing and manufacturing and all the technology that goes into it is a passion for the end result. Literature as an art form is about contributing to culture, challenging assumptions and fueling our desire to learn. I appreciate the value of every book that we produce and take great pride in upholding the very highest standards of excellence for our customers." We met at his Montreal offices to talk about the book printing business, acquisitions and the growth of Marquis, the nature of the Quebec and Canadian markets, North American competition, the importance of good equipment and happy employees, working with publishers, and much more. 

Sheila Fischman is a renowned Canadian translator who specializes in translating works of contemporary Quebec literature into English. Born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan she was brought up in Ontario, and holds an M.A. from the University of Toronto. She is a former editor of the Montreal Star's book section, as well as a columnist for The Globe and Mail and the Montreal Gazette and a broadcaster for CBC Radio. She's also a founding member of the Literary Translators' Association of Canada and has translated more than 200 Quebec works into English, including novels by such noted authors as Michel Tremblay, Hubert Aquin, Anne Hébert, Marie-Claire Blais, Roch Carrier, Yves Beauchemin, and Kim Thúy. She has won many awards including the Governor General's Award for Translation, and the Molson Prize for the Arts.  We met at her home in Montreal to talk, among other things, about Quebec, her career and role as a translator, Mordecai Richler, the Plateau in Montreal, North Hatley, house parties, booze and poets, the language question, La Guerre, Yes Sir, the church and large families, separatism, names on front covers, obsessiveness, humility, Leonard Cohen, musicality, swear words and the vessels of the alter, capturing 'voice", pure laine and much more.