Why Books?
Steve Miller
June 4
Thursday, 6:30–7:30
Rare Books Classroom, Marriott Library, Level 4

Steve Miller was born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin and educated at The University of Wisconsin-Madison. Having taken letterpress printing classes with Walter Hamady of The Perishable Press, he founded Red Ozier Press in 1976—a fine press devoted to publishing literary first editions in handmade limited editions.
Steve came to The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1988. He teaches letterpress printing, hand papermaking, and coordinates the MFA in the Book Arts Program. Although his primary focus at the university is in the teaching of traditional bookmaking, he is also the proprietor of Red Hydra Press and collaborates on various limited edition publishing projects with authors and artists. Steve is a co-director of Paper and Book Intensive, a nationally-recognized annual series of summer workshops in the book arts. He is also a trustee of the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina and co-directs the University of Alabama Center for Cuba Collaboration and Scholarship. Steve was awarded the 2012 Distinguished Career Award from the College Book Art Association (CBAA)

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Heartbreak Thursday
Helene Hanff (1916-1997)
Tuscaloosa, AL: Parallel Editions, 1993
ML422 S76 H36 1993

Printed by Steve Miller and Timothy Geiger with Baskerville types. Cap calligraphy and pochoir by Paula Marie Gourley. Bound in purple cloth-covered boards, printed cover label by Paula Marie Gourley with Catherine May and Coriander Reisbord. Edition of seventy-five copies. University of Utah copy is no. 69, signed by the author. Gift of Eileen Wallace.

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unfolding the tablecloth of god
T. Begley (b. 1956) and Olga Broumas (b. 1949)
Tuscaloosa, AL: Red Hydra Press, 1995
PS3552 E377 U64 1995

Printed and bound by Steve Miller. Wrapper drawing by Pinkney Herbert. Edition of eighty-seven copies. University of Utah copy is no. 1, signed by the poets and printer. Gift of Eileen Wallace.

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Artist’s Statement:
“The first time I read Bly’s poem Singing Late at Night at Chuck and Phil’s Farm, I saw a thunderous tornado sweeping across the fields, and poem lines swirling from it. No matter how hard I tried to rid myself of the image, it stayed. And so I made the reduction linocut with words swirled in photopolymer types around it. The words all come from several of Bly’s poems in his book Iron John, and one of his translations of Kabir in the same book. What I saw in Singing Late at Night…unleashed a riff of Bly words for me.” – Steve Miller

Saturday Nights in Marietta
Robert Bly (b. 1926)
Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota Center for Book Arts, 1999
PS3552 L9 S28 1999

Poems by Robert Bly accompanied by visual interpretations by Bonnie Thompson Norman, Steve Miller, David Moyer, Ruth Lingen, Colleen Dwire, Jack Molloy, Karla Elling, Beth Grabowski, James Horton, Elsi Vassdal Ellis, Audrey Niffenegger, Eric Bealer, Deborah Mae Broad, Joe Sanders, and Caren Heft. Poems printed by Michael Sean Fallon on handmade paper by Mark Hark. Type is Van Dijk from The Press and Letterfoundry of Michael and Winifred Bixler. Bound by Dennis Ruud with leather spine and vellum lacing; housed in box of barn board. Designed by May Brooks Kirkpatrick under the direction of MCBA Artistic Director Mary Jo Pauly. Deluxe edition of 26 lettered copies, signed by the poet. University of Utah copy is “Z.”

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By His Own Labor
Cathleen Baker
Tuscaloosa, AL: Red Hydra Press, 2000
TS1098 H8 B34 2000b

From the colophon: “John DePol cut the Hunter portrait in wood, Michael and Winifred Bixler cast the types, Kathryn and Howard Clark and Travis Becker made the paper, Dard Hunter III made the endsheets using his grandfather’s Bull’s Head & Branch watermarked mould…designed and printed by Steve Miller and Cathleen Baker and the plate volume was printed by Meriden-Stinehour. Both the text and the plate volumes were bound at Gray Parrot; the box was made by Judi Conant.” Edition of one hundred and fifty numbered copies and twenty-six lettered copies. Numbered copies are quarter-bound in leather with printed pattern papers created from a single leaf & stem punch cut by the author. University of Utah copy is no. 45.

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Uso Ilegal del Alma
Luis Francisco Diaz Sanchez
Tuscaloosa, AL: Parellel Editions, 2006
PQ7392 D53 U76 2006

From the colophon: “This book is a collaboration between The University of Alabama School of Library and Information Studies Book Arts Program, and our colleagues in Havana, Cuba. The collaborators from Alabama are Book Arts faculty bookbinder Anna Embree, faculty letterpress printer Steve Miller, graduate students Katrin Braun and Sara Owen, and translator Maria Vargas. The collaborators from Cuba are Luis Francisco Diaz Sanchez, artist Julio César Peña Peralta, and, from the Taller Experimental de Papel Artesanal (TEPA) de la oficina de Historiador de la Cuidad, Izel Marino Gonzales, Dra del TEPA, and Rafael Suan Lazo, Tecnico del TEPA…letterpress printed at The University of Alabama. Linocuts…printed in Havana by UA printers and the artist…Binding…done in Havana by UA binders and our Cuban friends.” Edition of fifty-five copies. University of Utah copy is no. 34, signed by author.

Rare Books is pleased to support the Book Arts Program with its fine press and artists’ books collections.