¶ Adrian Johns, Professor of History at the University of Chicago, wrote The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (University of Chicago Press, 1998), which won the Leo Gershoy Award of the American Historical Association, the John Ben Snow Prize of the North American Conference on British Studies, the Louis Gottschalk Prize of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and the SHARP Prize. Published widely in the history of science and the history of the book, Professor Johns is currently working on a history of intellectual piracy from the invention of printing to the Internet.

¶ Louise Erdrich is the acclaimed author of eleven novels—including Love Medicine (Holt,1984), The Master Butchers Singing Club (HarperCollins, 2003), and The Painted Drum (HarperCollins, 2005)—as well as several works of nonfiction and children’s books. The many awards that she has received include the O. Henry Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Also the proprietor of BirchBark Books, an independent book store in Minneapolis, and BirchBark Books Press, which publishes Ojibwe works, she brings a unique perspective to the world of authorship, reading, and publishing.

Special thanks are due to the University of Minnesota McKnight Arts and Humanities Endowment for co-sponsoring these events, which are are part of the annual meeting of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing. An international organization with more than a thousand members, SHARP was founded in 1991 to advance the study of book history and print and manuscript culture. The program for the whole conference is available online, as is additional information, including information about registering for the conference. However, the events listed above do not require registration: they are open to the public.