Among the Archives: October 2008 Archives

Tony Hillerman. Photographer unknown.

Tony Hillerman, bestselling author of detective novels set set among the Navajos of the Southwest, died last Sunday at 83. You can read his obituary in The New York Times here. It was written by Marilyn Stasio, who also wrote this piece for PaperCuts about meeting Hillerman at the 1988 Key West Literary Seminar, where they discussed Hemingway while leaning against the pink stuccoed wall of the La Concha.

Below is a reproduction of a letter Hillerman wrote on personal stationary to Les Standiford, the coordinator for our 1988 Seminar, Whodunit?, dedicated to the art and tradition of mystery literature.

Click to enlarge.

This small broadside was designed and printed by John Hersey in 1969, and reprinted in 1993 by the Fellows of Pierson College at the John Hersey Printing Office.

Hersey, a Pulitzer Prize winner whose Hiroshima chronicles the destruction of that Japanese city in the wake of an American atomic bomb, lived in Key West with his wife Barbara for many years. Each was a good and longtime friend who did much good for the Seminar, and we honor John each year with our keynote spech, the John Hersey Memorial Address.

As master of Yale University's Pierson College, Hersey operated the college's printing press. Our investigation reveals a storied history of letterpress printing at Yale, fears for its extinction with the advent of desktop publishing, and a heroic revival by turn-of-the-century book-arts devotees. But there seems to be nothing on the web about the Yale Presses, or the John Hersey Printing Office, since 2002. Does anyone out there know anything more? Here's what we found about the Pierson Press; and about Yale's letterpress tradition. Click the image to enlarge.