They are pouring in so quickly that we’ve not been keeping up properly.  Having already been awarded the Archives and Records Association of New Zealand prize at the end of last month, Donald Kerr’s bio/bibliographical study of Dr. Hocken has now been announced as the winner of the 2016 John Harris Award from LIANZA.  Books are obviously a hot historical topic and we are delighted to be able to celebrate Donald’s success.

Just under months from today we will be gathered for the 2016 Centre for the Book Annual Research Symposium.  This year’s event will open with a public lecture on Thursday night, followed by a day of stimulating papers. Thursday night’s lecture at the Dunedin Public Library will be given by Neville Peat, author of numerous books about Southern New Zealand (http://www.nevillepeatsnewzealand.com/). Come listen to this well-known author reflect on his sense of book and place as he describes, in words and pictures, some of New Zealand’s most remote and precious areas and landmarks, and his ideas for an autobiography that explores an array of New Zealand islands spanning 8,500 kms of latitude, from the tropical to the frozen.

Friday will consist of panels of 20-min papers, with a plenary lecture by Dr. Ingrid Horrocks of Massey University after morning tea.  Ingrid is one of the editors of the forthcoming Victoria University Press title,Extraordinary Anywhere: Essays on Place from Aotearoa New Zealand, as well as an online anthology about a particular place, Pukeahu (http://pukeahuanthology .org/).  The day will open with reflections by Professor Tony Ballantyne.  The full program is available to download.

We are also delighted that Nicky Page will be joining us. As Director to Dunedin’s City of Literature program, Nicky will have lots of thoughts about our topic and will also look forward to hearing the insights of others.

Thanks to support from the Department of English and Linguistics, the Division of the Humanities, and the Centre for Research on Colonial Cultures, we are delighted that there will be no charge for the symposium, though participants will need to bring or buy their own lunch.  We will provide a reception following the evening lecture, and morning and afternoon tea.

We look forward to seeing you.  We can accommodate 70 people in the Marjorie Barclay Theatre of the Otago Museum, so please ensure you register early to secure a place.  To register, you need to send an email providing your name as you wish it to appear on your name tag and your email address to books@otago.ac.nz.  You will also need to notify the Public Library that you wish to attend the Thursday evening lecture by going to the Library’s event site to let them know you are coming.

As Ed. Hillary famously said “We knocked the b…. off.” The PIR 2016 Otakou Press publication Freda Du Faur Southern Alps 1909-1913 is now complete, handsomely printed by Sarah Smith, our visiting printer from Dartmouth College, USA. And to celebrate reaching the summit (and getting back down again) we held a traditional Wayzgoose*; everyone who attended last night remarked on the fine production. Poet Rhian Gallagher read three poems from the book, and artist Lynn Taylor and Sarah talked about the collaborative process involved during the project.

One hundred copies of this concertina-style publication are for sale at the great price of NZ$120.  Please contact Donald Kerr for details on securing a copy and payment options.

The Hocken Collections has announced a $10,000 fellowship for work using the riches of their holdings as a special gift from the Friends of the Hocken in celebration of 25 years of the group’s support.  How cool would it be if that research project were on print culture?  Please help spread the word to all interested scholars.  Applications close 17 October 2016.

Professor Bill Sherman will be unable to join us for the Dalziel Lecture later this month, but I am pleased to announce that we will still have a Dalziel lecture this year, a few weeks later in mid-October, and all going well, I hope it will have a strong book focus as well.  Look out for more details soon.

For a good introduction to this year’s printer-in-residence project, check out this ODT feature on the progress that Sarah and Lynn have made so far.

On Thursday 25 August 2016, Sarah Smith, this year’s printer in residence from Dartmouth College,* will talk about her experience as Manager at Dartmouth’s Book Arts Workshop.  Her talk will begin at 12.15 in Cen 3, 1^st floor, Central University Library. All are welcome.  Feel free to bring your lunch.

Sarah is here at Otago printing poems that focus on Freda du Faur, the first female mountaineer to climb Mt Cook-Aoraki. The poems are by Rhian Gallagher.

*Dartmouth College is allied to the University of Otago through the Matariki Network.

The 2016 printer in residence, Sarah Smith, and Donald Kerr talk to Dunedin TV about this year’s project, an accordion-fold volume to represent the mountains that are the subject of Rhian Gallagher’s poetry.  Feel free to call by the Otakou Press to meet Sarah and find out more about the project.

The Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival is bringing down three authors from the Christchurch WORD festival.  They will be in Dunedin on Sunday 28 August and the lineup looks very interesting indeed.  Something here for everyone, or attend all three for the price of two.

On 1 August, Sarah M. Smith, Book Arts Printer at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, will arrive at the University of Otago to be the Printer in Residence (PIR) for 2016. Sarah’s Otakou Press print project is to print a limited edition of poems written by local poet Rhian Gallagher. The theme of this volume is centred round the life and activities of Freda Du Faur (1882–1935), the first woman to climb Aoraki/Mount Cook, New Zealand’s highest mountain. The text will be enhanced by images by the Dunedin artist Lynn Taylor. 120 copies will be printed; 100 will be for sale.

To further enhance the Otago-Dartmouth Matariki Partnership, an exhibition of Book Arts materials from Dartmouth College that were used in their own 25^th anniversary celebrations last year, will be exhibited in the de Beer Gallery, Special Collections. The Otago exhibition starts 1 September and runs through to 2^nd December 2016.

Another exciting aspect to this partnership is the exhibition of past University of Otago PIR publications at Dartmouth College Library. The exhibition is scheduled to start the 1^st week of October 2016.

*The Matariki Network of Universities (MNU) is an international group of seven universities that focuses on strong links between research and undergraduate teaching. Alongside the University of Otago, the other six are Durham University; Queen’s University; University of Tübingen;University of Western Australia; Uppsala University; and Dartmouth College.