Fargo, ND—Students from the Introduction to Publishing class at North Dakota State University (NDSU) will be using an antique printing press at Bonanzaville this Saturday, September 27, to produce the cover for the tenth annual poetry chapbook from NDSU Press.
The 12 undergraduate students, taught by Dr. Suzzanne Kelley, Editor in Chief of NDSU Press, will be hand-feeding the covers into a Chandler & Price press dating back to 1897 at The Hunter Times building in Bonanzaville’s pioneer village. The students are scheduled to work in shifts from 10 a.m. to 3:45 p.m.
The class will later travel to Braddock, N.D., the weekend of October 10-12, to print the inside pages of the chapbook at The Braddock News Letterpress Museum.
This year’s chapbook, which is the winner of the Poetry of the Plains and Prairies (POPP) Award, is After the Floating Barn by co-authors Josh Gaines of Portland, OR, and Ben Clark of Minneapolis, MN.
Dr. Kelley noted that the practice of letterpress publishing chapbooks has historical ties to the university. “In our archives, we’ve found copies of, and photos of, chapbooks being letterpress published by poet and faculty member Richard Lyons in the 1950s and 1960s. Decades later, in 2016, NDSU Press returned to publishing chapbooks on letterpress equipment,” she said.
The project is the result of a collaborative arrangement between Bonanzaville and The Braddock News Letterpress Museum of the South Central Threshing Association.
Beth Jansen, executive director of Bonanzaville, commented on the educational opportunity, stating she is “pleased to welcome the students back to the pioneer village. There is nothing better than to have students visit Bonanzaville to experience history through 19th-century technology.”
