About
I am a writer, scholar, and librarian with a focus in special collections. I have also been a rare-book cataloguer; secondhand bookseller; and intern editor at a small independent Midwestern publishing house. My hobbies and interests include antiquing, native gardening, managing local politic campaigns, and restoring my 1895 Queen Anne home. At present, I am working on a book about early modern reader and book collector Frances Wolfreston’s life and library. Education
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign – B.A. in Creative Writing and Rhetoric
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – Master’s in Library and Information Science Publications
Forthcoming
“Tracking Wolfs: A Seventeenth-Century Woman Reader’s Books at the Firestone Library,” Princeton University Library Chronicle.
“Frances Wolfreston’s Almanacs.” The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women’s Writing, edited by Patricia Pender and Rosalind Smith.
“Social Media.” The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women’s Writing, edited by Patricia Pender and Rosalind Smith.
Published
“Memorializing the Everyday: The Evidence of the Final Decade of Frances Wolfreston’s Life,” The Seventeenth Century (2021)
“ ‘she rede good bokes’: Digital Technologies for Women’s Book Ownership in the Early Modern Period,” The Caxtonian XXVII, no. 8 (August 2019)
“Hiding in Plain Sight: How Electronic Records Can Lead Us to Early Modern Women Readers,” in Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain: Ownership, Circulation, Reading, ed. Leah Knight, Micheline White, and Elizabeth Sauer (University of Michigan Press, 2018)
“Looking Beyond the Text in Frances Wolfreston’s Books,” Houghton Library blog, Houghton Library, October 2018
“Written in the Margent: Frances Wolfreston Revealed,” Collation blog, Folger Shakespeare Library, June 2018
“Frances Wolfreston and ‘Hor’ Playbooks at the BPL,” Collections of Distinction blog, Boston Public Library, December 2015 Upcoming Talks and Conferences
Past Talks and Conferences
April 2022
Workshop co-leader, “New Directions in the Study of Early Modern Female Book Ownership,” Shakespeare Association of America, Jacksonville, FL
March 2022
Roundtable participant, “Roundtable: New Approaches to Early Modern: Female Book Ownership I,” Renaissance Society of America, Dublin, Ireland
Roundtable chair, “Roundtable: New Approaches to Early Modern: Female Book Ownership II,” Renaissance Society of America, Dublin, Ireland
April 2021
Seminar paper, “Given Her by: Early Modern Women’s Gift Inscriptions in Books,” Shakespeare Association of America, virtual conference
April 2019
Seminar paper, “Sad, Prity, and Mery: Frances Wolfreston’s Shakespeare Quartos,” Shakespeare Association of America, Washington, D.C.
March 2019
Presentation, “Frances Wolfreston Revivified: New Biographical and Bibliographical Evidence for a Late Renaissance Woman Reader,” Renaissance Society of America, Toronto, Canada
November 2018
Non-Org presentation, “Trashy Romance Novels: The Library of 17th-Century Englishwoman Frances Wolfreston,” Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, IL
March 2017
Luncheon meeting, “On the Trail of Frances Wolfreston,” Caxton Club, Chicago, IL
March 2017
PechaKucha presentation, “Frances Wolfreston: A 17th-Century Woman Book Collector,” SheSpeaks, Council for IWU Women, Bloomington, IL
July 2015
“Finding Frances Wolfreston in Online Public Access Catalogues: How Electronic Records Can Lead Us to Early Modern Women Readers,” SHARP conference, Longueuil/Montreal, Canada,
June 2015
Co-presenter, “Marking Lives: Women Readers and Print Almanacs,” Attending to Early Modern Women: It’s About Time, Milwaukee, WI, June 2015 Memberships
Basenji Club of America
The International Buster Keaton Society
Renaissance Society of America
Shakespeare Association of America
Society for the Study of Early Modern Women & Gender
Wild Ones
