CABS 2020 registrations now open & relaunched as "CABS - Minnesota"

Message from Lorne Bair, Director of the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar

Registration for the 43rd Annual Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar – now known as CABS-Minnesota – is open. The seminar will take place from Sunday, July 12 to Friday, July 17, on the campus of St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota (about a thirty-minute drive south from Minneapolis International Airport).

If the past several years are an indication, we’ll reach our enrollment limit of fifty students well before the enrollment deadline of July 1. In fact, this year’s session was already 20% enrolled before the turn of the new year — so we strongly encourage prospective attendees to register sooner rather than later. HERE is a link to our website, where you’ll find pricing information, answers to most seminar-related questions, and a simple on-line registration form.

One important item to note: because of a recent generous gift to the Antiquarian Book School Foundation, we have been able to substantially lower the cost of attending CABS in 2020: tuition has been dropped by $250 this year, from $1500 to $1250. And we’re hoping that our new, more central location will make the Seminar easier to attend for most attendees. Scholarships are plentiful — more than 20 full and partial scholarships will be available this year. HERE is a link to our scholarships page; check back regularly, as we’ll be updating the page as new sponsors come on board.

As for this year’s program, it’s terrific: our Keynote Speaker will be Mark Dimunation, Chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress and one of the most eloquent speakers on the planet when it comes to matters bibliographical (and not coincidentally, a notable St. Olaf alumnus).

As Specialty Dealers this year we’ll be welcoming Andy and Marcee Nettell, proprietors of Back of Beyond Books in Moab, Utah – not only a thriving brick-and-mortar bookshop, but also one of the country’s leading specialists in Western Americana.

As usual, our returning faculty is rock-solid, and includes:

• Brian Cassidy, ABAA bookseller and specialist in the Beats, counterculture, and contemporary avant-gardes;

• Maria Lin, Chief of the IT and Photography Departments, Rulon-Miller Books;

• Heather O’Donnell, proprietor of Honey & Wax Booksellers, ABAA member, specialist in significant works of American, British, and Continental literature;

• Katherine Reagan, Assistant Director of Rare and Manuscript Collections at Cornell, and curator (among other collections) of the Cornell Hip-Hop Archive;

• John Thomson, co-proprietor (with his partner Karen Griffin) of Bartleby’s Books in Bethesda, Maryland, a distinguished Americanist and long-time brick-and-mortar shop-owner;

• Garrett Scott, ABAA bookseller specializing in 18th-20th century Americana, with an emphasis on eccentric social movements and popular medicine;

• Rob Rulon-Miller, a long-time ABAA member with one of the finest general antiquarian stocks in the trade;

• and, finally, me, Lorne Bair, Director of the Seminar and a specialist in radicalism and social history.

More about each of us may be found on the website and on our own websites, which are linked on the CABS home page.

Kathy Lindeman, our registrar, will be happy to assist in answering questions. Please contact her through our website www.bookseminars.com where you’ll find more information about our courses, schedule, scholarships, and how to register, as well as some other interesting CABS tidbits.