Aldus Society Literary Talks: Ashlyn Oprescu

Ashlyn Oprescu will be at the Thurber Center on Thursday, November 12, for a literary talk hosted by the Aldus Society. Oprescu is a book and paper senior conservator at Ohio State's University Libraries, so she spends her days working with the physical side of books—the paper, the binding, the actual material that holds a text together—rather than just the words on the page. If you've ever wondered what goes into preserving an old volume or how a conservator looks at a book, this is the kind of talk that pulls back the curtain on that world.

The Aldus Society is a central Ohio gathering for book lovers, and they host free literary events and author talks every month for readers, book collectors, writers, and anyone who loves the printed word. The society is an affiliate of the Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies, and this particular series runs on the second Thursday of the month from September through November and from January through May. Oprescu's talk falls on the second Thursday of November, the final one of the autumn stretch.

The venue is the Thurber Center at 91 Jefferson Avenue, right next to Thurber House. The house itself is a nonprofit literary arts center and living museum—the restored 1873 home of James Thurber, the humorist, cartoonist, author, playwright, and journalist who's widely considered one of the foremost American humorists of the 20th century. Since 1984, the house and the adjacent center have hosted author events, creative programming, writing workshops, writer residencies, and camps. The house is filled with Thurber artifacts, memorabilia, and antique furnishings, and it's reputed to be haunted. On the grounds, you'll find four large dog sculptures by Dale Johnson and a unicorn modeled after the creature in Thurber's story The Unicorn in the Garden.

Doors open at 7 PM, and the presentation starts at 7:30 PM. Admission is free.