“You have to dance,” says Professor Nichole Nidey (College of Public Health). “That’s the best way to get a good print.” Nidey is speaking to a young guest of the first-ever Pressing Matters exhibition, a girl of seven or eight. Laid on the floor of Close House, the downtown home of Public Space One, is a blank t-shirt and an inked linocut plate. Together, laughing, Nidey and her new young friend take turns to hop on the plate and dance their design into being.

Stephanie Miracle’s ensemble is large. Mechanical engineers, musicians, hydroscientists, robots, zoological specimens, filmmakers, parking ramps, at least one professor of 18th-century literature, and the Iowa River all have found a place in collaborations honored this year by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies.

You’ve worked for a number of robust institutions in the last fifteen years. Do you feel the role of a university press has changed in campus life since you began your career? If so, what do you see as the most important ways that presses can engage and support their intellectual ecosystems today, beyond publishing books?

I started in university-press publishing in September 1999, so the number is closer to (gulp!) 27 years. In that timespan, I’ve worked for three presses: University Press of Mississippi, University of Georgia Press, and now University of Pennsylvania Press (Penn Press).