Keith Helmuth: Working in the Commonwealth of Books
Schedule
Thu, 05 Feb, 2026 at 07:00 pm
UTC-04:00Location
88 York St, Fredericton, NB E3B 3N5, Canada | Fredericton, NB
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Westminster Bookmark, Chapel Street Editions, and Frostival 2026 are pleased to present a special event celebrating Keith Helmuth's new book, Working in the Commonwealth of Books: A Cultural Memoir: 1960-2025. The author, activist, and publisher of Chapel Street Editions will read from the book and be joined by one of Westminster Bookmark's own booksellers, Nick Thran, for a wide-ranging discussion about Helmuth's decades-long, multi-faceted contributions to book culture.
The free event takes place here at the shop (88 York St.) on Thursday, February 5th at 7 pm.
Hope you will join us!
ABOUT THE BOOK:
From a golden age of bookselling to community-based publishing
Working in the Commonwealth of Books lays out Keith Helmuth's cultural memoir encompassing the past six and half decades-a narrative seen through the lens of a bookseller, bookstore manager, college librarian, and publisher.
Starting in the 1960s in Iowa City, Syracuse, and Manhattan, an account of an era unfolds as seen by an activist devoted to the culture of books and their role in illuminating the human condition in a time of accelerating ecological destruction and deepening social crisis. The journey continues at Friends World College on Long Island and in Kenya. The story is rounded out with a return to bookstore management in Philadelphia and community-based book publishing in Woodstock, New Brunswick.
KEITH HELMUTH grew up with a mother who read to her children - A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson, for example, and The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, a book she loved and read aloud to her whole family gathered for repeated winter evenings at the dining room table after supper. He learned to read by picking up the adventure novels his older brother and sister brought home from the bookmobile service that made regular stops at their school in Aurora, Ohio -Shadow in the Pines by Stephen W. Meader and Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey, for example.
The opportunity for employment in the book business while still at university, led to a multi-faceted vocation: bookseller, bookstore manager, college librarian, college teacher, editor, and publisher, in addition to being a community development activist, small-scale farmer and market gardener.
Keith Helmuth was the delegate representing the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Canada to the 1990 World Council of Churches' Convocation on Justice, Peace, and the Integrity of Creation in Seoul, Korea, where he served as a consultant to the drafting committee for the Convocation's final report. In 2003, he was instrumental in founding Quaker Institute for the Future. He lives in Woodstock, New Brunswick, where he and his wife, Ellen, maintain a big garden and a small greenhouse.
NICK THRAN is the author of four collections of poems and a mixed-genre collection called If It Gets Quiet Later On, I Will Make a Display. His most recent book of poems is Existing Music. Nick is a bookseller at Westminster Bookmark and a member of the editorial collective at Brick Books.
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Where is it happening?
88 York St, Fredericton, NB E3B 3N5, CanadaEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
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