WHO WE ARE
In 2015, Guy Duncan and Denise Brady established Gibraltar Editions in Omaha, Nebraska, to publish contemporary poetry in handmade limited letterpress editions. The press works to continue a fine press tradition in honor of Duncan’s late father and Brady’s mentor, master printer Harry Duncan. Gibraltar Editions utilizes handset type, relief blocks, and a Vandercook proof press to print books that are hand sewn, often in non-adhesive bindings.
DENISE BRADY
Denise Brady made handmade limited edition books of contemporary poetry for 30 years under her bradypress imprint before partnering with Guy in 2015. She has published works by poets including Ted Kooser, Hayden Carruth, Marilyn Hacker, Greg Kosmicki, Jonis Agee, and Michael Skau. Her books have been exhibited in juried shows regionally and nationally and are held in libraries and private collections. Brady has also taught workshops in the region for children and adults and college classes in graphic design, paper making, and book arts. In 2018 she retired from the University of Nebraska at Omaha where she had held many positions over the years, most recently, director of the Art Gallery.
GUY DUNCAN
Guy Duncan has always been passionate about finding new ways to use technology for the betterment of society and methods of merging technology with traditional craft. Throughout his career, Duncan has been involved in cutting-edge technology initiatives working at GiftCertificates.com, Election Systems and Software, Valtech, and Bwin.Party. Guy was living and working in Gibraltar when the press was founded, which inspired the name. He is currently working for PayU based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
HARRY DUNCAN
Harry A. Duncan, “considered the father of the post-World War II private-press movement” (Newsweek, August 16, 1982), was born in 1916 in Keokuk, Iowa, to a fine furniture craftsman and a champion bridge player. He graduated from high school in Keokuk, and in 1938 he earned a degree in English from Grinnell College in Iowa and was awarded a graduate assistantship to study English at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
Duncan spent the summer of 1938 writing poetry at The Cummington School for the Arts in Cummington, Massachusetts, where he returned the following two summers. During this time the school’s president acquired an iron hand press and chose Duncan to begin a literary press.
The challenges and successes with printing and publishing at The Cummington School of the Arts led Duncan to abandon his studies at Duke before completing requirements for the master’s degree, and he continued to print and publish for the rest of his life.
In 1944, along with artist and friend Paul Wightman Williams, Duncan printed The Land of Unlikeness, the first book of poetry by Robert Lowell. Books by William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, Marianne Moore, and others, followed. After World War II, Duncan and Williams moved the press to Rowe, Massachusetts, where they operated The Cummington Press as a nonprofit business independent from the art school. Dedicated to literary publishing and fine printing, Duncan drove a school bus and taught while Williams mowed the cemetery to meet basic financial needs.
Following the death of Williams in a car accident in 1956, Duncan accepted the position of director of the typographic laboratory at the University of Iowa’s School of Journalism. For the next fifteen years, he taught typography, book design, and production, rising to the rank of professor. He also continued to print books under the Cummington imprint from his home in West Branch, Iowa, and in 1960 he married Nancy Kimmel, a teacher at the Scattergood Friends School there.
In 1972, Duncan was offered a position at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) that would reduce his teaching schedule and increase his publishing time. Because of his desire to print and publish poetry, he accepted with enthusiasm, and he and his wife, actress and storyteller Nancy Duncan, and their three children, Barnaby, Lucy, and Guy, moved to Omaha. Duncan established Abattoir Editions at UNO, publishing mostly poetry while teaching printing and the history of the book until his retirement in 1985.
After retiring, Duncan continued printing and publishing at UNO under The Cummington Press imprint until his death. He died of pneumonia at his home in 1997 the day before his 81st birthday. News of his death was featured in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times and memorial pieces appeared in specialty publications across the country.
In addition to the rich trove of books that he left us, Harry Duncan also imparted a passion for fine printing and literary publishing that many have worked to advance and preserve. Among his prolific and acclaimed protégés who have created remarkable bibliographies of their own are Juan Pascoe, who apprenticed to Harry in West Branch, Iowa, and continues to produce beautiful literary editions by hand at his Taller Martín Pescador in Michoacán, Mexico; and Kim Merker (1932-2013), who studied with Harry in Iowa City, and created “some of the most beautiful books made in America in the late 20th century” (New York Times) under the imprints Stone Wall Press and Windhover Press in Iowa City.
According to Duncan's wife Nancy (as quoted in his New York Times obituary), Duncan's roots as a poet and writer informed his work and the philosophy behind it. “He believed that the book shouldn’t get in the way of the poetry; and it should act as a window to the word,” Nancy Duncan said. In 1999, two of Duncan’s books and two of Merker’s were among the 100 included in The Grolier Club’s exhibition A Century for the Century: Fine Printed Books 1900-1999.