Karla Ann Merino Nielsen

Karla Nielsen, Ph.D., stewards the Library’s archival and print holdings in literature, publishing, journalism, and the performing arts. Before joining The Huntington in 2018, Nielsen worked as curator of literature in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University, where she had an affiliate appointment in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. She obtained her doctorate in comparative literature (Spanish, Latin, Arabic) from the University of California, Berkeley, and her MSLIS from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She has worked as an editor for academic and small press publishers, experience that continues to inform her scholarly interests in publishing studies, the interrelatedness of literary form and material format, visual poetics, and the long history of the novel. At The Huntington, she curated the exhibitions “Mapping Fiction” in 2022 and “Storm Cloud: Picturing the Origins of Our Climate Crisis” in 2024.