Writing Maps
Featured writers: Stentor Danielson, Andy Woodruff, and David Weimer
Explore cartographic writing through Belt Publishing’s Cities in 50 Maps series. Stentor Danielson is the author of Pittsburgh in 50 Maps, while Andy Woodruff is the author of Boston in 50 Maps. Woodruff also served as cartographer for Cincinnati in 50 Maps. Danielson and Woodruff are joined by David Weimer, the Robert A. Holland Curator of Maps at the Newberry Library.
Book signing times (all signings take place in the First Floor Lobby of the library)
🖊️Stentor Danielson: 4:30 – 4:50
🖊️Andy Woodruff: 4:30 – 4:50
About the writers:
STENTOR DANIELSON has been a map nerd since reading The Lord of the Rings in third grade. After spending their childhood in both western and eastern Pennsylvania, they earned a BA in Geography from Colgate University and a PhD in Geography from Clark University. Since 2009 they have lived in (or just outside) Pittsburgh while teaching geography and environmental studies at Slippery Rock University. Since 2015, they have run Mapsburgh, an online shop making paper cutout street maps and fantasy-style maps of real places. They currently share a house with one human partner, two feline bosses, and a classic mid-century Pittsburgh pink tile bathroom.
DAVID WEIMER is the Robert A. Holland Curator of Maps and Director of the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography at the Newberry. He previously served as Librarian for Cartographic Collections and Learning at the Harvard Map Collection. Weimer has devoted his professional and scholarly work to guiding people into the history of maps and highlighting the interdisciplinary potential of maps. In 2020, he co-curated an exhibition on the tactile reading of texts that earned him the Biennial Disability History Association’s Public Disability History Award.
ANDY WOODRUFF is a freelance cartographer, creating everything from digital data visualization to printed hiking maps, who newly claims the title of “author” thanks to his work on map books for Belt Publishing.
Boston in 50 Maps
by Andy Woodruff
In this fun and informative book, you can trace Paul Revere’s ride as well as Viking Leif Erikson’s supposed (and dubious) route through the area. You can visualize how the city grew through landfill and annexation and where The Great Molasses Flood flew. With data collected from public sources, you can also see how structural forces have shaped the social and lived experience of Bostonians: inside are maps of redlining, urban renewal practices, and the busing of schoolchildren. Andy Woodruff’s inventive cartography captures quirks of the city as well, such as Boston’s distinctive three-decker residences, rogue turkeys, and Smoots. These clear and colorful maps make The Hub’s history, urban plans, and lore easy-to-read and engaging.
Cincinnati in 50 Maps
edited by Nick Swartsell, cartography by Andy Woodruff
Over fifty ways of looking at the Queen City, from its early roadways and Indigenous earthworks to its shifting neighborhood borders… Broken up into five sections―Mapping the Past, the Shape of Cincinnati, Communities and Culture, Getting Around, and Health and Environment―these visual representations show both the commonalities and the contradictions of an ever-changing American city… Anyone who calls or ever called Cincinnati home will find something familiar, something surprising, and something revealing in this glossy, full-color volume.
Pittsburgh in 50 Maps
by Stentor Danielson