Karla Ann Merino Nielsen, Ph.D.

Karla Nielsen stewards the Library’s extensive archival and print holdings in literature, publishing, journalism, and the performing arts. Before joining The Huntington, Nielsen worked as curator of literature in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University, where she held a faculty appointment in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. She obtained her Ph.D. in comparative literature (Spanish, Latin, Arabic) from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MSLIS with an emphasis on rare books 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 has brought in the archives of several prominent contemporary writers and curated the exhibitions “Mapping Fiction” (2022), “Storm Cloud: Picturing the Origins of Our Climate Crisis” (2024), and “Don Bachardy: A Life in Portraits” (2025).