Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Karla Ann Merino Nielsen, Ph.D.
Karla Ann Merino Nielsen, Ph.D.
Senior Curator of Literary Collections
Department: Curatorial Department (626-405-2203), Library
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).
Publications
President's Series: Inspired by Octavia E. Butler - A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: Lynell George in conversation with William Deverell and Karla Nielsen
Writer Lynell George discusses her forthcoming book, A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler, and her experience in The Huntington archives, in conversation with William Deverell, director of the Huntington-USC Institute for California and the West and professor of history at USC, and Karla Nielsen, curator of literary collections at The Huntington.
