Margaret Sheppard is pursuing her PhD in English with an emphasis on book studies and early modern literature. An avid hand papermaker and book artist, Sheppard is interested in the materiality of texts and the production of books as social objects. She is currently collaborating with University of Iowa Libraries on the development of Mark, an educational game centered on early modern printer’s marks. Sheppard’s interest in collaborative scholarship extends to her ongoing work digitizing manuscripts in the William S. Burroughs Archive at Florida State University.

Margaret holds an MA in English from Florida State, where she studied the History of Text Technologies. In 2011, she co-founded Peace Paper Project, a portable hand papermaking operation that engages international communities in traditional book arts processes as forms of trauma therapy, empowerment, and resilience. Her work in the book arts has been exhibited internationally and is archived at the Library of Congress and Yale University.