TOM
IN BRIEF:
Director of publications at the Asian Art Museum
of San Francisco, author,
editor, illustrator,
translator, graphic
designer, jackalope breeder, photographer, webmaster, Mayanist, typehead,
blogger, etc., etc., formerly director of Mercury
House and a senior editor at North
Point Press, one-time acolyte, caterer, cherry picker, delivery
boy, disk jockey, driver, janitor, jellybean maker, laborer, mattress
salesman, photographer, poster salesman, railyard laborer, Santa Claus manager, smuggler,
teacher, tobacco cutter ...
LIST
OF PUBLICATIONS
| RESUME (.PDF FORMAT) | LINKED-IN PROFILE
Wrong Tom Christensen? See more Toms here.
TOM AT LENGTH:
Asian Art Museum. These days I am director of publications at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. On March 20, 2003, the museum opened in Civic Center, in the old Main Library building, which has been redesigned by Gae Aulenti (Musée d'Orsay) (Since the 1960s its home had been in Golden Gate Park.) At the Asian I do a lot of work with color, which is nice after years in text-based trade book publishing.
Graphic design. At the museum I not only edit but also design books, brochures, posters, rack cards, pamphlets--a variety of stuff. See, for example, my account of designing the publication Masters of Bamboo. My colleague in Publications is Jason Jose, artist, graphic whiz, computer adept, and stalwart fellow. We're a very efficient team--we even share a birthday.
Mercury House. Previously (Sept. 1990-Jan. 1999), I was executive director and editor-in-chief of Mercury House, a trade book publisher based in San Francisco; most years we would issue about twelve to twenty books. Under my tenure Mercury House was nominated for a Carey-Thomas Award for excellence in publishing. An article on my work there appeared in the San Francisco Examiner. Among Mercury House's titles are new works by Harold Brodkey, José Antonio Burciaga, Carol Emshwiller, Shulamith Hareven, James D. Houston, William Kittredge, and Leonard Michaels, among others,as well as reissues of classic texts, such as George Sand's Horace, Sung Po-jen's Guide to Capturing a Plum Blossom, and Robert Louis Stevenson's Silverado Squatters. At Mercury House I not only acquired and edited the books but also (after the early years) did the book design of the covers and interiors (as well as the typesetting) for many titles.
Literary classics. At Mercury House I wrote introductions to many of our reissues, among them for books such as Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll, The Getting of Wisdom by Henry Handel Richardson, and Hieroglyphic Tales by Horace Walpole. A more recent example of an introduction appears in my translation of Ballets Without Music, Without Dancers, Without Anything, by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, published by Sun & Moon Press (or its new imprint, Green Integer); it was recently named a finalist in the PEN Center USA West 2000 Literary Awards in the category of translation. (more info here).
Translating. My other translations include books by Carlos Fuentes, Alejo Carpentier, Julio Cortázar, and others. I usually collaborate on translations with my wife, Carol Christensen. Together we translated the best-selling novel Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel. A book that I edited on translating Latin American literature, New World / New Words, is due out in spring 2007 from the Center for the Art of Translation.
Anthologies. Carol and I were co-authors of a companion book to the PBS series, The U.S–Mexican War (Bay Books), produced by KERA, Dallas. The show ran in September, 1997. We were the editors of The American Promise (KQED Books), another PBS companion book. We were also co-editors of The Discovery of America and Other Myths (Chronicle Books), a collection of writings about the encounter between native Americans and the first European arrivals to the hemisphere.
Older/other stuff. From 1980–1988 I was an editor with North Point Press. I have also been associated with Fiction Network, ZYZZYVA, Jossey-Bass Books, and ComputerLand Magazine. I am (or was) a book reviewer and a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association. For several years I served on the Board of Directors of Small Press Distribution. I have served as a panelist and consultant for the National Endowment for the Arts, reviewing both translation and creative writing grant applications. I received my BA, MA, and ABD in comparative literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and I have taught there and in Guatemala and Ecuador. Carol and I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. We have two daughters, Claire and Ellen.
A
little more on family. Speaking of family,
Robert
Frost seems to be a distant relation, according to geneological
work done by a first cousin. But my favorite ancestor is a great grandmother
named Dorothy Jones
(1672-1727), a spirited and independent Friend (Quaker) who married
"Out of Meeting" (to a member of the Church of England). She
ran afoul of the authorities and was "presented" to court
in 1703: "Among the grand jury presentments, 'Dorothy', wife of
Richard Canterill, presented for masking in men's clothes the day after
Christmas, walking and dancing in the house of John Simes at 9 or 10
o'clock at night." John Simes, who gave the masquerade party, was
presented for keeping a disorderly house, "a nursery of Debotch
ye inhabitants and youth of this city... to ye greef of and disturbance
of peaceful minds and propagating ye Throne of wickedness amongst us."
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