Tag Archives: literary papers

Hidden Gems in the UConn Archives, Post 2

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Written by Jonathan Trinque, Research Services Coordinator, UConn Archives & Special Collections

The UConn Library’s Archives & Special Collections holds over 1000 archival collections. Some of these collections are well known and are used all the time for research, while others may not have been accessed since they arrived at the archives. Because of this, I thought it would be fun to spotlight some collections that I have come across that seem interesting, and that researchers have not used much or simply do not know that they exist.

Here are some other collections that I have come across that piqued my interest. I hope you find them as interesting as I do, and maybe reading about them will spark your next research project!

Nonny Hogrogian Papers

Original Artwork from Nonny Hogrogian’s The Contest (1976). Nonny Hogrogian Papers, Box 1, UConn Archives & Special Collections.

Nonny Hogrogrian was a critically acclaimed Armenian American author, illustrator, and designer of children’s literature.

Hogrogian grew up in an artistic family; her parents were amateur painters, and her sister went on to become an interior designer. Hogrogian began painting at a very young age. She always had a love for folktales and fantasy, as well as poetry, which is clearly shown in her body of work. Hogrogian is known for intricate illustrations and attention to detail that capture the personalities of her various characters. She has also been attributed to bringing multiculturalism into children’s literature by incorporating her Armenian heritage into her books.

Hogrogian studied fine art at Hunter College, earning herself a B.F.A in 1953. She freelanced as a book-jacket designer for William Morrow after graduation. Hogrogian continued her studies at The New School for Social Research where she studied life drawing. While at the New School, Hogrogian learned the art of woodcutting from Antoni Frasconi. Shortly after graduating from her master’s program in 1957, Hogrogian became a production assistant at Thomas Y. Crowell Co. in 1958. At Crowell, she illustrated her first published children’s book, King of the Kerry Fair. Hogrogian eventually moved on to work for Holt & Co. as an art director. Her work at Holt earned her first Caldecott Medal in 1966 for her work with Leclaire G. Alger (also known by the pen name, Sorche Nic Leodhas) on Always Room for One More. Hogrogrian won another Caldecott in 1972 for her self-illustrated book One Fine Day, and a Caldecott Honor Award in 1977 for The Contest, a retelling of an Armenian folktale.

I wanted to spotlight this collection because Nonny’s work is extraordinary but is often overshadowed by other big names that she has collaborated with. I resonate with her love of folktales and fairytales, and the beautiful illustrations that often accompany such stories. I also found her background and how she charted her career through various educational institutions and jobs in the publishing industry to be important and inspiring for early career professionals in children’s literature trying to break into the industry.

I strongly recommend experiencing Nonny Hogrogian’s collection in-person in our reading room and giving this underutilized collection the attention it deserves.

Related Resources:

Nonny Hogrogian Papers | UConn Archives & Special Collections

David Kherdian Papers | UConn Archives & Special Collections

Michael Rumaker Papers

Michael Rumaker in Sausalito, 1956. Photograph by Jonathan Williams. Western Regional Archives. Asheville, North Carolina.

Michael Rumaker was an American author known for his semi-autobiographical novels that document his life as a gay man from his early life in the 1950s to his death in the 2010s.

Rumaker was born in South Philadelphia and grew up in a small town in New Jersey. He went on to attend Rider College in Trenton where he majored in journalism, but after hearing Ben Shahn’s enthusiastic praise of Black Mountain College, he applied and was accepted.

Rumaker was granted a work scholarship where he worked seven days a week in Black Mountain’s kitchens. During his time at Black Mountain College, Rumaker studied writing under the tutelage of Charles Olson and Robert Creeley. Rumaker’s breakthrough work was his short story “The Truck.” He originally wrote in one of Olson’s writing classes in 1954 and sent it to Robert Creeley to be published in the Black Mountain Review. This was a very encouraging experience for Rumaker that led to his writing of three additional stories during his winter break that followed, including “Exit 3” and “The Pipe,” both of which were eventually published.

In 1955, Rumaker graduated from Black Mountain with an honors degree with Robert Duncan as his outside examiner. He was one of very few students to have graduated during the college’s final years. After graduation, Rumaker worked various jobs during the day and worked on his writings at night. He worked in Philadelphia at an advertising agency. He eventually quit and hitchhiked all the way to San Francisco where he found work as a clerk for a steamship company. He continued writing in his spare time and stayed with friends from Black Mountain. From then on, his life continued to intersect with other artists from the Beat Generation.

There is still much more to Michael Rumaker’s interesting life and career that I could not include in this already-too-long blog post. I really wanted to spotlight his collection and published works as I feel together they really capture the life of someone who was a writer and creative to his very core and was so deeply dedicated to his craft. Reading about how hard he worked for his education, going from a kid in a small town to being a well-regarded published author, was inspiring and encouraging.

There is so much untapped research potential in this extensive collection, and if my enthusiastic review of it has not persuaded you to check it out, maybe George Butterick’s words will finally sell you on it.

According to George Butterick, who began reading and collecting Michael Rumaker’s literary papers at the University of Connecticut in 1974, “Rumaker has proceeded from writing about disengaged youth in a generation willing to declare its difference, to being a celebrant of total life and human joy. Actively participating in his own destiny, he has left a glowing trail of work to document the struggle toward identity. He represents, in his later writings, one extension of the Beat revolution: the embracing of sexual diversity. Governing all his work is an indefatigable spirit that gives the creative life reward.”

Related Resources:

Michael Rumaker Papers | UConn Archives & Special Collections ArchivesSpace

BMC Yearbook Biographies | Michael Rumaker

Merrill Gillespie Papers

Merrill Gillespie photograph included with student application. Western Regional Archives. Asheville, North Carolina.

This small but important collection features correspondence from Michael Rumaker to his long-time friend and former partner, Merrill Gillespie, documenting the pair’s early relationship in the mid-1950s while they both attended Black Mountain College.

Gillespie was born in Kewanee, Illinois and attended Black Mountain College from Spring 1949 – Fall 1952 pursuing his studies in music composition. He attended with composer David Tudor, artist Herb Roco, poet Marie Tavroges Stilkind, and of course Michael Rumaker. At an early age, Gillespie contracted an ear infection that made him hard of hearing for most of life. Despite this, he followed his passion for music studying under Lou Harrison during his Black Mountain College years, and David Garner during the last 25 years of his life. Over the course of his life he composed many works including several chamber works and three orchestral works.

I wanted to draw attention to this small collection because it complements Michael Rumaker’s collection and is easy to overlook. I think through the letters included in this collection you can really get a sense of each of them as individuals, their relationship with one another, and what their lives were like while attending Black Mountain College. I think these collections work together to accomplish one of the main goals of an archive; to give the fullest picture possible of an individual, the life they lived, and the context in which they existed.

Related Resources:

Merrill Gillespie Papers | UConn Archives & Special Collections ArchivesSpace

BMC Yearbook Biographies | Merrill Gillespie

Merrill Gillespie Obituary | 1931 – 2017 | Daly City, CA

If any of these collections have piqued your interest, you are always welcome and encouraged to view them in-person in our reading room or by accessing them remotely through reproductions. To learn more about how to access our collections, please visit our website: https://s.uconn.edu/asc

Citations:

Photograph of Michael Rumaker in Sausalito, 1956. Photograph by Jonathan Williams. Western Regional Archives, Asheville, North Carolina. Retrieved on February 17, 2026. https://bmcyearbook.org/bio/michael-rumaker  

Photograph of Merrill Gillespie included with student application. Western Regional Archives, Asheville, North Carolina. Retrieved on February 17, 2026.  https://bmcyearbook.org/bio/merrill-gillespie  

Original Artwork from Nonny Hogrogian’s The Contest (1976). Nonny Hogrogian Papers, Box 1, University of Connecticut Library, Archives & Special Collections

Michael Rumaker, 1932-2019

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Author and Black Mountain College alumnus Michael Rumaker — writer of fiction, poetry, short stories, non-fiction and memoir — passed away on June 3, 2019.

Michael Rumaker was born in South Philadelphia to Michael Joseph and Winifred Marvel Rumaker, the fourth of nine children. He spent his first seven months in the Preston Retreat charity ward, too sickly to be brought home, while his mother helped pay for her keep and his birth by peeling potatoes in the hospital’s kitchen. He grew up in National Park, New Jersey, a small town on the Delaware River, and later attended the school of journalism at Rider College in Trenton on a half-scholarship. After hearing artist Ben Shahn speak enthusiastically of Black Mountain College during a lecture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, he applied to the college and was granted a work scholarship. In September 1952 he transferred to Black Mountain–washing dishes seven days a week, managing dishwashing crews, and taking care of the kitchen his first year–and studied in the writing classes of Charles Olson and Robert Creeley. While at Black Mountain College he produced three stacks of manuscripts, each a foot high, which he kept hidden on a top shelf.

His breakthrough was “The Truck,” written for Olson’s writing class in October 1954: “after two years of confused false starts and superficial scratchings, I wrote my first real short story, although, in what was to become usual for me, I didn’t know it till after the fact.” He had “reached back,” by his own account, into his adolescence in the mid-1940s and a street gang he knew in the northern section of Camden, New Jersey, “to get it.” Olson’s response was enthusiastic, and he suggested that Rumaker send the story to Robert Creeley for the Black Mountain Review, which he published.

In September 1955 Rumaker graduated from Black Mountain with an honors degree ( Robert Duncan was his outside examiner)–one of only two or three students to have graduated from the college in its final years. After graduation, he lived in Philadelphia for a year, working in an advertising agency during the day and writing stories at night (“Black Mountain College,” he wrote, “had prepared me for nothing but my destiny”). In October 1956, he quit his job at the agency and hitchhiked the three thousand miles to San Francisco, where he worked as a clerk for a steamship company, again writing in his spare time while staying with former Black Mountain friends there, on hand for the energies shortly to be recognized as those of the Beat Generation. He describes these days vividly in “Robert Duncan in San Francisco,” part of his memoir of a literary life in progress.

He returned to New York in April 1958, suffered a breakdown some six months later, and was hospitalized, first at Bellevue and then at Rockland State just north of New York City, until August 1960. His first contract, then–four stories for Scribners’ Short Story 2 anthology–was signed in a mental institution. Since recovery he continued to live in Rockland County.

Rumaker received an M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia University in 1969 and taught writing at the New School for Social Research, City College of New York, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and Rockland Center for the Arts.

Beginning in the 1970s, Rumaker began publishing memoirs and poems as well as fiction, often using a first-person narrator. His principal subject was gay life in the novels A Day and A Night at the Baths and My First Satyrnalia, the memoir Robert Duncan in San Francisco, and the poem “The Fairies Are Dancing All Over the World,” originally published in the periodical Gay Sunshine (1975) and later included in the 2005 release Pizza: Selected Poems. 

According to George Butterick, who began reading and collecting Michael Rumaker’s literary papers at the University of Connecticut in 1974, “Rumaker proceeded from writing about disengaged youth in a generation willing to declare its difference, to being a celebrant of total life and human joy. Actively participating in his own destiny, he has left a glowing trail of work to document the struggle toward identity. He represents, in his later writings, one extension of the Beat revolution: the embracing of sexual diversity. Governing all his work is an indefatigable spirit that gives the creative life reward.”

The Michael Rumaker Papers, assembled by Rumaker, contains his literary manuscripts, letters, notebooks, diaries, photographs, audio recordings and periodicals documenting his life, writing, activism, friendships, and literary affinities from 1950 to 2015.

Rumaker was a friend, supporter and collaborator to archivists and staff at the University of Connecticut over the years. We send our condolences to Rumaker’s friends and family. Read more on the website of The South Jersey Times.