Our Founders
Miranda Garno Rossa, PhD
Across more than twenty years working with rare books, Rossa has been a professor, a private collection development manager, and a specialist bookseller. Though her career began with a narrower academic focus in seventeenth-century women’s books and manuscripts, her time in the book trade has expanded her expertise up to the early twentieth century; and it has deepened her appreciation for the historical intersections among femme, queer, BIPOC, and disabled communities across these periods. Rossa’s background in education has made the support of scholars and librarians central to her mission and to Marginalia’s: Researching, teaching, and exhibiting traditionally marginalized stories is only possible when those primary materials are accessible.
Kelsey Clarke Grode
With a background in venture capital and finance, Grode entered the rare book world as a collector driven to discover her own feminist heritage. Over fifteen years, she built a prize-winning collection of second and third wave feminist material that was recognized by the California Young Book Collector’s Prize in 2021, which only further fueled her desire to engage with the rare book world. Grode’s business acumen, combined with her complex understanding for how the movement of rare books through the market aids their preservation, make her the cornerstone in managing financial operations and planning for future growth. And her personal investment in mentoring a more diverse cohort of book collectors and sellers has helped define Marginalia’s community-centered missions.