Nancy Norton Tomasko *95

Nancy Tomasko, the editor of the East Asian Library Journal at Princeton’s East Asian studies department for a decade, died of cancer Dec. 28, 2018, at age 71.

She graduated from Illinois State University in 1969, and then taught English at the YMCA in Taipei, Taiwan. This began a lifelong fascination with China and things Chinese. In 1981 she earned a master’s degree from Princeton in East Asian studies, and was in one of the first groups of U.S. graduate students to study in China in the early 1980s.

In 1995 she earned a Ph.D. from Princeton in East Asian studies. She taught at Connecticut College and Bryn Mawr, where she created a studio course on the history of the book in China. She also taught many workshops in Chinese bookbinding, with her greatest interest in documenting Chinese handmade paper.

Tomasko gave talks, wrote articles, and prepared sample books. In recent years she was a devoted volunteer in the Christian Science Reading Room in Manhattan, and was always fond of animals.

She is survived by her husband of 33 years, Mark D. Tomasko.

Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.