Heather O'Donnell grew up in the library stacks and bookstore aisles of suburban Delaware. In 1989, she moved to New York City, where she studied English at Columbia, and held down a series of bookish jobs on the side: working the cash register at the Strand, shelving photobooks in the Avery Library, sifting the slush pile at Grand Street. While writing her doctoral dissertation in the Yale English department, Heather worked as a curatorial assistant at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

 

From 2001 to 2004, she joined the Princeton Society of Fellows, then left academia to pursue the rare book trade full-time. For seven years, she worked as a bookseller in the New York gallery of Bauman Rare Books, dealing in a wide range of material, from incunabula to modern firsts. In the fall of 2011, she launched Honey & Wax Booksellers in Brooklyn. In 2016, she helped to found the Women's Initiative of the ABAA (later the Gender Equity Initiative), and in 2017, she and Rebecca Romney established the annual Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize for young women book collectors. She is featured in The Booksellers, the 2019 documentary on the New York book trade, and served on the ABAA Board of Governors from 2018 to 2022. 

 

Heather is a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (ABAA), the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB), the Bibliographical Society of America (BSA), the Grolier Club, the Philobiblon Club, and the Caxton Club. She is a graduate of the Antiquarian Book Seminar (CABS-Minnesota) and Rare Book School. She currently serves on the faculty and board of the Antiquarian Book Seminar, the Council of the Bibliographical Society of America (BSA), the ABAA Gender Equity Initiative and Mentorship Program, and the Yale Library Associates Trustees. In 2025, she was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society.

 

You can reach Heather at heather@honeyandwaxbooks.com.

 

Christine von der Linn was born and raised in the Hudson River Valley. A graduate of Bard College, she studied material culture, art history, historical preservation, and literature. While at Bard, she helped restore a Calvert Vaux mansion, managed a bookstore in Kingston, and was an archivist of the Livingston family library and art collection at the Clermont State Historic Site in Columbia County.

In 1993, Christine joined Swann Auction Galleries in New York City, where she served as a specialist in literature, fine press, livres d’artiste, and illustrated books for over two decades. She was a head cataloguer of Swann's LGBTQ+ Art, Material Culture & History sales as well. In 2013, Christine co-founded Swann’s Illustration Art Department and served as its director. In that role she oversaw record-setting biannual sales of original narrative art in all genres, with a focus on literary illustration. She brought that range of experience to Honey & Wax in 2023. As a USPAP-compliant appraiser, Christine also performs our appraisals for insurance, sale, and charitable donations.

Over the course of Christine's career, she has organized and spoken at events with cartoonists, illustrators, scholars, and archivists. An expert in Edward Gorey’s work, she has conducted numerous sales and appraisals and has served as advisor to collectors and institutions. In 2025, she was a panelist for “Edward Gorey and the Art of Illustration” at The Society of Illustrators and a commentator in the BBC Radio documentary “Make Everyone as Uneasy as Possible: Edward Gorey at 100.”

Christine is a member of the Ephemera Society of America, the Society of Illustrators, the Philobiblon Club, and ArtTable, the national leadership organization for women in the visual arts. She is a graduate of the Antiquarian Book Seminar (CABS-Minnesota). As a graduate of Natural Gourmet/ICE Culinary Institute, she pursues her lifelong interest in food, drink, and agriculture as president of the Metuchen Farmers Market in New Jersey, writing its weekly newsletter and producing its video documentary series, “Market Presents.”

You can reach Christine at christine@honeyandwaxbooks.com.

 

Rebecca Romney, now of Type Punch Matrix, was a principal of Honey & Wax from 2016 to 2019, and a co-founder of the Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize. She remains an independent partner in the administration and judging of the prize.