Thursday, August 30, 2007

Atlanta Journal-Constitution Decatur Book Festival Returns

The AJC-DBF is back this weekend, after its smashingly successful debut last year. Stop by Booth 502 and visit us.

Here's the who, when, and where for the participating authors who have published with the UGA Press. For the full story, visit the AJC-DBF web site.

Monday, August 27, 2007

No Sophomore Slump for These Two Poets

The National Poetry Series recently announced the winners of its 2007 competition. Two of the five winning poets published their first books with UGA Press: Oni Buchanan (WHAT ANIMAL) and Donna Stonecipher (THE RESERVOIR). Both books were published in the recently retired Contemporary Poetry Series.

Buchanan's National Poetry Series book,
Spring, was chosen by Mark Doty and will be published by the University of Illinois Press. The Cosmopolitan, Stonecipher's National Poetry Series book, was chosen by John Yau and will be published by Coffee House Press.

Bin Ramke served as series editor of the Contemporary Poetry Series for twenty-two years, helping to establish the careers of an influential group of poets including Albert Goldbarth, Timothy Liu, Andrew Zawacki, and Mark McMorris. When Ramke retired as editor the Press also retired the series in tribute to its editor and guiding spirit.

Now, the Press's commitment to poetry has taken it in a new direction. We are excited to announce a new series partnership with the Virginia Quarterly Review. Ted Genoways will be series editor for the new VQR Poetry Series. Launching in spring 2008, the series will debut with four books: FIELD FOLLY SNOW by Cecily Parks, THE HISTORY OF ANONYMITY by Jennifer Chang, HARDSCRABBLE by Kevin McFadden, and BOY by Patrick Phillips. See this Publishers Weekly story for more details.

UGA Press also publishes every third winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, as part of a rotating system with Graywolf Press and the University of Pittsburgh Press. We now have three Cave Canem books on our list: Major Jackson's LEAVING SATURN, Kyle Dargan's THE LISTENING, and Dawn Lundy Martin's A GATHERING OF MATTER / A MATTER OF GATHERING. Our relationship with Cave Canem has also resulted in the anthology THE RINGING EAR: BLACK POETS LEAN SOUTH, edited by Nikky Finney.

Spring 2008 will also see the publication of two poetry volumes that fall outside of any UGA Press series. The poems in BLOOD TIES & BROWN LIQUOR by Sean Hill create a call and response across six generations of the fictional family of Silas Wright, a black man born in 1907 in smalltown Georgia. Ed Pavlic's WINNERS HAVE YET TO BE ANNOUNCED conveys the voices, surroundings, and clashing dimensions of the life of '70s soul singer Donny Hathaway. Some early readers have likened it to
Coming Through Slaughter, Michael Ondaatje’s reimagining of the tumultuous life of jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden.

Images:
Left: Oni Buchanan, photo by Ryan Spoering
Right: Donna Stonecipher, photo by Laura Payton

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