Short Takes

Philadelphia-based Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy, author of The Affected Provincial’s Companion and The Perils of Sportswear, reviews Sharon White’s VANISHED GARDENS on his blog this week: “White has a gift for evaporating history. Her writing allows her settings to exist in all their incarnations simultaneously: a marsh, a grand estate, a factory, and a community garden… For many, reading this book will be like acquiring a new sense; it will enrich the way you experience this city.”
White will appear at the Philadelphia Flower Show and as a speaker at the Fairfield Works Interpretive Center in Philadelphia next week.

A thoughtful and comprehensive essay in International Studies Review describes FROM SUPERPOWER TO BESIEGED GLOBAL POWER as "accessible to a wide audience" and "extremely informative." The reviewer notes, "Each of the state and regional case studies serves as a mini-primer on contemporary politics.”

Peter Blaze Corcoran and A VOICE FOR EARTH: AMERICAN WRITERS RESPOND TO THE EARTH CHARTER appear prominently in a top news story in yesterday's Fort Myers Florida Weekly.

The most recent Studies in American Fiction praises John A. McClure’s PARTIAL FAITHS: “McClure makes a compelling case that a viable alternative has emerged between the mutually exclusive certainties of religion and secularism and that fiction is an important part of this cultural transformation. . . . McClure devotes the balance of his book to tracking, in clean and convincing prose, how this project plays out in divergent works of American fiction.”

We've just posted two new audio podcasts to the UGA Press YouTube channel. Andrew Porter reads the story "Departure" from his collection THE THEORY OF LIGHT AND MATTER and Victoria Chang reads three poems from her collection SALVINIA MOLESTA.

Upcoming area events
Sunday, March 8, 4:00 pm
Matthew H. Bernstein will discuss his just-released SCREENING A LYNCHING at The Breman Jewish Heritage & Holocaust Museum in Atlanta. Their exhibit on Leo Frank closes at the end of March and will travel to New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, where Bernstein will speak on May 13.

Short Takes

The Georgia Online News Service reviews Matthew H. Bernstein’s just released SCREENING A LYNCHING: “Bernstein's analysis finds almost as many compelling aspects about the various cinematic interpretations of the Frank case as the case itself, his sleuth's curiosity like that of a police detective.” Bernstein will speak in Athens next Tuesday 2/24 in room 150 of the Miller Learning Center at 4 pm, and again at Cine at 6 pm. He will also present a lecture in association with the Leo Frank exhibit at the Breman Museum in Atlanta at 4 pm on Sunday, March 8.

Over 60 people attended the launch event for AN EVERGLADES PROVIDENCE at Goerings Bookstore in Gainesville yesterday. Garden and Gun Magazine mentions the title in their Feb/March “Below the Line” roundup: “ For any fan of the preservation of any wilderness, the book explores how Stoneman Douglas recognized the aquatic one right under our noses.” Davis will be lecturing and reading across Florida in the coming months, including at next week’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas Festival in Everglades City.

The authors and editors of the newest titles in our Environmental History and the American South series, Davis, Shepard Krech III (SPIRITS OF THE AIR) and Paul Sutter and Chris Manganiello (ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY AND THE AMERICAN SOUTH: A READER) will also all be in attendance at a press-sponsored reception at next week’s American Society for Environmental History meeting in Tallahassee.

From Post No Ills Magazine: “Poet and historian Afua Cooper’s compelling THE HANGING OF ANGELIQUE recreates and interrogates the story of the enslaved Afro-Portuguese woman Marie-Joseph Angelique, and in doing so provides readers a fascinating look into the history of slavery in Canada.”

Poets in the blogosphere: Missy McEwen says of Sean Hill’s BLOOD TIES AND BROWN LIQUOR: “Even the feel of the book (glossy, smooth to the touch) reminds me of a postcard. It is as if the reader has been sent a postcard, not just from Milledgeville, Georgia, but from another century and the poems are what is scribbled down (in the neatest handwriting) on the back, written by the relative with a knack for writing and storytelling.” Ron Slate writes “SALVINIA MOLESTA has a single-minded ambition: to create the sound of a psyche exposed to or punished by the excesses of power, danger, and evil. Moreover, the expansive drama of her projected world seems commensurate with the depth of mind heard in these speeches.”

UGA Press has fun at AWP

VQR Poetry Series authors took part an in-booth signing event at this year’s Associated Writers and Writing Programs conference to celebrate both the series and the two newest books: QUIVER, by Susan B.A. Somers-Willett, and FREE UNION, by John Casteen.

Pictured above are Casteen, Patrick Phillips (BOY), and Victoria Chang (SALVINIA MOLESTA), and at right is Somers-Willett.

In addition, the conference served as a sneak preview of our about-to-release craft title, NOVEL IDEAS: CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS SHARE THE CREATIVE PROCESS. Both editors attended the university press evening reception on behalf of Georgia and we sold through the copies we brought to the conference. Conference-goers also expressed much interest in FEARLESS CONFESSIONS, a guide to memoir-writing due out this summer from Sue William Silverman, who was on several AWP panels.

Creative nonfiction writers were excited to meet last year’s AWP nonfiction winner, Sharon White, and many took home VANISHED GARDENS after seeing her read on the prize-winners panel.

Many other UGAP authors were in attendance and on panels, including National Poetry Society winner Anna Journey (IF BIRDS GATHER YOUR HAIR FOR NESTING); Flannery winners Andrew Porter, Peter Selgin, Margot Singer and Gary Fincke; AWP creative nonfiction winners Jill Christman and Karen Sayers McElmurray; poets Sean Hill and Ed Pavlic; and writers Judith Ortiz Cofer and Judson Mitcham.

UGA Press among Winners of Prestigious Book Design Competition

Congratulations to our Editorial, Design and Production department for receiving six awards in the 2009 American Association of University Presses Book, Jacket, and Journal Show competition.

This annual competition honors design and production teams whose work furthers a tradition of excellence in book design. The selected entries are featured in a traveling exhibit and a forthcoming catalog. Approximately 289 books, 292 jacket and cover designs, and seven journals were entered. From this pool the jurors chose fifty-three books, one journal, and thirty-six jackets and covers. The design blog FaceOut Books has an inside look at the judging process.

Awards for interior design:


FROGS AND TOADS OF THE SOUTHEAST, by Mike Dorcas and Whit Gibbons
Designer: Mindy Basinger Hill
Production Coordinator: Walton Harris





THE THEORY OF LIGHT AND MATTER, by Andrew Porter
Designer: Mindy Basinger Hill
Production Coordinator: Walton Harris




Awards for covers and jackets:


THE CIVIL RIGHTS READER, edited by Julie Buckner Armstrong and Amy Schmidt
Designer/Art Director: Mindy Basinger Hill
Production Coordinator: Kathi Dailey Morgan





DROWNING LESSONS, by Peter Selgin
Designer/Art Director: Anne Richmond Boston
Production Coordinator: Walton Harris






EVANGELISM AND RESISTANCE IN THE BLACK ATLANTIC, 1760–1835, by Cedrick May
Designer/Art Director: Mindy Basinger Hill
Production Coordinator: Kathi Dailey Morgan




OTHER SOUTHS, edited by Pippa Holloway
Designer/Art Director: Erin Kirk New
Production Coordinator: Kathi Dailey Morgan

UGA Press Author Discusses Darwin's Legacy

Edward J. Larson, author of THE CREATION-EVOLUTION DEBATE, was interviewed on the Rachel Maddow Show yesterday, which was the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. Larson appears about three minutes into this segment.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History for Summer for the Gods, a study of the "Scopes Monkey Trial," Larson has written and spoken extensively on America's ongoing debates over science and religion.

Also of interest: THE MAJOR PROSE OF THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY. Huxley (1825-1895), one of Victorian England's intellectual giants, was the principal exponent of Darwinism in his day. This volume offers a sampling of Huxley's most notable nontechnical prose, including "Man's Place in Nature," "On the Physical Basis of Life," "Science and Culture," and "Evolution and Ethics."

Images:
Left: Photo of Edward J. Larson by
Robert Newcomb/UGA Phogographic Services.
Right: Cover of The Creation-Evolution Debate.

Technorati Tags: Edward J. Larson Charles Darwin Thomas Henry Huxley

UGA Press Author Wins Grammy

Folklorist, artist, and musician Art Rosenbaum has won a 2009 Grammy Award in the Historical Album category for Art of Field Recording Volume I: Fifty Years of Traditional American Music Documented by Art Rosenbaum.

Rosenbaum is the author of SHOUT BECAUSE YOU'RE FREE, a study of the ring shout, the oldest known African American performance tradition surviving on the North American continent. The book includes photographs by Margo Newmark Rosenbaum, whose work can also be found in the book included in the Art of Field Recording box-set.

Rosenbaum's devotion to traditional American music is well known among many musicians and his fellow folklorists. Thanks to the Grammy for Art of Field Recording and a 2008 feature in the New Yorker, Rosenbaum is getting his due from a much wider audience of both readers and listeners. Rosenbaum, a prolific visual artist, is also in demand as a muralist.

Images:
Top left: Art Rosenbaum, self-portrait, courtesy of the artist.
Right: Album cover of Art of Field Recording Volume I, courtesy of Dust-to-Digital Record Company.
Lower left: Jacket of Shout Because You're Free.

Technorati Tags: Grammy Awards Art Rosenbaum Dust-to-Digital

Short Takes

AN EVERGLADES PROVIDENCE is featured in February’s Florida Trend magazine, with a link to this excerpt online.

The LA Times book blog reviewed CIVIL RIGHTS MEMORIALS AND THE GEOGRAPHY OF MEMORY as a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day feature. The Metro Spirit of Augusta calls the book “a wealth of knowledge and expertise concerning a fascinating historical era.”

LITTLE WOMEN ABROAD is one of ForeWord magazine’s top 10 outstanding university press titles.

Andrew Porter’s THE THEORY OF LIGHT AND MATTER is reviewed in the Feb/Mar issue of Bookforum.

Labor History (Feb 2009) praises Beth English’s A COMMON THREAD, noting that her study“adds subtlety and nuance to a growing historical attempt to understand deindustrialization, globalization, and capital movement across a much longer temporal spectrum…Historians of the Progressive Era and the Great Depression as well as business, labor, economic, social and Southern historians will find much of value in her wide-ranging analysis.” The same issue says of GREENBACKERS, KNIGHTS OF LABOR, AND POPULISTS: “Hild’s study offers rich detail into how social movements cohere, yet how brittle the adhesive can be. His state-by-state portraits will provide fodder for future research projects, and his inference that Populism was the end of hope rather than its embodiment should touch off spirited academic debate.”

Floyd Skloot’s review of Patrick Phillips’s BOY appeared in the most recent issue of the Harvard Review: “The poet continues to freshen his already profound gifts.”

The Journal of Latin American Studies calls PARAGUAY AND THE UNITED STATES: DISTANT ALLIES “an impressive, eloquently written and fascinating book, and an important and welcome addition to the literature, which will appeal to scholars and students alike.” The January 2009 issue of The Americas finds ECUADOR AND THE UNITED STATES: USEFUL STRANGERS “an excellent starting point for anyone seeking a comprehensive grasp of Ecuador’s history and present.”

ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment enthusiastically reviewed RECONNECTING WITH JOHN MUIR (“This ambitious book does much more than re-connect us with John Muir’s life and work. Terry Gifford provides both a useful re-orientation toward much of the nature writing tradition and an adept demonstration of what he calls ‘post-pastoral practice.’”), COMING INTO CONTACT (“finally delivers what academics and students of ecocriticism have been asking for…a book every teacher of ecocriticism should become familiar with.”) and John Lane’s CIRCLING HOME (“The best essays in the collection resonate with the poignant discovery of how nature and personal history thwart the attempt to circumscribe understanding of them in any decisive way.”)

Knopf Buys Paperback Rights to Flannery O'Connor Award Winner

Knopf has just bought worldwide paperback rights to Andrew Porter's short story collection THE THEORY OF LIGHT AND MATTER. Knopf plans to publish the paperback edition some time this winter.

Porter's collection of stories received the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and was published in October 2008. The book quickly won over critics and earned Porter comparisons to such writers as Richard Ford, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver for his elegantly plain language and deft exploration of suburban lives. Pulitzer Prize-winner Marilynne Robinson offered the following advance praise: "Porter's fiction is thoughtful, lucid, and highly controlled. It is especially striking for the strong consistency of vision that is achieved in every story. He has the kind of voice one can accept as universal--honest and grave, with transparency as its adornment." San Antonio Express-News critic Billy Taylor selected the book as one of the five best of the year noting, "Porter can achieve more in a handful of pages than most writers can in a hundred. I've read most of the stories in this collection two and three times, and I continue to marvel at how they can be so spare and rich at the same time. My favorite book of the year." The website Largehearted Boy also named it as one of the best story collections of the year and the book has been featured in such places as Texas Monthly, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Time Out New York, and Poets & Writers.

Porter is a native of Lancaster, PA, and a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He currently teaches English and creative writing at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

The Press will publish the next two winners of the Flannery O'Connor Award in October--Geoffrey Becker's BLACK ELVIS and Lori Ostlund's THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD.

For more information on Porter visit his website: http://www.andrewporterwriter.com/.



Technorati Tags: Andrew Porter Flannery O'Connor Award