North Country Public Radio interviews BLACK NATURE editor Camille Dungy about black poets writing about nature. "The fabulous editor at the University of
Georgia Press just mentioned in passing, ‘I’d never really thought about
African-Americans writing about the natural world. So this is the
acquisitions editor of a press who had not seen, who had not been
conscious of this presence. He said ‘do you think you can pull together a
few more poets?’ There are 90 poets in this book, almost 200 poems, and
there are more that I could have had." Listen to the interview here.
Be sure to check out the Late Night Library's close examination of Iain Haley Pollock's 2011 Cave Canem Poetry Prize winning collection SPIT BACK A BOY. In the show, guest co-hosts Doug Cornett and DJ Dolack interview Pollock while also discussing the themes of identity and in-betweenness, death and ritual, and connections between past and present that pervade his poems. Listen to the show here. A recent review in the Greensboro News & Record lauds Karen Kruse Thomas for her book DELUXE JIM CROW: "Thomas traces in detail--minute, eye-watering detail with charts, tables and graphs--the history of this aspect of segregation. . . . surely the definitive [book] on this aspect of segregation. . . .This is outstanding scholarship."
Author Linda LeGarde Grover is venerated for her collection of short stories, DANCE BOOTS (re-released as a paperback this year), in a recent issue of Studies in American Indian Literatures. Michael Wilson writes, "Dance Boots is an elegantly written and often deeply moving collection of short stories. Like O'Connor's fiction these stories are regional, focusing on members of an Ojibwe community in northern Minnesota. And like O'Connor's fiction, very little in these stories is untouched by the history of racism in American. . . .When it comes to fiction, this is not just good manners—this is good art."
Jack E. Davis of The Civil War Monitor praises Lisa Brady's book WAR UPON THE LAND
in a recent book review: "Brady's fine book. . . looks at the role
nature played in the Civil War. . . . no one [else] has offered a
comprehensive examination of the subject."Books & Culture calls Vincent Carretta's PHILLIS WHEATLEY "simply superb--a welcome addition to the burgeoning literature on key 18th-century evangelicals."
