Short Takes

Deep South Magazine praises our two new books on Medgar Evers, telling "anyone who wants to learn more about the history of the Civil Rights Movement and quiet bravery of Medgar Evers [to] pick up [Minrose] Gwin's book [REMEMBERING MEDGAR EVERS]." Frank X Walker's TURN ME LOOSE is described as "a powerful tribute."

Congratulations to BEAR DOWN, BEAR NORTH author Melinda Moustakis! Her story "They Find the Drowned" from her Flannery O'Connor Award-winning collection has won a 2013 O. Henry Award. The story will appear in the 2013 O. Henry Prize Stories book in September.

Congratulations to Ren and Helen Davis, authors of ATLANTA'S OAKLAND CEMETERY! They are the recipients of the 49th Georgia Author of the Year Award in the Specialty Book category. Congratulations to Dorinda Dallmeyer, Janisse Ray, and James Holland! Their book, ALTAMAHA, was a finalist for the Georgia Author of the Year Award.

Our friends at the Southern Foodways Alliance are busy with another new project: A Spoken Dish. As NPR reports, "the Southern Foodways Alliance is teaming up with Whole Foods Market and Georgia Organics in this video storytelling project as a way to celebrate and document food memories and rituals of the American South." The Southern Foodways Alliance is also partnering with the Press on the new Southern Foodways Alliance Series. The first book in the series, THE LARDER, will be available this October.

Antipode praises David Correia's PROPERTIES OF VIOLENCE, calling it, "[E]ngaged, critical, historical geography as it ought to be done."

"THE INVISIBLES blends magic realism and mystery fiction, and throughout the entire collection Sheehy uses genre combinations dynamically, whether to establish narrative frame or mood or to inflect the interiority of a main character. . . . Sheehy’s stories, by creating continual intersections between the fantastic and the real, find a novel way to seize upon the moments of change that test the relationship of the individual will with the outside world."—Kenyon Review

The latest issue of UGAResearch Magazine features HUMMINGBIRD SLEEP by Coleman Barks in the media shelf section. The poetry in HUMMINGBIRD SLEEP "is a quiet, sometimes humorous examination of the meanings of identity, language and perception."

In the News: The Dinner Party

As Judy Chicago nears her 75th birthday and The Dinner Party turns 35, the artist and her iconic art piece continue to inspire viewers as diverse as the Queen of Norway and the Russian feminist performance art group Pussy Riot. While on national television this spring, the Queen announced The Dinner Party as her favorite piece of art. In early June, two members of Pussy Riot visited the piece in person for the first time and described their experience as "extraordinary."

In her new book, THE DINNER PARTY: JUDY CHICAGO AND THE POWER OF POPULAR FEMINISM, Jane Gerhard explores the history of this widespread and unabated influence, a phenomenon that began with the opening of the piece in 1979. Her study of The Dinner Party illustrates the powerful role feminism has in our culture and the way in which material objects can influence the transmission of ideas.

Stephanie Martin, Susan Hill and
Shelley Mark examine possible stitches
for use in a runner at the loft, 1977.
Courtesy of Through the Flower

Gerhard's book is the first to accurately portray the daily work life of Chicago's Dinner Party studio where men and women gathered to help the artist produce her monumental work and is the first account to capture the sense of excitement of the 1979 San Francisco opening. In addition to retelling the history of its unique production and the never-told story of its unconventional U.S. tour, Gerhard examines the media's coverage of the piece and its controversies, sifting through debates about its significance among feminists, art critics, and the public.

Judy Chicago herself has praised the book, saying, "I've been waiting years for a book that thoughtfully appraised what The Dinner Party has meant to art, feminism, and politics in our times—also, for an accurate description of its impact. This publication, by historian Jane Gerhard, IS that book."

On July 11, Gerhard and Chicago will take part in a moderated talk and signing at the Brooklyn Museum, the permanent home of The Dinner Party. Find out more about this event here.

50th Anniversary of Medgar Evers' Assassination

Today is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Medgar Evers. Both Minrose Gwin, REMEMBERING MEDGAR EVERS, and Frank X Walker, TURN ME LOOSE, are in Jackson, MS, participating in several days' worth of events commemorating Medgar Evers. The Medgar & Myrlie Evers Institute is hosting most of these events. More information about the institute and order of events is here.

Gwin and Walker will also be doing a joint talk and signing at Square Books in Oxford, MS on Friday at 5:00pm.

Check out this ABC News story for more on Medgar Evers and his life in pictures.

On June 12, 1963, Evers was assassinated in the driveway of his Mississippi home by white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith. The first NAACP field secretary for Mississippi, Evers's death was the first assassination of a high-ranking public figure in the civil rights movement.

REMEMBERING MEDGAR EVERS by Minrose Gwin.

In REMEMBERING MEDGAR EVERS, Gwin compiles together an impressive collection of fiction, poetry, memoir, drama, and songs that emerged in response to Evers's life and death. Gwin examines local news accounts about Evers, 1960s gospel and protest music as well as contemporary hip-hop, the haunting poems of Frank X Walker, and contemporary fiction such as The Help and Gwin’s own novel, The Queen of Palmyra. In this study, Evers springs to life as a leader of “plural singularity,” who modeled for southern African Americans a new form of cultural identity that both drew from the past and broke from it.

When speaking of REMEMBERING MEDGAR EVERS, Myrlie Evers-Williams said, "This is a book that should be widely read, shared with others, and placed in a spot of honor in every library. It tells important and all-too-often forgotten stories of the times with clarity and passion. It is a treasure."

TURN ME LOOSE by Frank X Walker

The poems in TURN ME LOOSE unleash the strong emotions both before and after the moment of assassination and take on the voices of Evers's widow, Myrlie; his brother, Charles; his assassin, Byron De La Beckwith; and each of De La Beckwith's two wives. Except for the book's title, "Turn me loose," which were his final words, Evers remains in this collection silent.

To recognize today's anniversary, the Press is giving away two advance reader copies of TURN ME LOOSE. To enter the drawing to win a copy of the book, email your  mailing address to press@ugapress.uga.edu. You have until 9:00am EDT tomorrow (June 13th) to enter.* The two winners will be notified via email.


*One entry per person please.

Short Takes

Publishers Weekly calls Gary Gallagher's BECOMING CONFEDERATES "[a]n excellent addition to Civil War scholarship."

The Tenured Radical blog gives a shout-out to THE DINNER PARTY and explains its connection to Pussy Riot: "Two members of the Moscow-based feminist punk rock collective Pussy Riot have been spotted in New York City in the last week. . . . According to The New York Times, the pair . . . 'receiv[ed] a guided tour of  'The Dinner Party,' Judy Chicago’s feminist installation at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.'"

Thinking about purchasing a copy of THE NATURAL COMMUNITIES OF GEORGIA but not sure if it is right for you? Then check out this YouTube video for an in-depth review of the book.



Vincent Carretta's PHILLIS WHEATLEY is reviewed in the latest issue of Reviews in American History:

Histories of the heroic come with unique challenges. In penning the first full-length biography of Phillis Wheatley, Vincent Carretta had a tall order. Known for his scholarly editions of the writings of Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano, among others, and his EQUIANO, THE AFRICAN: BIOGRAPHY OF A SELF-MADE MAN (2005), Carretta is no stranger to celebrated figures of African descent in the Atlantic World. In this monograph, however, he reveals a fresh perspective on this figure at once known and unknown, one whose symbolic meaning obfuscates the alternately unsettling and inspiring circumstances of her lived experience.

RUIN NATION author Megan Kate Nelson discusses her book on Civil War Talk Radio with host Gerry Prokopowicz. Listen to the interview here.