Short Takes

From the new issue of Audubon magazine: "Written with disarming and compelling glee, ROSALIE EDGE, HAWK OF MERCY, by Dyana Z. Furmansky, tells the unlikely story of how a poor little rich girl became the most effective American conservationist between John Muir and Rachel Carson."

Karine Moe and Dianna Shandy (GLASS CEILINGS AND 100-HOUR COUPLES) will appear on "Showcase Minnesota" this Monday, December 12 at 10 am on KARE-11, the Twin Cities NBC affiliate; after it airs, view the segment here.

Robin Ekiss (THE MANSION OF HAPPINESS) is included in the annual debut poets feature in the new issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Newly released: THE NEW ROAD by photographer Rob Amberg. Amberg will sign books and discuss this documentary project at The Captain's Bookshelf in Asheville this Friday at 5:30 pm.

Joshua Poteat's "Illustrating" on Verse Daily today.

A review by Ron Slate of GHOSTBREAD.

From this month's Journal of American History: "Seth C. Bruggeman's impressive account of George Washington's birthplace deserves a wide audience. . . . HERE, GEORGE WASHINGTON WAS BORN is a compelling story about the changing fields of historic preservation, museum studies, and public history." From the Journal of Interdisciplinary History: "A fine addition to the memory studies and public-history canon."

From Rain Taxi: BLACK ELVIS "has something for all readers who sometimes doubt their own sense of direction, and even more for the reader with an ear and a love for music."

Andrew Porter (THE THEORY OF LIGHT AND MATTER) has received the Drake Emerging Writer Award in Short Fiction from Drake University. The paperback of his collection will release January 5 from Vintage.

Spring catalog and newsletter now available online

Can't wait for (or don't need) the print catalog? Check out our spring list online.

Highlights include:

FROM MUD TO JUG - "no one better understands Southern folk pottery than John Burrison”

SERIOUSLY FUNNY, an anthology compiled by Barbara Hamby and David Kirby to examine the incisive tool of humor in the best contemporary American poetry

The rapid evolution of CHARLOTTE, NC as seen from many angles, from transit to NASCAR

Biographies of writer and activist John Oliver Killens and songwriter Johnny Mercer

CORNBREAD NATION 5, tasty Southern food writing, from Sazeracs to hot chicken

While you're digitally browsing, check out our latest newsletter, featuring interviews with LeeAnn Lands (THE CULTURE OF PROPERTY) and Camille Dungy (BLACK NATURE) as well as background on the Gullah-Geechee culture that is the subject of our forthcoming AFRICAN AMERICAN LIFE IN THE GEORGIA LOWCOUNTRY.

Finally, if you're so inclined, take a look at our latest subject catalog (scroll down the page), featuring new and recent titles in history.

Short Takes

GLASS CEILINGS AND 100-HOUR COUPLES in the Wall Street Journal: "Glass Ceilings makes a prediction: Before long, businesses will see the folly of under-using a powerful resource and will design policies that better accommodate capable, educated women who happen to have children." The book was also reviewed in the December issue of Brain, Child.

The Asheville Citizen-Times reviews THE NEW ROAD; photographer Rob Amberg will speak and sign books at The Captain's Bookshelf in Asheville next Friday, December 18.

Southern Living's December issue notes SOUTH CAROLINA WOMEN as a great SC book to give this holiday.

Vernon Burton on the Lincoln Bicentennial and Atlanta's town hall meeting this past week.

Audio from Wendy Hamand Venet's lecture on SAM RICHARDS'S CIVIL WAR DIARY at the Atlanta History Center now available online from Forum Network.

NONPROLIFERATION NORMS reviewed in Parameters: "Maria Rublee's book is valuable as an antidote to a realist pessimism regarding whether nuclear proliferation can be contained."

From Georgia Historical Quarterly: "THE BIG TENT is first-rate--impressively researched, interpretive, and highly readable...Gregory Renoff has provided a model of how to study popular culture."

From Technology and Culture on ENTREPRENEURS IN THE SOUTHERN UPCOUNTRY: "Our understanding of the antebellum southerners' view of the economy is changing, and Eelman's important work contributes much to that understanding by joining antebellum and postbellum worlds in a single analysis."

The Poetry Society of America names Jennifer Chang among its 2009 New American Poets, which recognizes "some of the most interesting recent first book poets." Previous years have recognized Cecily Parks, Joshua Poteat, Dawn Lundy Martin, Oni Buchanan and Major Jackson.

A Joshua Poteat poem was featured Saturday on Poetry Daily.

BLACK ELVIS a "best of 2009" short story collection at The Book Fox.

A review of HARDSCRABBLE in New Letters praises "the pleasures of McFadden’s nimble wit and linguistic savvy"; the book is also reviewed in the Antioch Review.

Short Takes

An interview with Christine Keiner (THE OYSTER QUESTION) is scheduled to air tomorrow morning(12/4) at 9 AM on Public Radio Delmarva.

ForeWord praises GHOSTBREAD: "Livingston writes with an understated restraint and paints her past in careful detail. The result is captivating."

Anna Journey reviewed at Blackbird.

The Environmental Defense Fund recommends our biography of Rosalie Edge.

Robin Ekiss (THE MANSION OF HAPPINESS) was featured on Poetry Daily this Tuesday. She reads in Santa Cruz December 8 and at San Francisco's Inside Storytime December 17.

UGA Press author Jonathan Addleton presented his credentials to the President of Mongolia this week to complete his appointment as the U.S. Ambassador to Mongolia. His memoir, SOME FAR AND DISTANT PLACE, describes his experiences growing up in Pakistan as the child of Baptist missionaries from rural Georgia.

Wonderful profile of Art Rosenbaum (SHOUT BECAUSE YOU'RE FREE) and his broad spectrum approach to field collecting of music in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Absorbing Rosenbaum’s rich collection requires some concentration, Cohen said. 'You have to work to digest it,' he said, adding that the payoff is a vivid impression of each performer’s world. 'You get a sense of place, time, the characters, the history,' he said. 'You can place the context of the music and what it means to the individuals.'"

Lori Ostlund makes some holiday shopping recommendations at the Emerging Writers Network.

Alan Wachman's article on "China's Lincolnophilia," adapted from a chapter in our forthcoming title SECESSION AS AN INTERNATIONAL PHENOMENON, appeared this week on the lively blog The China Beat.

BLACK NATURE launches in San Francisco

BLACK NATURE, a new anthology of African American nature poetry, launches today with editor Camille Dungy and contributors C.S. Giscombe, Patricia Spears Jones,devorah major, and Indigo Moor at the San Francisco State University Poetry Center and afterward at the Green Arcade.

The pathbreaking book will also be the focus of a three-day symposium at Berkeley in March, featuring contributors including Clarence Major, Harryette Mullen, Ed Roberson, Evie Shockley, Natasha Trethewey and Al Young.

As noted by contributor Evie Shockley:

This anthology is a major correction to a dismal record. It addresses the fact that the genre of "nature poetry" in this country has been constructed for hundreds of years as though African American poets had not produced any to speak of. With rare exceptions, if you look at collections of and scholarship/criticism about nature poetry throughout the last century and before, you will find very few black folks included or discussed -- often none.

There are reasons for this, which Dungy outlines, briefly and elegantly, in her introduction; one important one involves the need for us to understand "nature poetry" as a much broader category than the traditional pastoral. (Just because a poem is critical of nature doesn't mean it isn't about nature!) But those reasons do not include "because black poets don't write about nature," and Dungy gives us approximately 350 pages of proof that they (we!) do.

Look for a review of the book in the January/February issue of Orion magazine.

Atlanta Town Hall Meeting on Race December 9 at Carter Center

This week and next, Atlanta joins cities including Boston, Chicago, Washington and Miami in holding events to address "Lincoln's unfinished work of race, justice, and equality of opportunity."

2009 marks the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, and the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, the Georgia Humanities Council, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights and over 20 other Atlanta area organizations, including the University of Georgia Press, will act as co-conveners of the Atlanta events.

An all-day leadership forum on Wednesday, December 2 at Morehouse College will feature Dr. Orville Vernon Burton, author of The Age of Lincoln, and panelists including media professionals Rebecca Burns (RAGE IN THE GATE CITY), Sachi Koto, Alexis Scott and Judith Martinez-Sadri; Spelman College president Beverly Tatum; and poet Kevin Young.

A public conversation at the Carter Center on Wednesday, December 9 at 6 pm will feature keynote speaker Dr. Stephen L. Carter, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale University and author of the novel Jericho's Fall. Panelists will include mayor Shirley Franklin and Manisha Sinha, Associate Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (and a series editor for our Race in the Atlantic World series).

Register here to attend this free town hall event and join other greater Atlanta community members in a discussion of the "unfinished work" yet to do regarding race in our city.

Short Takes

LIBERALISM, BLACK POWER AND THE MAKING OF AMERICAN POLITICS, 1965-1980 by Devin Fergus rated essential by Choice Reviews for Academic Libraries: "Fergus has fingertip knowledge of North Carolina during this era and does a masterful job of navigating the often-complex contours of Tar Heel politics. His coverage of Little is outstanding, and his account of Soul City, that abortive attempt at a harmonious biracial community in eastern North Carolina, is marvelous. An outstanding work."

See Fergus on UNC-TV's Black Issues Forum with Howard Fuller (Malcolm X Liberation University) and Karen Bethea Shields (attorney in the Joan Little case).

John Sledge and THE PILLARED CITY on Walter Edgar's Journal today at noon; podcast available online Monday.

Alexander Macaulay and MARCHING IN STEP, an account of cultural change at The Citadel in recent decades, chronicled in Charleston's Post and Courier: "The tension between being both an insider and a dispassionate historian worked in his favor, Macaulay says."

Booklist praises GHOSTBREAD's "thoughtful testimony"; profile of author Sonja Livingston in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and the Batavia Daily News.

The Georgia Review's roving reporter Dorine Jennette covers Lori Ostlund's San Francisco launch for THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD.

Ostlund will appear on the variety radio show West Coast Live! on November 28 with ecopragmatist Stewart Brand and other guests.

Walden by Haiku on NPR's Living on Earth

This weekend's edition of the NPR show Living on Earth will include an interview with Ian Marshall in which he discusses his recent book WALDEN BY HAIKU. In this unusual project, Marshall explores what he calls "haiku moments" in Henry David Thoreau's Walden by actually stripping the text down into haiku form. For example:

pitch pine where the chimney stood
sweet-scented black-birch
where the door-stone was


huckleberries
the bloom rubbed off
in the market cart


Marshall's accompanying text examines the underlying principles shared by Thoreau's very image-driven work and the art of haiku. He argues that this thought experiment helps clarify what makes the best passages in Thoreau so powerful and lays a foundation for a better understanding of the aesthetics of American nature writing.

Short Takes

Two pieces on CNN.com this week relating to THE LOST BOYS OF SUDAN: one a profile of Kuol Dut, known in the book as Daniel, and the other a blog post by Mark Bixler about the experience of writing the book.

Amrita Chakrabarti Myers wins the Letitia Woods Brown Book Award for Best Article from the Association of Black Women Historians for her chapter in SOUTH CAROLINA WOMEN, which examines a remarkable family of free black women in antebellum Charleston.

"Spartanburg was not my destination, but I became smitten with the fact that here in the Piedmont was this small town with such an international vibe." Marko Maunula (GUTEN TAG, Y'ALL) draws more than a hundred listeners to the Spartanburg County Public Library this week; comments about the book and the event in the Spartanburg Herald-Journal and the Spartanburg Spark.

Author Caroline Leavitt calls Sonja Livingston's GHOSTBREAD "an absolutely astonishing debut" and then interviews Livingston about Nancy Drew, Wonder Woman, and nun fashion.

Jack E. Davis and AN EVERGLADES PROVIDENCE at the Miami Book Fair International this Saturday; pre-fair write up in the Miami Herald.

American Historical Review on Susan Youngblood Ashmore's CARRY IT ON (reviewed with Thomas Kiffmeyer's Reformers to Radicals):"Ashmore and Kiffmeyer offer a powerful indictment of the operation of the War on Poverty on the ground, contribute to an understanding of public policy issues, and, in Ashmore's case, add to our knowledge of the civil rights movement after its glory years."

THE MANSION OF HAPPINESS reviewed at The Rumpus.

New Flannery winner Linda LeGarde Grover profiled in the Duluth Budgeteer and the Duluth News Tribune.

Lori Ostlund (THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD) interviewed in the Albuquerque Alibi; a video review of the book at The Collagist.

Two prizes for Ashmore announced at SHA

At this weekend's annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association in Louisville, Susan Youngblood Ashmore's CARRY IT ON was announced as the winner of two significant southern history prizes.

The Southern Historical Association's Francis B. Simkins Award recognizes the best first book by an author in the field of southern history over a two-year period.

The Southern Association of Women Historians' Willie Lee Rose Prize is awarded annually for the best monograph in southern history authored by a woman. In their award letter, the prize committee commended Ashmore for her impressive and exhaustive research as well as her efforts to "foreground black agency and trace continuities from the civil rights movement to the war on poverty--topics that historians have tended to separate far too much."

The Journal of American History review of the book captured its remarkable qualities this way: "A brief review cannot do justice to Ashmore's skill in weaving together the economic and political aspects of a still-unfinished effort to remake Alabama along more just and egalitarian lines. Her book, like Kent Germany's New Orleans after the Promises (2007), signals a new level of breadth and sophistication in civil rights scholarship."

Short Takes

Rob Amberg and THE NEW ROAD in Mountain XPress.

GLASS CEILINGS AND 100-HOUR COUPLES on MinnPost.com

Matthew H. Bernstein (SCREENING A LYNCHING) on CNN.com in conjunction with the airing of the new documentary The People vs. Leo Frank on PBS stations nationwide this week.

The Mobile Historic Development Commission has awarded the Elizabeth B. Gould research award to John S. Sledge for THE PILLARED CITY and issued a commendation to Sheila Hagler for the photography.

Jane Fulton Alt's LOOK AND LEAVE exhibit recommended by New City Art.

BLACK ELVIS and THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD reviewed in Sunday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution; THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD "wastes no time in establishing Ostlund as one of the new front-runners in Bay Area short fiction" according to San Francisco magazine.

Upcoming area events:
Tuesday, November 10 @ 7 pm
Spartanburg, SC
Marko Maunula (GUTEN TAG, Y'ALL) will speak on the story of international investment in Spartanburg County at the Spartanburg County Public Library courtesy of the Hub City Writers Project.

Thursday, November 12 @ 7 pm
Charleston, SC
Alexander Macaulay (MARCHING IN STEP) will speak on The Citadel at The Citadel (Bond Hall, 117 Moultrie Street).

In Verse: poets examine the economic edge

This weekend, NPR's Studio 360 will air a segment on Women of Troy, a collaboration between poet Susan B.A. Somers-Willett (QUIVER) and photographer Brenda Ann Kenneally. In poems, photographs, and essays, Somers-Willett and Kenneally document the effects effects of the economic crisis on the lives of working mothers in Troy, New York. (The podcast will shortly be available from Studio 360 online.)

The broadcast is part of In Verse, a project "in the spirit of the Federal Writer's Project" in which poets, photographers, and radio producers interview people living on the economic edge and to document their lives. In Verse is an initiative of Public Radio Makers Quest 2.0 (which is in turn an initiative of the Association of Independents in Radio) in collaboration with the Virginia Quarterly Review.

Congregation, a second project, paired Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey and Emmy-nominated photographer Joshua Cogan for a visit to Gulfport, Mississippi in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; the radio segment stemming from this collaboration will air on Studio 360 next weekend, November 13-15. Next fall, The University of Georgia Press will publish BEYOND KATRINA: A MEDITATION ON THE MISSISSIPPI GULF COAST, an expanded account of Trethewey's journey.

There are approximately one million ways to explore these projects further, including:
- a discussion with Somers-Willett and Kenneally to follow this weekend's broadcast at transom.org, a Peabody Award-winning website dedicated to channeling innovative work in public radio

- Multimedia slideshows of both projects on Vimeo and You Tube

- In Verse on Twitter (@inversepoetry) and Facebook

Short Takes

Booklist reviews GLASS CEILINGS AND 100-HOUR COUPLES: “An economist and an anthropologist teamed up to conduct hundreds of interviews for this insightful analysis of the ramifications of stepping off the career track to focus on motherhood. The authors bolster their conclusions with a dazzling (and sometimes daunting) collection of statistics as well as thorough end notes and an impressive bibliography. Their scholarship is balanced by numerous personal stories that elevate the study beyond the miasma of the mommy wars.”

Delta Farm Press strongly recommends WEEDS OF THE SOUTH: “Simply excellent.”

THE PILLARED CITY in Birmingham magazine and the Tuscaloosa News.

ROSALIE EDGE and the Mystery of the Missing Suitcase.

Tennessee Women and William Faulkner and the Southern Landscape (by Knoxville-based geography professor Charles S. Aiken) briefly noted on the newly launched Tennessee Humanities Foundation website Chapter 16.

Flannery contestant celebrates the new Flannery winners and the contest as a whole.

Upcoming area events:
Saturday, November 7, 6-9 pm
Rob Amberg will launch THE NEW ROAD with an exhibit opening at the Madison County Arts Council in Marshall, NC.

Digital Flannerys -- and paperback editions

Ha Jin’s story collection UNDER THE RED FLAG – which won the Flannery in 1996 – will be available in a Kindle edition by the end of the year; the press is also planning on other digital editions, to be available from both libraries and booksellers.

If you’re hot to read digital stories right this second, a Kindle edition is available for Anne Panning’s SUPER AMERICA, and Margot Singer’s THE PALE OF SETTLEMENT will be available soon.

As noted by the American Book Review, “The University of Georgia Press's Flannery O'Connor Award has released some of the most challenging and rewarding short fiction of the last three decades, publishing more than fifty collections since the award's inception in 1983.” In further celebration of more than a quarter century of great short stories, we are making much of our backlist of winning titles available in paperback.

Just released:
THE SEND-AWAY GIRL by Barbara Sutton

THE PEOPLE I KNOW by Nancy Zafris

LARGE ANIMALS IN EVERYDAY LIFE by Wendy Brenner

THE NECESSARY GRACE TO FALL by Gina Ochsner


Coming in March --new paper editions of:
-ICE AGE by Robert Anderson (“I was in the hands of an artist whose intelligence and yes, deftness, thrilled me” —Salon)

- THE EDGE OF MARRIAGE by Hester Kaplan (“We become mesmerized by the stark beauty of disintegration”—New Yorker)

- UNIFIED FIELD THEORY by Frank Soos (“Quietly spectacular”—Boston Review)

- EVENING OUT by David Walton (“His fine ear for the significant subtexts that lie beneath the banalities and half-sentences that intelligent people usually utter to one another give his better stories a gentle power”—NYTBR).

From series editor Nancy Zafris

The announcement of this year's winners of the Flannery O’Connor award for short fiction coincides with the publication of the winning collections from last year's competition: Geoffrey Becker’s BLACK ELVIS and Lori Ostlund’s THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD.

Sadly, another coincidence: just a few days ago Charles East, the esteemed former editor of this series, passed away is his home state of Louisiana. Charles East helped launch the careers of many writers. I had the privilege of working with him when I won the Flannery O’Connor award in 1990. I still have the typewriter-typed pages of his meticulous edits and lengthy comments. A couple of stories in the original collection didn’t pass his muster. We took them out and added a couple of others. To this day I sometimes think, Good thing he got rid of that paragraph. I will be forever grateful to him for taking a potentially good collection and honing it into something better. He did the same for every writer.

Charles East got to experience the thrill many times over of selecting the winners and notifying them of their award. This year I had the pleasure of calling Jessica Treadway and Linda Grover, this year’s co-winners. This will be Linda’s first book of fiction. Her collection "Dance Boots" follows several generations of Ojibwe family members as they struggle, clear-eyed and stoic, to rise above the lot defined for them. There is a Willa Cather-like authenticity in these unique stories. In Jessica Treadway’s collection, "Please Come Home to Me," a variety of recognizable characters living a recognizable life make small turns that accrue toward big and surreal effect. Like the characters themselves, the reader ends these stories changed.

You don’t have to wait a year, however, to read award-winning stories. BLACK ELVIS and THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD demonstrate the high literary standards Charles East demanded for the Flannery O’Connor award series.

THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD takes us to exotic locales all over the world, yet Lori Ostlund’s small American towns might be the most exotic of them all. Publishers Weekly, in its starred review, called The Bigness of the World “remarkable” and “sublime.” This is Lori’s first book and she followed it with winning a $25,000 Rona Jaffe grant. Quite a banner 2009 after years of struggling.

“Black Elvis,” the title story of Geoffrey Becker’s winning collection, was featured in Best American Short Stories a few years ago. The many fans of this story, as well as newcomers to Geoffrey’s work, will be delighted by the other offerings in this collection and the way such imaginative premises play out in this superb craftsman’s hands. And music lovers and art connoisseurs will be further rewarded.

Fewer and fewer presses are in the position of publishing work based solely on literary merit--especially collections of short stories. The editor-in-chief of a large New York publishing house told me a few years ago that he would publish collections of poetry before collections of short fiction -- because they know up front that poetry won’t make money. Bottom line: because of profit margins, collections of short stories are avoided more than any other type of genre. I venture to say that if Flannery O’Connor were sending out her stories today, the big presses would be asking these questions: How do we market this? Can we make money? Perhaps Flannery O’Connor would be told the same thing told to many writers: give us a novel we can sell and we’ll agree to this collection.

The University of Georgia Press stands committed to the goals of the Flannery OConnor award for short fiction: to bring to the public works of lasting literary value. For me, it’s a great feeling to know that my charge is to find the best stories being written today, period. Nobody asks me for a marketing plan.

Please show your support for the two wonderful collections that just came out. You can find them at your local or online bookstores. Enjoy!

Announcing the winners of the 2009 Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Award

The University of Georgia Press is pleased to announce the winners of the 2009 Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award: Linda L. Grover for her manuscript “The Dance Boots” and Jessica Treadway for her manuscript “Please Come Back to Me.” The award recognizes a superlative book-length collection of short fiction and includes a cash prize of $1000 and publication by the University of Georgia Press.

Linda LeGarde Grover is a professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, and an Ojibwe, a member of the Bois Forte Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. Her academic research examines the effects of federal and state Indian education policy on Ojibwe children, families, and communities. Grover’s winning collection of interconnected short stories slips back and forth in time to give an account of the lives an extended family. In the process she illustrates the wide-reaching consequences of the federal policy of removing children from their families to be educated in off-reservation boarding schools.

Jessica Treadway is a native of upstate New York and a former reporter for United Press International. She is currently associate professor of Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College. In most of the stories in her winning collection "Please Come Back to Me," the line between parents, partners, and children is strictly drawn; there are perspectives from all sides, but very little empathy in between. Treadway has previously published a collection of stories, Absent Without Leave (Delphinium) and a novel, And Give You Peace (Greywolf).

The press will begin accepting manuscripts for next year’s competition April 1.
Details about the award series and submission guidelines can be found here.

Short Takes

SPIRITS OF THE AIR in Common-Place.

GLASS CEILINGS AND 100-HOUR COUPLES in Inside Higher Ed and on Minnesota Public Radio. More info and a podcast at Macalester College's site for the book.

THE PILLARED CITY launches in Mobile; coverage in the Mobile Press-Register and Baldwin County Now.

ROSALIE EDGE, HAWK OF MERCY on Colorado Matters.

Interviews with newly released Flannery award winners online at Story in Literary Fiction; THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD in the California Literary Review.

Indiana Review on last year’s winner DROWNING LESSONS.

Anne Panning’s SUPER AMERICA receives the Lillian Fairchild Award from the Department of English at the University of Rochester.

Michael Martone in the Sycamore Review.

Robin Ekiss (THE MANSION OF HAPPINESS) consulted on her favorite San Francisco spots in the San Francisco Examiner.

Roundtable on leadership and the Leo Frank lynching

This Thursday, the Georgia Historical Society presents a roundtable discussion featuring:

Roy Barnes, former Governor of Georgia

Matthew H. Bernstein, chair of the Emory University film studies department and author of SCREENING A LYNCHING

Steve Oney, author of And the Dead Shall Rise

The roundtable will take place at 7 pm at the studios of Georgia Public Broadcasting on 260 14th St NW in Atlanta. A thirty minute segment of the discussion will air on GPB following the November 2 showing of The People v. Leo Frank, a new documentary on the Leo Frank case directed by Ben Loeterman and filmed in Atlanta.

Barnes has been an important supporter of Loeterman's film, and Oney -- whose magazine article initially interested the director in doing the project -- served as a historical consultant to the project. Bernstein is an expert on film and television accounts of the Leo Frank case.

In Memoriam: Charles East (1924-2009)

Charles East, a former Editor and Assistant Director of the UGA Press, died this past weekend. His contributions to the Press were many and long lasting.

Most notably, East founded—and for many years served as the series editor for—the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. More than fifty short-story collections have appeared in this prestigious series, which has helped to launch the careers of such widely read authors as Ha Jin, Antonya Nelson, Rita Ciresi, and Mary Hood.

In addition, the Press published East's edition of The Civil War Diary of Sarah Morgan, one of our best selling and most widely reviewed titles. Following a successful run in hardcover, the book was reissued in paperback by Touchstone/Simon & Schuster where it is still available.

Today's edition of the Baton Rouge Advocate includes more details of the life and career of this accomplished editor and writer.

Update: A moving personal remembrance of Charles East's tenure at the Lousiana State University Press can be read at the LSU Press Blog.

Photo of Charles East © Ron E. Dobbs

Three Press Authors Selected for Georgia Writers Hall of Fame

Three University of Georgia Press authors--Judith Ortiz Cofer, Walter White, and Philip Lee Williams--will be inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in a ceremony tentatively scheduled for March 22–23, 2010, at UGA’s Miller Learning Center.

Judith Ortiz Cofer, born in Horminqueros, Puerto Rico, moved with her family to Augusta, Georgia, when she was fifteen. Her stories, poems, and personal essays explore the lives of young Puerto Ricans as they assimilate the native culture of their parents with their own adopted culture. In 1984, she joined the faculty of the University of Georgia, where she is now Regents and Franklin Professor of English and Creative Writing.

Ortiz Cofer has published several books with UGA Press, beginning with her first major work of prose fiction, THE LINE OF THE SUN, in 1989 and, most recently the poetry collection A LOVE STORY BEGINNING IN SPANISH. Her other UGA Press publications include EL DELI LATINO, the Spanish translation of her collection of personal narrative, short fiction, and poetry The Latin Deli, and both the English and Spanish versions of her nonfiction account of the process of becoming a writer, WOMAN IN FRONT OF THE SUN and MUJER FRENTE EL SOL.

Philip Lee Williams was born and raised in Madison, Georgia, in 1950. He serves as the director of public information for UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, as well as an adjunct professor of creative writing at UGA. His first novel, THE HEART OF A DISTANT FOREST, won the Townsend Prize for Fiction in 1986 and was reprinted in paperback by UGA Press. Williams’s comic novel THE TRUE AND AUTHENTIC HISTORY OF JENNY DORSET(1997) and his memoir CROSSING WILDCAT RIDGE(1999) were also published by the Press. His most recent novel is The Campfire Boys, which released September 1.


Atlanta native Walter White(1893?-1955) served as chief secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) from 1929 to 1955 and was one of the most prominent and influential black leaders in the U.S. until mid-century. UGA Press has editions of his 1924 novel THE FIRE IN THE FLINT and his autobiography, A MAN CALLED WHITE, with a foreword by Andrew Young.

Exhibits open: New Orleans in Chicago and Mobile in Mobile

Two new books launch this Thursday in conjunction with the opening of related exhibits.

"After the Storm," an exhibit of Jane Fulton Alt's photographs of New Orleans opened Saturday at the Chicago Cultural Center's Michigan Avenue Gallery.

Alt, who as both social worker and photographer accompanied residents of New Orleans's Ninth Ward back to their homes for the first time after Hurricane Katrina, will sign copies of her new book LOOK AND LEAVE just before an opening reception for the exhibit on Thursday, October 8 at 5:30.



At the same time -- Thursday, October 8 at 5:30 -- the Museum of Mobile will host a launch event for THE PILLARED CITY, a new illustrated book from architectural historian John Sledge and photographer Sheila Hagler.

The event includes a sneak preview of their new exhibit "Pillars of the Community: Mobile's Greek Revival Movement," which opens to the public on Sunday. Proceeds from admission to the book launch will go toward the restoration of Barton Academy, a Greek Revival landmark in Mobile that is covered extensively in the book.

A review in this Saturday's Mobile Press-Register includes additional event details.

Poet Rita Dove in Athens this week

Because we've all been very, very good this year, The Georgia Review (with the support of the NEA American Masterpieces project and the Southern Arts Federation) is bringing the amazing Rita Dove to Athens this week for a series of public events on Thursday and Friday.

Dove won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her book Thomas and Beulah, which contains poems loosely based on the lives of her grandparents. (The historical Beulah was born in 1904 in Rockmart, Georgia.) She was poet laureate of the United States from 1993-1995, and was the youngest poet to have held this post and only the second African American, after Gwendolyn Brooks. Her most recent book, Sonata Mulattica, released this spring from Norton.

Several of Dove's poems appear in the anthology BLACK NATURE, forthcoming from the University of Georgia Press in December.

Ken Burns series examines Everglades tonight

The new Ken Burns documentary series, The National Parks: America's Best Idea, has been airing this week on most PBS stations. Episode 5, "Great Nature (1933-1945)," which airs tonight at 8 pm on Georgia Public Broadcasting and in many other markets, will feature the controversial bill to establish the Everglades as a national park in 1934.

The episode mentions Marjory Stoneman Douglas, who became an important public voice in support of the Everglades in the face of attitudes like those of a respected zoologist of the day, who argued that "a swamp is a swamp." However, the series is particularly drawn to the figure of George Melendez Wright, originally a naturalist at Yosemite who became in 1933 head of the National Parks Service's newly established wildlife division. Wright took a research party over the Everglades in the Goodyear blimp, and the quantity and diversity of wildlife he observed helped convert him to a fervent champion of establishing this unique swamp as a park.

If the episode stirs Everglades fever, take a look at the just-released EVERGLADES: OUTSIDE AND WITHIN by photographer Marion Belanger, or read Jack E. Davis's recent biography of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, AN EVERGLADES PROVIDENCE.

Great backlist titles on the natural history of the Everglades include naturalist Ted Levin's LIQUID LAND and Susan Cerulean's vivid account of a search for swallow-tailed kites, TRACKING DESIRE. Finally, for a true insider account of the wilderness Everglades, before development and drainage, try Rob Storter's charming, illustrated CRACKERS IN THE GLADE.

Short Takes

Steve Courtney wins the 2009 Connecticut Book Award in biography/memoir for JOSEPH HOPKINS TWICHELL.

Andrew Porter’s THE THEORY OF LIGHT AND MATTER has been named a finalist for the 2009 Writers League of Texas Book Award.

September’s Mobile Bay Monthly features John Sledge’s forthcoming illustrated book on the Greek Revival architecture of Mobile, THE PILLARED CITY. An interview with Sledge will air on Mobile’s NPR station on Monday, Sept. 28, and a companion exhibit at the Museum of Mobile opens with a book launch October 8.

This month’s Atlanta Magazine features Mrs. S. R. Dull’s SOUTHERN COOKING and Nathalie Dupree’s NEW SOUTHERN COOKING in an article on “Best Georgia Cookbooks.”

Seth Bruggeman’s HERE, GEORGE WASHINGTON WAS BORN positively reviewed in History News and in a forthcoming issue of Material Culture; Choice calls it “a fascinating administrative history.” In The Public Historian, Michael Kammen wrote: “The author has done so much thoughtful work providing context (especially concerning the influence of the Colonial Revival and the evolution of National Park Service policies) that the book really is a ‘must read’ for many public historians. It is also a significant contribution to the flourishing field of memory studies.”

The Public History Podcast from the University of Central Florida features Jack Davis and AN EVERGLADES PROVIDENCE, and poses the question: is it possible to think of the Everglades as a giant public history exhibit, with Marjory Stoneman Douglas as its curator?

NEW ORLEANS AFTER THE PROMISES highlighted as one of “The Best Books About New Orleans” in The Daily Beast.

Maria Rost Rublee’s NONPROLIFERATION NORMS in Foreign Affairs.

Poetry news: Orion Magazine on QUIVER by Susan B.A. Somers-Willett: “Anyone fascinated by what comes of the passionate coupling of science and art will devour this collection of poems. Somers-Willett's poetic imagination plumbs the wonders and mysteries of dark matter, relativity, atomic physics, and natural history with lyricism, reverence, and delight.” FIELD FOLLY SNOW by Cecily Parks reviewed in New Letters: “This poetry collection demands close reading and deep engagement to follow its levels of found material and its internal discoveries, and these poems are worth the effort.”

The Journal of American History reviews DIXIE EMPORIUM: “This delightfully entertaining tour of the South reveals much about the processes of consumption, identity, and memory that apply well beyond the geographical and cultural boundaries of Dixie. But reader beware: do not attempt to enjoy this collection on an empty stomach. A hankering for a Krispy Kreme could arise. Nevertheless, it is a must for scholars of the South or cultural history."

UGA Press authors and books will be featured at several fall book festivals:

Geoff Becker launches BLACK ELVIS at the Baltimore Book Festival this Sunday.

Jim Lorence (THE UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE’S MOVEMENT) will share the stage with David A. Taylor (Soul of a People) at the Wisconsin Book Festival Oct.11.

Three different panels at the Louisiana Festival of the Book on October 17 will highlight LOUISIANA WOMEN – two featuring different contributors to the volume and one focusing on journalist Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer, a.k.a. Dorothy Dix.

Jack E. Davis will showcase AN EVERGLADES PROVIDENCE at the St. Petersburg Times Festival of Reading October 24 and the Miami Book Fair November 14.

Riot remembered at Auburn Avenue Research Library

This Saturday, September 26, at 4 pm, the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, a special library within the Atlanta-Fulton County Library System, will host an authors' discussion on the 1906 Atlanta race riot, one of the most brutal in American history.

The event will feature Rebecca Burns, author of RAGE IN THE GATE CITY, and author/educator June Dobbs Butts, daughter of prominent African American leader John Wesley Dobbs (and contributor of a foreword to Burns's book.) The discussion will be moderated by Georgia State history professor Clifford Kuhn (LIVING ATLANTA).

The event is free and open to the public and will be held in the Authors' and Writers' Lounge on the third floor of the library.

NYROB on Brack's edition of Hawkins's Life

From a roundup of new Samuel Johnson titles in the New York Review of Books:

"A new, corrected, and annotated edition of Hawkins's The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D, first published in 1787, and edited by O.M. Brack Jr., was reissued this summer by the University of Georgia Press. This edition is—as Johnson once said of a previous work by Hawkins on Izzak Walton—'very diligently collected, and very elegantly composed. You will...not wish for a better.' Professor Brack deals with the question of Hawkins's 'asperity' toward Johnson in his introduction. 'Hawkins had to decide if he was going to write a panegyric on Johnson or produce a life....Hawkins esteemed Johnson, but he esteemed truth more.'"

Tercentenary of Samuel Johnson’s birth and symposium at Emory October 3

Today marks the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of Samuel Johnson, English lexicographer, biographer, essayist, and poet. Celebrations and reexaminations of Johnson’s life and work have been taking place this year all over the world.

In commemoration of this event, the University of Georgia Press has released the first scholarly edition of Sir John Hawkins’s THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D., edited by noted Johnson scholar O M Brack, Jr. Brack’s introduction and annotations supply a context for reading Hawkins’s Life, which complements, clarifies and often corrects the better-known and later Life by James Boswell.

Brack and six other noted Johnson scholars will take part in a one-day symposium at Emory University to discuss Hawkins's Life, sponsored by Emory’s Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry and the University of Georgia Press:

REASSESSING HAWKINS’S LIFE OF JOHNSON
Saturday, October 3, 2009
10:15 am -5:30 pm

Location: MARBL, Emory’s Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Library in Woodruff Library, Emory University, Decatur, GA

10:30-12:00 Address by O M (Skip) Brack, Jr.

2:00-3:30
Chris Johnson, Francis Marion University, "Hawkins's Use of Personal Recollection"
Martine Brownley, Emory University, “English Biography Before Hawkins”
Myron Yeager, Chapman University, "Hawkins's Life and Modern Biographers"

4:00-5:30
Thomas Kaminski, Loyola University, "Hawkins, the Parliamentary Debates, and other Problems with Johnson's Politics"
Greg Clingham, Bucknell University, "Hawkins and the Law"
Timothy Erwin, UNLV, "Richard Savage, Samuel Johnson, and the Profession of an Author"

The event is FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC but space is limited.
Please register if you plan to attend by e-mailing Martine Brownley, director of the Fox Center, at martine.brownley@emory.edu.

Rosalie Edge commemorated at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary 75th Anniversary

Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in eastern Pennsylvania celebrated its 75th anniversary this weekend. Despite the downpour, more than 100 visitors turned up to hear author Dyana Furmanksy (ROSALIE EDGE, HAWK OF MERCY) recount the life of socialite-turned-hellraiser Rosalie Edge, who was instrumental in founding the sanctuary.

Furmansky’s biography of Edge chronicles the struggle for conservation at Hawk Mountain -- one of the best places in the northeastern United States to witness the annual hawk migration -- as well as other aspects of Edge's remarkable career: she fought for both Olympic and Kings Canyon National Parks and inspired the founders of such organizations as the Nature Conservancy and the Environmental Defense Fund.

Booklist gave ROSALIE EDGE, HAWK OF MERCY a starred review, noting, “Clearly relishing every moment of Edge’s remarkable life, Furmansky vividly enriches environmental history with her inspiring portrait of this indomitable champion of the wild.” High Country News noted, “Furmansky’s book serves as a timely reminder that today’s conservation movement could use a few more firebrands.”

Furmansky will return to Hawk Mountain September 26 at 6 pm as a speaker in their Autumn Lecture Series.

She will speak at Tattered Cover in Denver on October 3 as part of their Rocky Mountain Land Series, at New York Audubon October 13, and at Chicago Audubon October 25.

Colin Cheney wins National Poetry Series competition

The National Poetry Series has officially announced the results of the 2009 Open Competition, and the University of Georgia Press is delighted to announce that judge David Wojahn has selected Colin Cheney's manuscript HERE BE MONSTERS for publication by the press in spring 2010.

Cheney, in addition to writing poetry, curating the Chin Music reading series, and teaching expository writing at NYU, builds rooftop gardens and meadows in Brooklyn. He received a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation in 2006. His poems have appeared widely in journals; read a few online from Poetry, Ploughshares, and the Kenyon Review Online.

Other winners of this year's competition are:

Julie Carr, Sarah - Of Fragments and Lines
Chosen by Eileen Myles, to be published by Coffee House Press

Carrie Fountain, Burn Lake
Chosen by Natasha Trethewey, to be published by Penguin Books

Erika Meitner, Ideal Cities
Chosen by Paul Guest, to be published by HarperCollins Publishers

Jena Osman, The Network
Chosen by Prageeta Sharma, to be published by Fence Books


The National Poetry Series was established in 1978 to ensure the publication of five poetry books annually through participating publishers. Publication is funded by the Lannan Foundation, Stephen Graham, Joyce & Seward Johnson Foundation, Glenn & Renee Schaeffer, and the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation.

Lori Ostlund Wins Rona Jaffe Award

Congratulations to Lori Ostlund, one of six recipients of this year’s Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Awards.

Intended to identify, encourage and support excellent women writers in the early stages of their careers, Writer’s Awards include a monetary award of $25,000. The six winners will receive their awards at a ceremony in New York September 24.

Ostlund’s first book, THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD, received last year’s Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award and has just released. A Booklist review noted, “Witty and sharp, Ostlund has crafted 11 surprising and often very funny tales that remind us just how vast the world really is.” A starred review in Publishers Weekly this week concluded, “Each piece is sublime.”

Our Amazing Coast

The summer issue of Coastwatch, the magazine of the North Carolina Sea Grant, features an in-depth article on “Our Amazing Coast” workshops for elementary school teachers held across North Carolina this past school year. Designed to help educators engage young learners with science using hands-on materials, the “Our Amazing Coast” curriculum was first piloted in Georgia and is based on the book GEORGIA’S AMAZING COAST, published by the University of Georgia Press in association with Georgia Sea Grant.

The book, written by David Bryant and George Davidson, is uniquely structured with one hundred self-contained plates each featuring a coastal creature with its common and scientific name and a brief, engaging yet informative description that helps capture the attention of younger readers. The accompanying curriculum, written by Georgia teacher Becci Curry for the Center for Ocean Science Education Excellence-Southeast, explicitly targets Georgia science standards for grades 3, 4 and 5 and extends the book’s usefulness with challenges like the “Coastal Marsh Survival Game” or organizers to help students classify the organisms found in the book.

Donny Hathaway poems adapted for performance

BlackPoet Ventures begins auditions this week for actors and musicians to play R&B musician Donny Hathaway, his nemesis Mr. Soul, his muse The Angel, his wife, and an array of musicians and fans in a theater adaptation of Ed Pavlic's WINNERS HAVE YET TO BE ANNOUNCED. Pavlic's book explores the rich musical life and tragic death of Donny Hathaway in a series of intense prose poems written as if spoken from points of view that shift from Hathaway himself to others who knew him more and less intimately. In Leah Marche's dramatized version, the imagined conversations of Pavlic's poems will come to life in a mix of on-stage spoken word, live music and movement.

Winners Have Yet to Be Announced will be the fall production in the Biorhythmic Series for BlackPoet Ventures, an organization founded in 2005 to make performance poetry more interesting and fresh by going beyond slam and open mic nights into new theatrical territory. The play opens October 15 in Phoenix.