Short Takes

Chesapeake Quarterly has an engaging review of the award-winning THE OYSTER QUESTION: "Keiner, in sharp detail, lays out the tangled history of Maryland's oysters — not only the leasing controversy, but the hunt for them, the struggle to manage them, the battle to bring them back. . . . Keiner's book is well researched, well thought out, and well written. Her attention to detail is impressive. Every library with marine-related holdings should have a copy. Indeed, for anyone wanting the deep backstory on Maryland's colorful oyster past, The Oyster Question is itself something of a treasure."

The winner of the 2010 Associated Writers & Writing Programs Creative Nonfiction Award is Danielle Cadena Deulen for her manuscript "The Riots." The award includes publication by the University of Georgia Press.

JURY DISCRIMINATION included on the Chronicle of Higher Education's New Scholarly Books list.

THE BIBLE ACCORDING TO MARK TWAIN makes the Essential Freethought Library.

ISLE reviews Sharon White's VANISHED GARDENS, calling it "a four-dimensional urban ecology" and noting, "Her spare yet lyrical sentences accumulate a Proustian density in which every fragrance, every blossom, every steamy shade of green, every change of temperature and cycle of season enriches the compost of history, culture, botany, and memoir."

Eighteenth Century Studies calls Julie Anne Sweet's NEGOTIATING FOR GEORGIA, on the relationship between early Georgia colonists and Lower Creek Indians, "the most focused study yet on this intercultural engagement," adding that "the strength of Sweet's monograph is in the impressive scope and depth of her research and the astonishing level of detail and complex analysis it allows her to provide."

Upcoming events:
August 12-14, 2010
Scribblers' Retreat Writers' Conference, St. Simon's Island
Author Karen Salyer McElmurray (SURRENDERED CHILD and STRANGE BIRDS IN THE TREE OF HEAVEN)is a featured speaker.