Upcoming Events

Need a gift for the bibliophile on your list? Check out some of our upcoming author events for inspiration!



Tuesday, November 25
Time: 7 PM
THE SMALL HEART OF THINGS by Julian Hoffman
Location: The Book Case, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Description: Reading/Signing


Monday, December 1
Time: 7:15 PM
CONFEDERATE ODYSSEY by Gordon L. Jones
Location: Decatur Library auditorium/Georgia Center for the Book
Description: Reading/Signing


Thursday, December 4
Time: 7 PM
BRIGHT SHARDS OF SOMEPLACE ELSE by Monica McFawn
Location: Scarab Club, Detroit, MI
Description: Performance for Literary Detroit's second anniversary


Wednesday, December 10
Time: 7 PM
ZERO TO THREE by F. Douglas Brown
Location: Eso Won Books, Los Angeles, CA
Description: Reading/Signing





And look for these exciting events for upcoming publications in 2015!

Wednesday, February 25
Time: 6:30 PM
ALONE ATOP THE HILL: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE DUNNIGAN, PIONEER OF THE NATIONAL BLACK PRESS, edited by Carol McCabe Booker
Location: National Press Club, Washington, D.C.
Description: Panel discussion with James McGrath Morris (ticketed event)


Friday, March 13
Time: TBA
HONEST ENGINE by Kyle Dargan
Location: Innisfree Poetry Bookstore and Cafe, Boulder, CO
Description: Reading/Signing

Short Takes

The first biography of William and Ellen Craft (for adults), LOVE, LIBERATION, AND ESCAPING SLAVERY is also the first telling of their story by a scholar. Complementing UGA Press's edition of the Crafts' 1860 memoir, RUNNING A THOUSAND MILES TO FREEDOM, Barbara McCaskill's new book examines the couple's two escapes from slavery, their activism on the transatlantic antislavery stage, and their work to assist the freed people in their birthplace in Georgia. To learn more about this new book, listen to the interview below.

Volume One Magazine interviews Debra Monroe about her memoir, ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF NORMAL. Check out the interview here to find out about her forthcoming memoir, MY UNSENTIMENTAL EDUCATION, that we will be publishing next fall.

Storyville recently featured FAULTY PREDICTIONS author Karin Lin-Greenberg's short story, "Bread," via its app. In case you missed it, check out the website to learn the story behind the story.

According to Covington News, COURTHOUSES OF GEORGIA is a "vibrant new photography book. . . . Organized by the nine travel regions of Georgia, the book offers the perfect starting point for touring any of Georgia's counties and instills an appreciation for historic preservation." Curious about why the Bartow County courthouse graces the cover of the book? Check out this article by the Daily Tribune.

In an interview with the Macon Telegraph, Association County Commissioners of Georgia executive director Ross King and photographer Greg Newington explain some of the thought behind COURTHOUSES OF GEORGIA:

'I wanted to capture the character of the building. [The courthouse] is the center of the community and a driving force behind community involvement,' Newington said.

King echoed Newington's sentiments. The buildings, King said, are not just to hold court.

'They are the people's building,' he said.

In its review of the book, the Augusta Chronicle praises the photographs of the courthouses, suggesting folks buy the book "for the photos of these wonderful, historic buildings that represent their counties in the best of lights." Besides the beautiful photographs, COURTHOUSES OF GEORGIA also features brief histories of the 159 county courthouses. In an interview with WMAZ, former Georgia House Majority leader Larry Walker "says while helping with the book, he learned facts about his native Houston County courthouses."

In an interview with Island Packet and Beauford Gazette Reporter Erin Shaw, PENN CENTER author Orville Vernon Burton explains why the story behind Penn Center is "amazing."

Burton said he was drawn to Penn Center's story because it offers a different South Carolina history than most people are used to.

'Here was the alternate vision to segregation in South Carolina,' he said. Penn Center, originally called Penn School, 'allowed blacks and whites to treat one another as brothers and sisters.'

The Durham Herald-Sun has a round-up of new titles, including Melissa Estes Blair's new book, REVOLUTIONIZING EXPECTATIONS. "The history of feminism in Durham is unique, in that it did not arrive 'through marches or mass demonstrations' but through organizations like the YWCA, which made the goals of feminism acceptable for more people." To learn more about the book, check out this interview with Blair at Warren Wilson College.

CBS News recently aired a piece on the University of Georgia's mascot, Uga. (Did you miss it? If so, check out the video below.) Want to learn more about Uga? Be sure to pickup a copy of DAMN GOOD DOGS. Monica McFawn, author of BRIGHT SHARDS OF SOMEPLACE ELSE, explains why she does not write down stories in a guest post for the blog, Read Her Like An Open Book:

Despite the fact that I’m a writer, the majority of stories I’ve told won’t be committed to paper. It isn’t because I think the stories aren’t good enough. In fact, some of the stories I tell are polished to a sheen, any crude transitions or slow spots worn away by years of telling, of watching listeners’ faces. Still, I believe the fact that I don’t write them down has paradoxically helped me become a better writer.

Visit WKMS 91.3FM to hear an interview with Kate Sweeney about her book, AMERICAN AFTERLIFE.  "The way I write always winds up having some irreverence in it. I always wind up finding humor in things," Sweeney says.

Congratulations Julian Hoffman and Joe Cook! Their books are two of this year's recipients of the 2014 National Outdoor Book Awards. Julian Hoffman's THE SMALL HEART OF THINGS won for Natural History Literature. "It is the small things that capture Hoffman’s attention, and through the simple power of his writing, they attract us as well." Joe Cook's THE CHATTHOOCHEE RIVER USER'S GUIDE won for Outdoor Adventure Guidebook. "This guidebook . . . has everything a good guide should have: excellent maps, enticing photographs, and intelligent organization. And the writing? That's where this guide really shines."

Congratulations Kari Frederickson! Her book COLD WAR DIXIE has won the 2014 Bennett H. Wall Award from the Southern Historical Association. It is awarded to the best book published in southern business or economic history over a two-year period.

GEORGIA WOMEN shine at Spotlight on the Arts at UGA

Spotlight on the Arts at UGA was an incredible success, and the Press is proud to have been a contributing entity. Our event with authors Dr. Ann Short Chirhart and UGA's own Kathleen Ann Clark was held this past Tuesday in the Richard B. Russell Special Collections Library on the UGA Campus.


Chirhart and Clark gave a presentation entitled, "Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History: Georgia Women Shape the Twentieth Century," which was launched from their recent anthology, GEORGIA WOMEN: THEIR LIVES AND TIMES, VOL. 2 (published by the Press). Their talk was centered around three Georgia women—two lesser known figures, activists Lugenia Burns Hope and Vara A. Majette, and then one of the most famous women in Georgia history, Margaret Mitchell.

"One challenge we faced [in editing GEORGIA WOMEN] was finding connections between and among these eighteen incredible women," Chirhart said in the opening of the lecture. "Yet we still wanted to remain true to the independent women who had socio-political and cultural influence in many ways."

Dr. Ann Short Chirhart

But through the course of the talk, the interweaving strands became evident. The stories of these eighteen women have often been marginalized, dismissed, or misunderstood in the context of Georgia history. Some of these women viewed the past and the traditions of their time as something to overcome, yet others respected the past, despite its tumultuous nature, and wanted to simultaneously preserve it and challenge the status quo.

Perhaps most importantly, despite being trailblazers in their own times, these women set the stage for future actions. Lugenia Burns Hope's philosophy drew heavily on the Christian tradition, rejected exclusionary racial boundaries, and urged those to "love they neighbor as thyself." Almost half a century later, Coretta Scott King would be greatly inspired by Hope's actions and use her tenants to guide her own activism.

Vara A. Majette was largely critical of the media. She was skeptical of white men's claims that they had a moral duty to protect white women by any means necessary, and she blamed newspapers for fueling the fire of racial tensions in the South after the 1906 Atlanta race riots. Through her work, Majette was devoted to "turning racialized ideologies on their heads."

Dr. Kathleen Ann Clark

Finally, though most notable for writing Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell was actually quite full of gumption. She was the daughter of a suffragette and largely believed in public activism, paid work for women, gender bending, and even delaying or indefinitely postponing marriage. It is in Mitchell's lost adolescent novella, Lost Laysen (her only published work other than Gone with the Wind), that a teenage Mitchell explores pushing the boundaries of racial and gender norms.

Many thanks again to Dr. Ann Short Chirhart and Dr. Kathleen Ann Clark for joining us in Athens for our celebration of the arts, as well as providing us with a thoughtful and engaging talk. Though the week of Spotlight on the Arts at UGA has passed, these kinds of performances and events thrive in Athens year-round. The next on-campus Press event will take place on February 27, 2015, as part of a lecture series for the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts and will feature John T. Edge, Director of the Southern Foodways Alliance and general editor of the SFA Studies in Culture, People, and Place series published with the Press. We look forward to seeing you then!

Dr. Kathleen Ann Clark, Dr. Ann Short Chirhart, and Press Director Lisa Bayer at the GEORGIA WOMEN, VOL. 2 event

#UPWeek: Blog Tour Day Four

It's day four of University Press Week's blog tour. Today's posts will not disappoint. Because it's Throwback Thursday!

Here's what you can look forward to looking back:

Harvard University Press: Late last year HUP made roughly 3,000 previously unavailable backlist works available again, some of which were published back in the late 1800s. Many of the titles and subjects bear a resemblance to some reference (or something that might as well be referenced) in a Decemberists song. So their post: a quiz, asking the question, HUP title or Decemberists' song?

MIT Press: A look back at former MIT Press designer Muriel Cooper, who designed MIT Press's iconic colophon 50 years ago in 1964.

Temple University Press: A post on the development of Temple's influential Asian History and Culture series.

University of Toronto Press: UTP looks back at the publications of The Champlain Society, an historical society which publishes primary source archive material that explores Canada's history. The Champlain Society produces scholarly books every year that have been the object of meticulous treatment by specialists whose role has been to highlight the significance of the eyewitness accounts and to inform readers of the context in which these documents were drafted. The post highlights this year's volume on the writings of Pierre-Espirit Radisson, as well as include historical images from past publications.

University of Washington Press: UWP looks at a series of Asian American classics that they have recently reissued, with an emphasis on the evolution of cover designs over the years.

Wesleyan University Press: WUP's #TBT post is a poem by Alice Notley from Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems, 1970-2005, which WUP published in 2006.

#UPWeek: Blog Tour Day Three

Yesterday for day two of the University Press week blog tour, we blogged about our collaboration with New Georgia Encyclopedia. University Press of Florida, Fordham University Press, and Indiana University Press shared some great—and a few hilarious—photos of their presses through the years. Johns Hopkins University Press ran a Q& A with JHUP Art Director Martha Sewell and a short film of author and marine illustrator Val Kells in her studio. And Stanford University Press featured some old b&w photos of SUP and its printing facilities as they existed in the 50s and 60s that highlight the artistry and craftsmanship that goes into print publishing.

Today on the blog tour: popular culture.

Georgetown University Press: TV, espionage, and the academy. GUP highlights several of their books that dive deep into the dark corners of the history of espionage, all of which speak to the enduring popularity of espionage as a subject in popular culture.

University Press of Kentucky: Dalton Trumbo was a Blacklisted Hollywood screen writer of films such as 'Spartacus' and 'Roman Holiday' and a member of the Hollywood Ten who opposed the House Un-American Activities Committee. (Bryan Cranston recently debuted the "Cranstache" at the Emmy's, grown in preparation to portray Trumbo in an upcoming biopic directed by Jay Roach.)

University Press of Mississippi: UPM highlights their book Walt Before Mickey, which has been adapted into a movie set to open Thanksgiving Weekend.

University of Pennsylvania Press: Penn Press highlights their ability to publish books that cater to both niche markets and general audiences as well, spotlighting a few recent titles.

Princeton University Press: Q&A with math editor Vickie Kearn about PUP's book Alan Turing: The Enigma, which has been adapted into a film starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley titled The Imitation Game.

University of Wisconsin Press: Books that highlight issues that have become major news stories, such as gays in the military, militarized police, torture, and immigration.

Tomorrow is sure to be another day of excellent blogging. Stay tuned.

#UPWeek: Blog Tour Day Two

Yesterday for day one of the University Press week blog tour, we blogged about our collaboration with the New Georgia Encyclopedia. There were also great posts from the University of California Press, University of Chicago Press, Duke University Press, Project Muse/Johns Hopkins University Press, McGill-Queen's University Press, Texas A&M University Press,  University of Virginia Press, and Yale University Press. (We did the tour yesterday: here are our highlights via Twitter.)

On deck for day two, Your UP in Pictures:

University Press of Florida: UPF in pictures through the years.

Fordham University Press: A photo collage featuring FUP events and memorable moments over the years.

Indiana University Press: A fun look at the history of IUP as they celebrate their 65th anniversary next year.

Johns Hopkins University Press: Q& A with JHUP Art Director Martha Sewell and a short film of author and marine illustrator Val Kells in her studio.

Stanford University Press: Old b&w photos of SUP and its printing facilities as they existed in the 50s and 60s that highlight the artistry and craftsmanship that goes into print publishing.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's posts as university presses take on their role in and relationship to popular culture.

The University of Georgia Press and New Georgia Encyclopedia: A Collaboration of Like Minds

It's Day 1 of the American Association of University Press Week Blog Tour, and we'd like to start by applauding our friends at Duke University Press for their new book, THE MUTLISPECIES SALON, and how it epitomizes this week's theme—collaboration. In this new approach to writing culture, editor Eben Kirksey creates an anthology that brings together analyses of insects, animals, fungi, microbes, and humans with strands of economic, political, and social life. More information on the book can be found here, and there's also an outstanding companion site in the transmedia collection that's definitely worth checking out.

Roughly 350 miles away from Durham in Athens, Georgia, the spirit of collaboration is alive and well here at the University of Georgia Press. The primary mission of the UGA Press is to support and enhance the University of Georgia's place as a major research institution by publishing outstanding works of scholarship and literature by scholars and writers throughout the world. But in order to ensure knowledge was available to expand upon, the New Georgia Encyclopedia was born. Now this year, for AAUP Week, the encyclopedia is being acclaimed as a groundbreaking collaboration to make knowledge accessible to all.

On February 12, 2004 (aptly Georgia History Day) the New Georgia Encyclopedia launched with a virtual ribbon cutting ceremony.  What started with only 700 entries has grown into a scholarly monolith of the state's history, with over 2,000 articles and over 6,000 images.  It is the first state encyclopedia to to be conceived and designed exclusively for publication online, and it is the product of unification between The Georgia Humanities Council, the University System of Georgia/GALILEO, the Office of the Governor, and the Press.

Though the content is exclusively digital, the award-wining encyclopedia has published two books with the Press to supplement the knowledge of Georgia history. In 2007, THE NEW GEORGIA ENCYCLOPEDIA COMPANION TO GEORGIA LITERATURE was published by the Press, and the anthology (which contains articles originally published online) collects biographical profiles of Georgia writers to highlight the state's literary contributions.

In 2011, THE CIVIL WAR IN GEORGIA: A NEW GEORGIA ENCYCLOPEDIA COMPANION was published, also by the Press. Edited by John C. Inscoe, editor of the New Georgia Encyclopedia, this groundbreaking work draws attention to the war's legacy, as well as originally published online articles that cover the prelude to the war and the war's years.

Director of the Press, Lisa Bayer, said, "The New Georgia Encyclopedia has become so deeply embedded in the ways in which Georgians of all ages (and people everywhere) learn about our state that I sometimes think we take it for granted. Where else can you find well-organized, vetted, expert information along with images, references, and crosslinking for free? We should be very, very proud—and supportive—of this amazing resource, which shares the rich history of our state with our world."

Kelly Caudle, project director and managing editor of the New Georgia Encyclopedia, elaborated on on how each compliments the other. "The NGE and the Press are natural partners, each doing its part to make the best scholarship on Georgia available to the academic community as well as the larger public," she said. "With a scholarly credibility endowed by the Press partnership, the NGE attracts a wide audience of readers curious about Georgia's stories—and in turn the NGE sends users straight to the authoritative source behind the entries: UGA Press books. It's been a mutually supportive partnership."

If you have any comments or are interested in learning more about the New Georgia Encyclopedia, the Press, or University Press Week, tweet to us at @UGAPress or talk to us on Facebook at the University of Georgia Press using the hashtag #upweek.