It's Earth Day . . .

. . . and UGA Press has many new and forthcoming nature and environment books in the works.

TURTLES OF THE SOUTHEAST is the second title in our series of nature guides to the Southeast. SNAKES OF THE SOUTHEAST is one of our bestselling books. These full-color guides are great for a range of readers, from children to serious naturalists. FROGS AND TOADS OF THE SOUTHEAST comes out in July.

We are very pleased to be adding three books by Barbara Hurd to our list. Her newest, WALKING THE WRACK LINE: ON TIDAL SHIFTS AND WHAT REMAINS will complete a trilogy of introspective nature writing in the tradition of Terry Tempest Williams and Gretel Ehrlich. The first two books—STIRRING THE MUD: ON SWAMPS, BOGS, AND HUMAN IMAGINATION and ENTERING THE STONE: ON CAVES AND FEELING THROUGH THE DARK—will be available as UGA Press paperbacks. All three books are on sale in early June.

A wealth of information about some 170 species of frogs, salamanders, crocodilians, lizards, snakes, and turtles can be found in AMPHIBIANS AND REPTILES OF GEORGIA, edited by John B. Jensen, Carlos D. Camp, Whit Gibbons, and Matt J. Elliott. Due out in July, the book has a strong focus on conversation.

Nature deficit disorder is a term that gained national attention with the publication of Richard Louv's book, The Last Child in the Woods. In A NATURAL SENSE OF WONDER: CONNECTING KIDS WITH NATURE THROUGH THE SEASONS, Rick Van Noy explores how parents can get their children outside and into nature in conversational and personal essays.

Also recently published:

CIRCLING HOME by John Lane
Spartanburg, South Carolina native John Lane draws a mile radius circle around his house on a map and sets out to explore everything within that vicinity.

SOLITARY GOOSE by Sydney Landon Plum
An encounter with a wounded Canada goose leads the author to a better understanding of birds, ponds, the impact of humans on nature, and the way that life heals.

SPRAWLING PLACES by David Kolb
Philosopher David Kolb questions widely held assumptions about sprawl and our built environments.

MOTORING: THE HIGHWAY EXPERIENCE IN AMERICA by John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle
MOTORING unmasks the forces that shape the American driving experience—commercial, aesthetic, cultural, mechanical—as it takes a timely look back at our historically unconditional love of motor travel.

Image, top left: "An area of convective activity over the Eastern Pacific Ocean, west of Mexico." Observation Device: GOES-12 4 km infrared imagery. Visualization Date: April 15, 2008 07:28:54. Courtesy of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Environmental Visualization Program.

Book Awards for Atlanta Writer-Photographer and Wisconsin Poet

Atlanta-based writer and photographer David Kaufman has won the Phillip D. Reed Memorial Award for Outstanding Writing on the Southern Environment for his book PEACHTREE CREEK. The award is given every year by the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) to writers who most effectively tell their stories about the South’s environment.

Contest judge and Orion magazine editor-in-chief, H. Emerson Blake, says of the book: "Wallace Stegner said that a place is not a place without a poet. Peachtree Creek has found its poet in David Kaufman. PEACHTREE CREEK describes how profoundly we are shaped by our surroundings and how profoundly, and destructively, we are able to modify those surroundings. This is the kind of story that really makes one stop and think about what kind of world we want to live in."

Kaufman received an award plaque and a $1,000 prize. He read from his book at an award ceremony on March 28, at SELC’s headquarters, as part of the annual Virginia Festival of the Book. Another University of Georgia Press book, John Lane’s CIRCLING HOME, was a finalist for the award.

In other award news, Paul Zimmer, author of CROSSING TO SUNLIGHT REVISITED, has received the Posner Book-Length Poetry Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers (CWW). The Posner Award is one of several given out every year by the CWW to Wisconsin residents who shows literary excellence in their work. Geeta Sharma-Jensen, book critic for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, had details on all of this year's winners in a recent column.

Ted Kooser, 2004-2006 Poet Laureate of the United States, has said, "I can't remember when I've read a book of poems I enjoyed as much as Paul Zimmer's CROSSING TO SUNLIGHT REVISITED. Here is an entire life, distilled to a lovely, celebratory essence." Zimmer will be honored at the Council for Wisconsin Writers annual awards banquet on Saturday, May 10, 2008, in Milwaukee.

Images:
Top left: Book jacket of Peachtree Creek
Bottom left: Book jacket of Crossing to Sunlight Revisited
Top right: David Kaufman, author of Peachtree Creek
Bottom right: Paul Zimmer, author of Crossing to Sunlight Revisited

Poet Named Finalist for Literary Award

Dawn Lundy Martin has been named a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in the category of Poetry for her book A GATHERING OF MATTER / A MATTER OF GATHERING. The Lambda Awards recognize writers of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender literature. The winners will be announced at a ceremony in West Hollywood on May 29.

A GATHERING OF MATTER / A MATTER OF GATHERING was chosen by Carl Phillips for the 2006 Cave Canem Poetry Prize; the UGA Press published the book in 2007. Martin is the author of one other poetry collection, The Morning Hour, chosen by C. D. Wright for the Poetry Society of America's National Chapbook Fellowship.

Martin cofounded the Third Wave Foundation a feminist, activist foundation that supports young women and transgender youth working towards gender, racial, economic, and social justice. She is also coeditor of The Fire This Time: Young Activists and the New Feminism. She teaches in the English Department at the University of Pittsburgh.

Photo of Dawn Lundy Martin by Stephanie Hopkins
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Short Story Writer Recognized

Margot Singer has received an honorable mention for the 2008 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for her short story collection THE PALE OF SETTLEMENT. One of the most prestigious literary awards for first books of fiction, the PEN/Hemingway Award is given by PEN New England and the JFK Presidential Library. In addition to this year's winner, Joshua Ferris for the novel Then We Came to the End, two finalists and one other honorable mention were recognized.

Read an interview with Margot Singer in Next Book.

Check out reviews of THE PALE OF SETTLEMENT in NewPages.com, the Miami Herald, Columbus Dispatch, and Venus.

Photo of Margot Singer by Tim DeGenero