Short Takes: Exceptional nuance and detail

Our just released reader of DC writers and writing, LITERARY CAPITAL, is featured on the cover of this week's Washington City Paper. The editor Christopher Sten and contributor E. Ethelbert Miller will launch the book at Politics & Prose this Saturday at 6 pm.

UPHEAVAL IN CHARLESTON in the Charleston City Paper and in the Post and Courier.

The Washington Independent Review of Books covers Kari Winter's biography of an unrepentant slave trader, THE AMERICAN DREAMS OF JOHN B. PRENTIS.

ON SLAVERY'S BORDER by Diane Mutti Burke reviewed on H-NET: "Her work is by far the most thorough treatment of slavery in Missouri to date, and the exceptional nuance and detail she brings to her analysis of the master-slave relationship will make it one of the most informative of a short list of works on slavery on small farms and in border states."

The June Journal of American History includes reviews of CHARLOTTE, NC ("recommended for all urban geographers, economists, and historians interested in the modern South. It would also be useful reading for southern politicians still struggling tho make up their minds about the meaning and cultural cost of embracing modernity"), JURY DISCRIMINATION ("Waldrep tells how two lawyers cooperated in 1906 to achieve, if only for a brief time, the racial integration of juries in Mississippi. This story is told in accessible prose that will appeal to general readers"), and SUFFERING CHILDHOOD ("Duane's work offers a valuable road map for scholars seeking routes out of the theoretical blind allies that potentially stifle inquiry into the history of children.")

Upcoming area events
Saturday, July 16
B*ATL: a day of events commemorating the Battle of Atlanta
Barry Brown, co-author of CROSSROADS OF CONFLICT, will give a talk and sign books at Bound to Be Read bookstore in East Atlanta Village as part of this day long festival of re-enactments, storytelling and more.

Prizes, Prizes, Prizes

JOHN OLIVER KILLENS has just won an American Book Award, which comes on the heels of being named an Honor Book for Nonfiction by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. The book is also longlisted for the 2011 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.

The American Library Association and the Association of American University Presses recently released its annual University Press Books for Public and Secondary Schools Libraries listing. GHOSTBREAD and JACK LONDON, PHOTOGRAPHER were both singled out as two of a handful of books known as the "Best of the Best."

CROSSROADS OF CONFLICT has been given an Award of Merit by the American Association for State and Local History, and John Burrison has been honored with a Georgia Author of the Year Award for FROM MUD TO JUG. Three more of our authors were also honored alongside Burrison: Terry Kay for lifetime achievement, and Philip Lee Williams and June Hall McCash for worthy projects from other publishers.

Congratulations are also due to Janisse Ray. We'll be publishing DRIFTING INTO DARIEN in September; in the meantime, Ray has won a Southern Independent Booksellers Association Book Award for her poetry volume A House of Branches. We've just heard as well that Gina Ochsner, who published her short-story collection THE NECESSARY GRACE TO FALL with us, has won a Grub Street Book Prize for
her novel The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight.

Short Takes: Just keep on eating that white foam rubber bread

Author Mark Hersey and book MY WORK IS THAT OF CONSERVATION will be on Living on Earth this weekend as part of a segment on George Washington Carver. Audio will be available at the show's site starting Friday afternoon and will air on public radio stations nationwide.

The Los Angeles Times featured JACK LONDON, PHOTOGRAPHER with a spread of photographs.

An interview with David Zierler on THE INVENTION OF ECOCIDE was included on the national religion news radio program Interfaith Voices as part of the show "Agent Orange: Why the War in Vietnam Isn't Over."

The new Oxford American features a tribute by John T. Edge to Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor and VIBRATION COOKING, here quoting Vertamae in response to Time magazine's 1969 dismissal of soul food as a fad: "Just keep on eating that white foam rubber bread that sticks to the roof of your mouth...and I will stick to the short-lived fad that brought my ancestors through four hundred years of oppression."

Don Noble reviews ALABAMA GETAWAY for Alabama Public Radio and the Tuscaloosa News: "Residents who believe that the 40 percent high school drop-out rate is acceptable, that the landfill at Emelle is good business and that the conditions in the prisons are good enough for the felons incarcerated there will probably not read this book or, if they do, will remain unconvinced."

Christopher Waldrep's JURY DISCRIMINATION reviewed in the Journal of Law and History Review: "This book effectively highlights the variability of Jim Crow -- even in Mississippi, even during the darkest years of white supremacist rule--and the sometimes unexpected power of the law."

A CNN.com piece on universities and their past connection with slavery includes Mark Auslander, author of the forthcoming THE ACCIDENTAL SLAVEOWNER, which explores the issue of slavery in Emory University's past.

Iain Haley Pollock launches his Cave Canem Prize-winning collection SPIT BACK A BOY with a party at the Raven Lounge in Philadelphia this Saturday; notice in the Philadelphia City Paper.

MARION MANLEY and the Miami International style featured in The Architect's Newspaper.

Short Takes: Pulses with crazed life

Should we have called it a memoir? THE RIOTS, winner of the AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction, reviewed with verve in DIAGRAM. An interview with Deulen will air on KUED Salt Lake City this Sunday on Utah Conversations with Ted Capener and should be available online afterward. Deulen will read at Powell's in her hometown of Portland on June 23.

Memoirist Dinty Moore names AWP creative nonfiction winner Sonja Livingston's GHOSTBREAD one of his top six memoir recommendations.

Library Journal on Mark Hersey's MY WORK IS THAT OF CONSERVATION: "Hersey here focuses on Carver’s role as a conservationist and his use of renewable resources to create sustainable farms. The book portrays the world of black farmers in the South in a plain and realistic manner from what could have been Carver’s point of view." Hersey will appear with historian Gary Kremer for a Carver-double-header at the Kansas City Public Library May 24.

UPHEAVAL IN CHARLESTON in Publisher's Weekly: "an enlightening portrait of a Southern city in the final stages of snuffing out black gains from Reconstruction." A lively interview with authors Williams and Hoffius on WICN's Inquiry.

AFRICAN AMERICAN LIFE IN THE GEORGIA LOWCOUNTRY receives the Malcolm Bell Jr. and Muriel Barrow Bell Award from the Georgia Historical Society for the best book in Georgia history.

BEYOND KATRINA, by Natasha Trethewey, is the winner of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters award for the best nonfiction book by a living Mississippian. The awards ceremony will be held in Ocean Springs June 4.

John Casteen's new poetry collection reviewed in C-ville: "In all, FOR THE MOUNTAIN LAUREL pulses with crazed life."

Kyle Dargan meets Arne Duncan: poets, Washington, DC high school students, and the role of the arts in education.

"How to turn that diss into a prize-winning book": interview with Christine Keiner at the Forum for the History of Science blog on how THE OYSTER QUESTION came to be. A review by Stephen Bocking in the History of Science Society's journal Isis notes, "Keiner's detailed historical account is a model of sensitivity to the Chesapeake's dual identity as an ecosystem and as a landscape rich in cultural and social meaning."

Upcoming area events

Wednesday, June 1 @ 6 pm - Atlanta, GA
Restaurant Eugene
Author dinner featuring John T. Edge & SOUTHERN FOODWAYS ALLIANCE COMMUNITY COOKBOOK
Call 404-355-0321 for reservations