In the News: Michael E. Dorcas and John D. Willson Share New Findings on Pythons

INVASIVE PYTHONS PYTHONS IN THE UNITED STATES authors Michael E. Dorcas and John D. Willson are part of a new study that was just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Dorcas is the lead author on the paper.) The study has found that the overabundance of Burmese pythons has led to a significant decrease in the number of mammals in the Florida Everglades. The study has drawn much attention from many news outlets over the last couple of days, including USA Today, NPR, BBC, and National Geographic.

For more information on the study's findings, check out some of the news links below. Also, be sure to pick up a copy of INVASIVE PYTHONS IN THE UNITED STATES to learn more about this predator and how it is affecting Florida and the rest of the United States.

Miami Herald: "Pythons likely wiping out Glades mammals, new study finds"
USA Today: "Pythons have stranglehold on Florida Everglades ecosystem"
Associated Press: "Pythons apparently wiping out Everglades mammals"
BBC: "Pythons linked to Florida Everglades mammal decline"
NPR: "Invasive Pythons Put Squeeze On Everglades' Animals"
National Geographic: "Pythons Eating Through Everglades Mammals at 'Astonishing' Rate?"
Washington Post: "In Florida Everglades, pythons and anacondas dominate food chain"
CNN (blog): "Pythons Wiping Out Mammals in Everglades, Researchers Say"
Time (blog): "Invaders: How Burmese Pythons Are Devouring the Everglades"

In the News: Amina Gautier and her new book, At-Risk

In December, Amina Gautier, the second African American to have received the prestigious Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Award in the award's 30-year history, visited several Philadelphia-area high schools, including Overbrook High School and West Philadelphia High. 

She read selections from her new book, AT-RISK, and spoke with students. Gautier, who is a University of Pennsylvania alumna and former assistant professor at Saint Joseph’s University, is currently on faculty at DePaul University. 

The stories in AT-RISK are set in Brooklyn, where Gautier herself grew up, and focus on the lives of young African Americans who might all be classified as ‘at-risk,’ but who encounter different opportunities and dangers in their particular neighborhoods and schools and who see life through the lens of different family experiences. 

 
Gautier has several upcoming events in Ohio, Illinois, and Richmond.

Thu Feb 2, 2012
7:30pm
Cincinnati, OH: Miami University

Sat Feb 11, 2012
7:00pm
Chicago, IL: The Book Cellar

Tue Feb 14, 2012
6:00-8:00pm
Chicago, IL: DePaul University

Wed Feb 29, 2012
7:00pm
Richmond, VA: University of Richmond

Short Takes

The Charlotte Observer and Raleigh News and Observer call George Derek Musgrove’s RUMOR, REPRESSION, AND RACIAL POLITICS “an enlightening, scholarly, yet accessible book.”

The February issue of Essence recommends Vincent Carretta’s PHILLIS WHEATLEY. According to Senior Books Editor Patrik Henry Bass: “I have a new appreciation for the colonial poet. You will as well. Author Vincent Carretta offers an extensive look at Wheatley and discovers that the enigmatic Senegalese talent was nobody’s puppet. Wheatley was about 31 when she died impoverished in 1784, but her recently discovered poems offer a glimpse of a remarkable talent way ahead of her time.”

 

The Massachusetts Historical Society’s blog, The Beehive, claims that PHILLIS WHEATLEY “introduce[s] provocative ideas regarding Wheatley and her family that will likely spark debate among historians for years to come.”

A January book review in the Post and Courier has John Lane’s book MY PADDLE TO THE SEA being celebrated for its “beautifully written and lyrical” prose as well as its “intimate look at the vanishing wilds of [South Carolina and] the author’s own life.”

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner features an interview with Melinda Moustakis about her book, BEAR DOWN BEAR NORTH.

In Flycatcher: A Journal of Native Imagination Karen Pickell praised David Lucas for his collection WEATHER, saying that “[t]he poems of Weather have been polished, and I expect they will shine for quite a long time.”

In a recent copy of the Journal of Asian Studies Charles Horner was applauded for his book RISING CHINA, which “charts the complexities of China’s many hopes, dreams, anxieties and ambivalences.”

Nishani Frazier, in a recent issue of the Journal of American Ethnic History, reviewed CARRY IT ON by Susan Youngblood Ashmore and said that her “book is well worth the read.”

Short Takes

The recently released January/February edition of Poets & Writers features a full page promotional interview of Iain Haley Pollock for his Cave Canem Poetry Prize winning collection SPIT BACK A BOY.

January 12^th was both Jack London’s birthday and the opening of the new exhibit “Jack London, Photographer” at the MaritimeMuseum of San Diego. The exhibit was inspired by Jeanne Campbell Reesman, Sara S. Hodson, and Philip Adam’s JACK LONDON, PHOTOGRAPHER.

Kyle Dargan, author of LOGORRHEA DEMENTIA, BOUQUET OFHUNGERS, and THE LISTENING, comments on Washington’s literary community and the relationship between poetry and government in this video featured on TheWashington Post.



Congratulations to Joseph Smith, author of BRAZIL AND THE UNITED STATES, and Mischa Honeck, author of WE ARE THE REVOLUTIONISTS. Their books have been selected for inclusion in Choice's Outstanding Academic Title list.

WE ARE THE REVOLUTIONISTS continues to garner praise, with T.K. Bryan from Choice asserting that “Honeck expands understanding of not just the antebellum abolitionist movement, but also conceptions of race and nationality in the mid-19^th century.”

Editors Sharon M. Harris and Robin L. Cadwallader were commended in H-Net Reviews for “the value of the anthology” REBECCA HARDING DAVIS’S STORIES OF THE CIVIL WAR ERA and for the anthology’s “thematic importance” in addressing “a range of disciplines, including literary studies, Civil War history, Southwestern border studies, cultural anthropology, women’s studies, and gender studies.”

Laura Barraclough was heralded for her book MAKING THE SANFERNANDO VALLEY in a recent copy of the Journal of Historical Geography. Admiring her insights into “discerning how those linking suburbia to the mythic west have managed purposefully to construct racial identities and maintain white privilege in the San Fernando Valley (and elsewhere in the west),” the reviewer, Ronald Davidson, even placed the book alongside “important histories of the region by Kevin Starr, Robert Fogelson, William Fulton, Becky M. Nicolaides, and too few others.”