News

Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley, our wonderful distribution from the Fowler Museum at UCLA, has been awarded the Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication Award from the Arts Council of the African Studies Association.  Congratulations to the editors,  Marla C. Berns, Richard Fardon, and Sidney Littlefield Kasfir, as well as all the contributors to this wonderful volume.

This week we learned that two University of Washington Press titles received Association of American University Presses Jacket & Cover Design Awards! Senior designer Thomas Eykemans won for Temple Grove: A Novel, by Scott Elliott and designer Dustin Kilgore won for Church Resistance to Nazism in Norway, 1940-1945, by Arne Hassing. We feel very lucky to have such a talented design team on staff–congratulations to both Tom and Dustin!

Review Highlights

Charming Gardeners by David Biespiel
“On the surface, Biespiel’s poems seem like the private meditations of one man. However, his poems encompass each of us, socially and politically, by illuminating our nation’s contradictory character: a longing for enchantment in a disenchanted world.” -John Ebersole, New Books in Poetry. Listen to the full New Books interview with David Biespiel here.

Car Country: An Environmental History by Christopher W. Wells
“In Car Country, Christopher W. Wells offers a compelling history of America’s signature car-dependent landscapes.The text is at once a deft synthesis of recent literature on motor vehicles, highways, urban planning, suburban development, and land use policy, and a persuasive reinterpretation of these histories through the lens of landscape ecology. With lively anecdotes, effective imagery, and dozens of illustrations, the book also presents an accessible narrative that will help students visualize how Americans gradually and profoundly transformed their nation into a place ‘where car dependence is woven into the basic fabric of the landscape.’”  -Michael R. Fine, American Historical Review

Temple Grove: A Novel by Scott Elliott
“Elliott achieved his goal as a novelist — to help a reader fall in love with the natural world, especially that place perched on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. It’s a book worth reading, especially for those of us who already love the Pacific Northwest…[a] fine, timely work” -Skip Nelson, Walla Walla Union-Bulletin

Upcoming Events

Courage in Action: A Symposium in Honor of the Life and Legacy of Gordon K. Hirabayashi, University of Washington, February 22 with special guest Lane Hirabayashi, coauthor of A Principled Stand: The Story of Hirbayashi v. United States

The annual meeting of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) convenes in Seattle next week. UW Press will be at the meeting, sharing booth 509 with our distribution partners, Lost Horse Press and Lynx House Press. The book exhibit will be open to the public on Saturday, March 1 so swing by our booth to check out our books and meet our authors.

P. Dee Boersma, coeditor of Penguins: Natural History and Conservation, Future of Ice Lecture Series, University of Washington Kane Hall, March 5 at 6:30 p.m.

New Books

Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture by Gary Y. Okihiro
The second edition of this classic work on multiculturalism features a new introduction by the author and a new preface by Moon-Ho Jung. While considering anew the meanings of Asian American social history, Okihiro argues that the core values and ideals of the nation emanate today not from the so-called mainstream but from the margins, from among Asian and African Americans, Latinos and American Indians, women, and the gay and lesbian community.

Family Revolution: Marital Strife in Contemporary Chinese Literature and Visual Culture by Hui Faye Xiao
Reading popular “divorce narratives” in fiction, film, and TV drama, Hui Faye Xiao shows that the representation of marital discord has become a cultural battleground for competing ideologies within post-revolutionary China.

Songs for a Summons by David Guterson / Distributed for Lost Horse Press
Written well into mid-life, Songs for a Summons are explorations and observations of a writing life. David Guterson is the author of Snow Falling on Cedars, recipient of the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award; East of the Mountains; Our Lady of the Forest; The Other; and Ed King. Songs for a Summons is his first poetry book.