Olivia DrakeQ: Parker, when did you join the staff at Wesleyan University Press, and what attracted you to Wesleyan? A: I came to work at Wes Press in Fall 2007. As an aspiring poet, some of my favorite poets have been published by Wesleyan over the years. As an editor in academic publishing, it was a great chance to work for one of the best presses in the country. Q: Please explain your role as an acquisitions editor? Do you select manuscripts that may be of interest to the Press, or do you help edit books? What do you look for? A: Both…
Wesleyan University Press received a grant from the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving in December 2011. The grant will support the publication of five books in 2012 including: Garnet Poems: An Anthology of Connecticut Poetry Since 1776, edited by Dennis Barone and Ella Grasso: A Biography by Jon Purmont, which are part of The Driftless Connecticut Series; and When Magoo Flew: The Rise and Fall of Animation Studio UPA by Adam Abraham; The Great Camouflage Writings of Dissent (1941–1945) by Suzanne Césaire; and A Guide to Poetics Journal Writing in the Expanded Field, 1982-98, edited by Lyn Hejinian and Barrett Watten.
Elizabeth Willis, the Shapiro-Silverberg Associate Professor of Creative Writing, associate professor of English, is the author of a poetry collection titled Address, published by Wesleyan University Press in March 2011. According to Wesleyan UniversiyAddress draws readers into visible and invisible architectures, into acts of intimate and public address. These poems are concentrated, polyvocal, and sharply attentive to acts of representation; they take personally their politics and in the process reveal something about the way civic structures inhabit the imagination. Poisonous plants, witches, anthems, bees—beneath their surface, we glimpse the fragility of our founding, republican aspirations and witness a disintegrating landscape artfully…
Suzanna Tamminen, director of Wesleyan University Press, received a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts on March 21. The grant will support Wesleyan University Press’s poetry program. The funding will support publication of 12 books of poetry in 2011 and 2012, including the new volume by Pulitzer Prize winner Rae Armantrout and the collected poems of Joseph Ceravolo. In addition to helping support publication costs, the funding will be used to help authors travel to give readings from their new Wesleyan books.
Suzanna Tamminen, director of Wesleyan University Press, received a $50,000 grant from the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving for the Driftless Connecticut Series. The Driftless Connecticut Series is a publication award program established in 2010 to recognize excellent books with a Connecticut focus or written by a Connecticut author. To be eligible, the book must have a Connecticut topic or setting or an author must have been born in Connecticut or have been a legal resident of Connecticut for at least three years. The Driftless Connecticut Series is funded by the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation…
Rae Armantrout’s Versed, published by Wesleyan University Press, won the National Book Critics Circle Award in the poetry category. “The poetry award went to Rae Armantrout’s Versed (Wesleyan University Press) for its demonstration of superb intellect and technique, its melding of experimental poetics but down-to-earth subject matter to create poems you are compelled to return to, that get richer with each reading.”
Corrina KerrThis issue, we ask 5 Questions to . . . Katja Kolcio, associate professor of dance, and author of the new Wesleyan University Press book Movable Pillars Organizing Dance, 1956–1978. Q: How did you become involved with the “Branching Out, Oral Histories of the Founders of Six National Dance Organizations" assignment, which led to your book? A: In 2001, I was invited by the American Dance Guild to conduct interviews with founders of six major American dance organizations. Marilynn Danitz and Margot Lehman, past presidents of the Guild, conceived of the project. These organizations were founded in the '50s and '60s,…
Brenda Hillman's book, Practical Water, published by Wesleyan University Press in 2009, was named a 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist in the Poetry category. The 124-page book is part of the Wesleyan University Press's Poetry Series. Publishers Weekly says "Hillman's eighth collection of poems is the third in her series of book-length meditations on the elements. In these aesthetically challenging, yet often surprisingly clear poems, which span the personal, political and environmental, water is simultaneously a transparent vessel, a mirror and an endangered resource. This is one of the most unusual and compelling books so far this year."
A book published by Wesleyan University Press is a 2009 finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Versed, by Rae Armantrout, was honored in the poetry category. The finalist reading will be held at 7 p.m. March 10 at The New School in New York, N.Y. The reading is free and open to the pubic. Rae Armantrout is a professor of writing and literature at the University of California, San Diego. Her book also is a National Book Award Finalist. For more information on the book click here.
Wesleyan University Press received a $50,000 grant from the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, to support publication of five books in 2010, as part of a new series. The grant includes fuding for four distinct types of poetry book, including second books and translations, and for a book in any genre by a Connecticut author. Together the books will be known as the “The Driftless Series.” Driftless books for 2010 will include: Exposition Park by Roberto Tejada, Rococo and Other Worlds by Afzal Ahmed Syed, translated by Musharraf Farooqi, Elegguas by Kamau Brathwaite, A Spicing of Birds: Poems by Emily Dickinson,…
Wesleyan University Press published a photographic book about the Connecticut River Oct. 23. The photographs in The Connecticut River: A Photographic Journey Through the Heart of New England follow this major waterway for 410 miles, from its origin near the Canadian border to its wide mouth on Long Island Sound, giving readers a vivid portrait of a living artery of the New England landscape. Middletown is featured in the book. Author and photographer Al Braden opens the book with an essay introducing important aspects of the river, and Chelsea Reiff Gwyther, executive director of the Connecticut River Watershed Council, closes with…
A book published by Wesleyan University Press is a 2009 National Book Award Finalist in the poetry category. Versed, by Rae Armantrout, offers readers an expanded view of the arc of the author's writing. The poems in the first section, “Versed,” play with vice and versa, the perversity of human consciousness. They flirt with error and delusion, skating on a thin ice that inevitably cracks. In the second section, “Dark Matter,” the invisible and unknowable are confronted directly as Armantrout’s experience with cancer marks these poems with a new austerity shot through with her signature wit and stark unsentimental thinking.…