Behold the debut of a new An Akronism feature!
This is the first edition of Press’d, a weekly webcomic by the unparalleled Tara Kaloz.
Each week we will be posting a new comic by Tara. The first comic finds our characters in very “punny” circumstances.
Press’d 01 – A Pressing Situation
Winter New Releases:
Winner of the 2008 Akron Poetry Prize, Rachel Dilworth’s The Wild Rose Asylum: Poems of the Magdalen Laundries of Ireland is a collection of poems that have their basis in the Magdalene Asylums. 2008 Judge Rita Dove notes that “Dilworth reaches beyond mere reportage or sensationalism to chronicle the institutionalization of supposedly “wayward” women in Ireland’s religious-run Magdalen asylums” and their testimonies “are stark yet fiercely lyrical, bearing witness to generations of lost women and their lost freedom.”
Goosetown: Reconstructing an Akron Neighborhood is Joyce Dyer’s second memoir with The University of Akron Press (after 2003’s Gum Dipped). In Goosetown, Dyer seeks to “reconstruct” her first five years in a neighborhood which no longer physically exists. It is “a book filled with mysteries” with “family ghosts, skeletons and characters abound . . . a difficult book to put down.”
Lee Leonard’s A Columnist’s View of Capitol Square: Ohio Politics and Government, 1969-2005 collects 49 years worth of his best columns. Leonard’s writing covers everything from “campaigns and national political conventions” to “the famous Democratic primary battles between John Glenn and Howard Metzenbaum” and the entire “era of the four-term Governor James A. Rhodes.”
Purchase A Columnist’s View of Capitol Square
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Check out our website for more new releases.
Way back in September of 2009 it was announced that William Greenway’s Everywhere at Once was selected as the 2009 winner of the Ohioana Poetry Book Award. This announcement was lost in the An Akronism shuffle, but now is just as good a time as any to look at Everywhere at Once and Greenway’s other books with The University of Akron Press.
Everywhere at Once is Greenway’s fourth collection that we have published, his ninth full-length collection overall, and his second book to win the Ohioana Poetry Book Award (Ascending Order won the 2004 Award).
His first book with us was 1994’s How the Dead Bury the Dead, where “he reconciles the ache of absence with [the] deep, persistent richness of this world” throughout the book’s 94 pages of poems.
In 1998, four years after How the Dead, we printed Simmer Dim: “a book of roots and epiphanies, of travels that become an inward journey as the poet searches for origins.”
2002 found Greenway co-editing I Have My Own Song for It: Modern Poems of Ohio with fellow poet Elton Glaser. I Have My Own Song collects some of Ohio’s most well known poems, in addition to the less known but equally potent, to craft a history through poems in the first comprehensive Ohio poems collection since 1911.
Ascending Order, Greenway’s first book to be recognized with an Ohioana Award, was published in 2003. Ascending Order is a collection of poems that “express amazement at life’s odd turns that sometimes leave us bereft and lonely, and sometimes surprise us by sudden grace and abundance.”
This brings us to 2008, and Everywhere at Once. Rather than offer a synopsis of the book we are including the first poem from the book, the poem from which the collection gains its title.
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Please visit our website to read more excerpts from William Greenway’s books, and to order any of the mentioned titles.
Sorry for the recent lack of new posts! We are in the process of moving out of our warehouse, and have also been planning our Annual University of Akron Faculty, Staff, and Student Sale. In lieu of an expansive “welcome back to blogging, UAP” post, here’s a few general updates and promise of more (we promise more posts) before Winter Break.
We wrapped up our Civilized Tribes blog giveaway. Congrats to the winners. If you didn’t get a chance to participate and are interested in grabbing a copy of Tribes, we have copies at our Sale (along with tons of other titles) for a modest $1.00!
This segues into our next announcement. We kicked off our Second Annual Faculty, Staff, and Student Sale. We realize that’s a fairly long title for our sale, so if you prefer the “buzz” acronym you can say SAFSSS.
The sale is for those in the University of Akron community and is being held in the University of Akron Bookstore (Barnes & Noble on the first floor of the Student Union). Here’s a link to the list of sale titles, including the price list (tons of savings in the upwards of 90%).
We’ve got some of our classic titles, along with more recent favorites like West Point Market Cookbook, Walks Around Akron, Jane Snow Cooks, and Our Boys in Blue & Gold at an awesome discount. This is the perfect time to catch up on any of our titles that you may have missed and to stock up on holiday gifts. The sale is running until December 18. Here’s a copy of the mini-poster:
On the creative writing side, we mainly release poetry (our substantial Akron Series in Poetry) and non-fiction (Joyce Dyer’s upcoming Goosetown). We are not a press that is known for publishing fiction and, looking over our catalog, it could easily be assumed that we haven’t published any. It’s easy to become lost in our forty-plus books of poetry, or our sizable collection of Ohio History & Culture, but hidden amongst our releases is a single book of short stories.
In the early days of the Press, waaaay back in 1995, we released The Civilized Tribes by Jerry Bumpus. Tribes is a collection of eleven short stories that were originally published in the 70’s and 80’s. The stories encompass a wide territory and one reviewer states that “Bumpus variously employs surrealism, magic realism, and the fantastical . . . it is not the underside of life but the underside of consciousness that [these stories] explore.” The reviewer goes on to mention that Bumpus’ stories “truly require a new critical lexicon” and that Tribes can help us “to revise our understanding and expectation of fiction.”
The book begins with the titular story, which examines a potentially fatal accident and its consequences for a former Army medic. The story employs a flowing narrative that is equally at home conveying the panic of the accident as it is painting a picture of the protagonist sharing drinks with a professor. The book moves on to stories that “epitomize Bumpus’ strongest work in conventional realism” to pieces which “encapsulate the grotesque . . . and a reality that is not what it appears.”
We will be offering copies of The Civilized Tribes for free to the first ten people to email press@uakron.edu with CIVILIZED TRIBES in the subject line. Winners pay the cost of shipping, but will receive the book for free, and will receive a reply with instructions on how to get their copy of Tribes.
This giveaway is now over. Congratulations to all the winners. If you are interested in a copy of The Civilized Tribes please visit our website.
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In early 2010, we will be releasing our second book of short stores, a reissue of Eric Wasserman’s The Temporary Life.
You could dash across the A3 or hurry along the B43 or rush along the L3004, but no matter if it’s October, all roads lead to the Frankfurt Book Fair. Oktoberfest you say. A misnomer. The Oktoberfest ends in early October most of the time, and people are downing beer in Munich beginning in mid-September. When the tenth month arrives, travelers from around the globe and some would say from as far away as Mars, o.k. maybe Le Mars, Iowa, who have anything to do with the publishing industry, show up at the Frankfurt Flughafen (airport) and Bahnhof (train station) and along Theoder Heuss Allee (the street adjoining the fair grounds).
The Messeturm (main exhibit building) with its triangular top is a beacon for the trading of distribution and translation rights. If you’re from Bangkok and are looking for the latest Twilight book for Thai translation, you’ll have scheduled an appointment with the folks at Little Brown, but be prepared to stand in line. That property is hot. Eight exhibit halls are packed with books, buyers and sellers, new digital readers, antiquarian wares, miniature books, and other related products with people dealing in languages familiar and obscure, and if all else fails pointing and gesturing work, too.
The Book Fair is all business for the first three of its five-day run. The public can only come in on the w
eekend. Smaller publishers have their own cubicles (space comes at a great cost) or they are part of a larger organization that rents them space. The big dogs, the Simon and Schusters, the Macmillans, the Elseviers, and the Penguins have a presence that portends the amount of Geld (money) they generate selling various rights including movie rights if they own them. Their dance cards are full of half-hour, face-to-face meetings with calculators and contracts nearby to finalize the numbers and terms, “If you don’t want it, the next appointment probably will beat you to it.”
University presses have a part in the big fair. Some books “travel” (the word used to indicate the book has an international market and not to indicate you carried it aboard your transatlantic flight), especially ones that have a lot of pictures of say the Grand Canyon or desert scenes in New Mexico. Some university presses even publish those wonderful coffee-table tomes. Scholarly monographs, in the sciences and technology and business, are sought for translation into Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. Even though global economy is not what it was and the dollar is worth less than the Euro, American ideas are still valuable.
If you search hard enough, you can find some publisher in some part of the world that specializes in just about any subject. Looking for that compact history of Mauritania, you say. More into the history of traditions and customs. Your feet might ache after a day of walking, but you’d probably find that one publishers whose book covered the Sunderland belief that a child would grow up to become a thief if her fingernails were cut before the age of one.
Frankfurt has a buzz heard around the word. The printed book doesn’t look all that dead yet, and I’m sure Gutenberg whose buried in the Franciscan church at Mainz, a town an S-Bahn ride away, is smiling when he sees how many bound words he spawned. If you’re heading to the Gutenberg Museum, be on time; the trains are.
Each year a nation is designated as the guest nation. In 2009, the year of the ox, the guest nation was China which brought out the cries of protesters who saw governmental censorship as a detriment to Chinese writers, especially those who criticized practices of the ruling elite. On the first day of the fair, a group gathered outside the entrance hall to read books banned by Chinese authorities. Showing traits of the ox, fearless, obstinate, and hard-working, the group mounted up after reading for an hour and took their protest to the streets of Frankfurt. After all, they were “Bicyclists against Censorship.”
And then there are always the little things about the Book Fair that show how flat the world has become. The very prestigious and staid Langenscheidt’s publisher, the Webster’s of the German language, got all MTV’ed out this year and were passing out promos to “Pimp deinen Wortschatz!” Nein baby, they weren’t trying to accessorize their Audis. They want teenagers to pimp their vocabulary, and may the Klaus or Bettina with the largest lexicon win!
Auf widersehen.
—Tom
From Monique Mason at the Akron-Summit County Public Library:
LOCAL AUTHOR HENRY INMAN SPEAKING AT MAIN LIBRARY
Making extensive use of Main Library’s oral history archives,
Hank Inman tells tale of Rubber Division and of Akron
Author Henry Inman.
Tuesday, November 10, 6:30 pm.
In 2007, Henry “Hank” Inman was commissioned to write the 100 year history of the Rubber Division of
the American Chemical Society, founded in Akron in 1909. Rubber Mirror: Reflections on the Rubber Division’s First 100 Years is the result of his research. Inman made extensive use of interviews conducted and recorded by Rubber Division, ACS, historian Herbert Endres starting in 1964 and now available through the Summit Memory Project, www.SummitMemory.org, a collaborative digital project administered by the Akron-Summit County Public Library.
Drawing on these interviews with scientists, engineers, executives, academics, and representatives of the publishing industry and the United Rubber Workers Union, Inman has crafted a story of how people of varied backgrounds , working together, have propelled advances in natural and synthetic rubber materials and applications, polymer engineering and manufacturing, thermoplastics research and chemistry. Rubber Mirror, published this past August by the University of Akron Press, reveals the heart and spirit of these pioneers of the rubber industry and of Akron’s industrial heritage.
Inman will speak at the Akron-Summit County Public Library on Tuesday, November 10 at 6:30 pm. A book signing will follow.
For more information, please contact the Science & Technology Division, 330-643-9075.
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Click here for more on Rubber Mirror, including excerpts and ordering information.
Also, be sure to become a fan of the University of Akron Press on Facebook for updates on our latest events.
We recently signed up for both LibraryThing and GoodReads accounts. It seems as if the two are the MySpace and Facebook of book cataloging sites, although both are a bit time-waste-y than either MySpace or Facebook (after all we’re cataloging literature here!). After perusing the interwebs, we found a good 
comparative review of both sites. It seems like LibraryThing is more suited for us as a publisher, and that GoodReads is better for our personal collections and reading lists.
We’re still in the process of organizing our GoodReads account, but our LibraryThing profile now lists the bulk of our books, and is more or less organized by series and imprint. We’re pretty excited, so if you use either of these sites add us as a friend!
The first release from our new imprint, Buchtel Books, came out this week.
Buchtel Books will be specializing in the reissue of titles that provide a picture of Northeast Ohio’s history and culture. Recipes by Ladies of St. Paul’s Church, a cookbook first published in 1887, provides a perfect example of what Buchtel Books is all about.
Recipes is a unique and nostalgic look at a slice of Ohio’s history through late 19th century’s cooking. In addition to faithfully reproducing the recipes and advertisements from the original edition, the reissue contains an illuminating introduction by Jon Miller and an insert with historical photos and gloss on the advertisements.
We are posting a few pages from Recipes below, to give an idea of the feel of the book. The first is an example from “Meats,” one of the twelve sections that the recipes are divided into. The second is an advertisement for Akron based business, The King Varnish Company, circa 1877.
Meats…In addition to “Meats,” there are sections for “Soups,” “Fish,” “Salads,” “Vegetables,” and more (including a “Pickles” section!)
According the the historical insert: “David L. King, the subject of this sketch, was born at Warren, Ohio, December 24, 1825, and graduated from Harvard College. He was admitted to the bar in 1848, and located at the City of Cleveland in 1851, but four years later removed to Akron, Ohio, at which city he made his home during his entire life … he was one of the active spirits in the promotion of the social and business interests of Akron. He was for many years identified with the Akron Sewer Pipe Company and other enterprises, was one of the original promoters of the Valley Railway, being at one time its President, and latterly organized the King Varnish Company”
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For more excerpts from Recipes by Ladies of St. Paul’s Church and information on how to order your copy, please visit our website.
Jane Snow’s new book, Jane Snow Cooks: Spirited Recipes & Stories, was released yesterday. Jane & Michael Stern of Roadfood describe Jane Snow Cooks as, “…not just a book of recipes to treasure [but] the story of life in Akron, in the Midwest and in America as seen in the way people cook and eat.”
The book is filled with great recipes: everything from Akron favorites like Nick Anthe’s Bean Salad and Cranberry Velvet to classics such as Pennsylvania Pot Roast, Tomato & Corn Bisque, and Julienned Squash with Walnut Butter to exotic dishes like Nid D’abeilles and Gazpacho Andalucia. But, Jane Snow Cooks is more, it is alive with the stories behind the recipes. Snow shares history, her experience, and helpful tips with the reader in a way that is entertaining and informative. As you go through and cook some of these amazing recipes, expect to learn the origins and history of the dishes and have a great time.
September is a little early, but Thanksgiving will be here before you know it and Cranberry Velvet is an Akron Thanksgiving classic that is perfect any time of the year. Here’s the recipe, taken from Jane Snow Cooks:
Jane Snow will be at several events over the next few months. Come out and let her know how your Cranberry Velvet turned out. Visit our Google Calendar or become a fan of our Facebook Page for the most up-to-date information on these and other events. See our website to learn more about Jane Snow Cooks, read excerpts, and order your own copy.
