Publicity

Announcing “Treaty Shirts” from Gerald Vizenor

by jgagne • May 13, 2016

The imagined narratives of seven native exiles from the White Earth Nation

Gerald Vizenor creates masterful, truthful, surreal, and satirical fiction similar to the speculative fiction of Margaret Atwood and Neil Gaiman. In this imagined future, seven natives are exiled from federal sectors that have replaced federal reservations; they pursue the liberty of an egalitarian government on an island in Lake of the Woods. These seven narrators, known only by native nicknames, are related to characters in Vizenor’s other novels and stories. Vizenor was the principal writer of the Constitution of the White Earth Nation, and this novel is a rich and critical commentary on the abrogation of the treaty that established the White Earth Reservation in 1867, and a vivid visualization of the futuristic continuation of the Constitution of the White Earth Nation in 2034.

An online reader’s companion is available at http://geraldvizenor.site.wesleyan.edu.

Gerald Vizenor is a prolific novelist, poet, literary critic, and citizen of the White Earth Nation of the Anishinaabeg in Minnesota. He is Professor Emeritus of American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His novels Shrouds of White Earth and Griever: An American Monkey King in China were both honored with the American Book Award, and the latter also received the New York Fiction Collective Award. Vizenor and his wife, Laura, now live in Naples, Florida, making regular visits to both Minnesota and France.

“In writing that’s full of possibilities, Gerald Vizenor delivers to us the native world that should be.”
—Diane Glancy, author of Fort Marion Prisoners and the Trauma of Native Education

“Treaty Shirts presents a masterful exhibition of the capacities of stories to create enduring images of natural reason, as it strides the shifty terrain of cultural survivance, treaty rights, and political sovereignty. Perhaps the most impressive is the way Vizenor achieves his goals, not through condemnation but through the humor of tease of stories that are the achievement of a literary artist at the height of his powers.”
—Billy Stratton, author of Buried in Shades of Night

May 10, 2016

148 pp., 6 x 9”

Jacketed Cloth, $24.95 x

978-0-8195-7628-6

eBook, $19.99 Y

978-0-8195-7629-3

Read an excerpt from Landfill Meditations, for an introduction to Gerald Vizenor’s family.

Read an Excerpt from Treaty Shirts: October 2034—A Familiar Treatise on the White Earth Nation

Announcing “Words of Our Mouth, Meditations of Our Heart” from Kenneth Bilby

by jgagne • April 28, 2016

Celebrating the legendary studio musicians of Jamaican popular music through personal photographs and interviews

While singers, producers, and studio owners have become international icons, many of the musicians who were essential to shaping the sound of Jamaican music have remained anonymous. Words of Our Mouth, Meditations of Our Heart: Pioneering Musicians of Ska, Rocksteady, Reggae, and Dancehall, complete with 98 color photographs, is the first book devoted to the studio musicians who were central to Jamaica’s popular music explosion. Bilby delves into the full spectrum of Jamaican music, from traditional and folk genres, such as Mento, Poco, and Buru, to the popular urban styles of ska, rocksteady, and reggae. Photographic portraits and interview excerpts (with such musical pioneers as Prince Buster, Robbie Shakespeare, Sly Dunbar, Lee “Scratch” Perry, and many of Bob Marley’s early musical collaborators) provide new insights into the birth of Jamaican popular music in the recording studios of Kingston, Jamaica in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The book illustrates how players of “traditional” Jamaican music and lesser-known singers have made fundamental and wide-ranging contributions to the music. Appendices include a recommended listening list, a bibliography of interviews and field recordings, and a glossary of terms.

Kenneth Bilby is an ethnomusicologist, writer, and lifelong student of Jamaican music. He is the former director of research at the Center for Black Research at Columbia College Chicago and currently a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution. Author of True-Born Maroons and coauthor of Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae, his collection of field recordings of Jamaican traditional music is one of the largest in the world.

“Bilby celebrates his roots in Jamaica in this magnificent book through beautiful photographs and interviews with musicians. Bilby unveils the backstory of Jamaican music, and his work will be cherished by all who love Jamaican music.”
—William Ferris, author of Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues

“Bilby doesn’t just tell the story that’s never been told—delivering an homage to the heroes who helped shape Jamaican music—he lets these heroes tell the story in their own words, writing their own chapter in history.”
—Baz Dreisinger, producer and writer of Black & Blue: Legends of the Hip-Hop Cop and Rhyme & Punishment

“An essential work of Jamaican musical scholarship. The interviews are engrossing on multiple levels. Our understanding of the black musics of the New World would have fewer gaps in it if there were more of the kind of thorough oral history that Bilby does here. He proves himself to be not merely a good collector but a good listener.”
—John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead

Enjoy some musical examples!

Drums of Defiance: Maroon Music from the Earliest Free Black Communities of
Jamaica. (CD) Smithsonian/Folkways. 1992. [1970s–1990s]

Example of Nyabinghi drumming

Mento version of Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab”, performed by The Jolly Boys

Alerth Bedasse & Chin’s Calypso Sextet perform “Industrial Fair”

Cedric “Im” Brooks and the Divine Light. From Mento to Reggae to Third World
Music. (CD) VP. 2008. [1973]

Studio One Ska—The Skatalites “Beardsman Ska”

Rocksteady: The Roots of Reggae. (CD) Mollselekta. 2009. [2000s]

The Harder They Come (Deluxe Edition). (2-CD box set). Hip-O. 2003. [1960s and 1970s]

Publication date: May 10, 2016
256 pp., 7 x 10”
Paper, $29.95 x
978-0-8195-7588-3
eBook, $23.99 Y
978-0-8195-7604-0

Announcing 2 books by TED GREENWALD

by jgagne • April 12, 2016

“Is it cynical or is it innocent? He has an almost machinic way. But is it utopian? The most progressive of Ted Greenwald’s poems are just that. No, they all are: forward thinking, Sagittarian, and wildly Americanly kind.” –Eileen Myles

We are pleased to announce the release of two noteworthy books by prolific poet Ted Greenwald! Greenwald’s long career spans six decades and more than 30 books. Based in New York City, he has long been associated with St. Mark’s Poetry Project and founded Poetry Readings at Ear Inn with Charles Bernstein. His work has appeared in Paris Review, Partisan Review, C, Lines, Big Sky, Angel Hair, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, Bomb, Adventures in Poetry, The World, Poetry Project Newsletter, nY, and Shiney.

Common Sense

First published in 1978, Common Sense evinces a spare street-wise style rooted in the vernacular of the city. Now something of a cult classic, the book is recognized as an understated masterpiece, pushing at the edges of spoken word. This is the language of everyday, brought onto the page in such a way that we never lose the flow of speech and at the same time we become attuned to its many registers—musical, emotional, ironic. Ted Greenwald’s work has been associated with several major veins of American poetry, including the Language movement and the New York School, but it remains unclassifiable.

The Age of Reasons: Uncollected Poems, 1969–1982

A New York-based poet with close ties to the New York School and the Language poets, Ted Greenwald has written daily since the early 1960s. The Age of Reasons includes the best of Greenwald’s uncollected poetry. While some of these poems appeared in literary journals or magazines in the 1970s, none were included in any of his previously published books. These distinct works were written in advance of or alongside the extended explorations of a mutated triolet form that increasingly occupied him from the late 1970s on. Alongside Common Sense (1978), The Age of Reasons evinces Greenwald’s ability to think with his ear, to hear what’s said as it arrives as a fresh sound or shape in his head. This work is singular in its pattern-making, its music-making, and its ability to simultaneously follow multiple paths.

“No poet has taken the idea that poetry should be at least as good as overheard conversation as seriously as Ted Greenwald.” –Publishers Weekly

“Ted Greenwald knows what real American talk sounds like, understands the rhythm and pulse of the language, and knows how to write poems that are built around that knowledge. He is one of America’s most ambitious and provocative poets.” –Terence Winch, Jacket 19

“Ted Greenwald’s poems ‘give voice’ to a variety of New York idioms, and with that, a distinct attitude toward both language and experience. His ultimate strength as a poet is his basic humanity, something that can be claimed for very few.” –Bill Berkson

“I have called Greenwald an ‘urban primitive’ because his work seems to spring from the base materiality of New York streets, the immediacy of enunciation, abrupt demand, tough neighborhoods, shifting milieus, grit and exhaust, flux and flurry. I see him as a genuine original whose method is a unique exploration of common language, utterly without academic pretense.” –Curtis Faville, publisher, L Publications

LAST FIVE MINUTES
The long and the short
Of it is
I have to keep pushing
I feel myself
Pushing against the
Lead-in to beauty
And take a hunch through
With me
Into the halls
Where the everyday
Seems like eternity
There’s no fooling around
About something
As serious
As it is beautiful
There’s no match
For the feeling
That gets there
When I get there
And absolutely no sense
Of duration
And no telling
How everything turns out

April

202 pp., 6 x 9 1/4”

Paper, $17.95 x

978-0-8195-7642-2

eBook, $14.99 Y

978-0-8195-7643-9

Wesleyan University Press @ AWP2016 – Los Angeles

by jgagne • March 25, 2016

Join Us @ AWP 2016, in Los Angeles!

Booth #1213

Don’t miss these events:

A Lunch Time Reading at Ace Hotel

Thursday, 3/31: Noon–2PM
Ace Hotel, 929 South Broadway, Los Angeles
1913 Press, Sidebrow & Wesleyan University Press present:

Rae Armantrout
Fred Moten
Ben Doller
Sandra Doller
Amaranth Borsuk
Kate Durbin
Lily Hoang
Mathias Svalina

Just Saying: A Tribute to Rae Armantrout

Thursday, 3/31: 3-4:15pm
Room 502 A, LA Convention Center, Meeting Room Level R255

Stephen Burt
Amy Catanzano
Catherine Wagner
Monica Youn
Rae Armantrout

Four author-critics approach Armantrout’s work from a variety of angles, including her association with Language poetry, her exploration of science through verse, her treatment of pop culture and current events, and her merging of everyday experience with epistemological questions about perceptions. Read more here.

Friday Afternoon Cocktail Celebration for BAX 2015

Friday, 4/1: 4-5pm, AWP Booth #1213
Purchase a copy of Best American Experimental Writing, 2015 for $10 (50% off cover price) & enjoy a free Moscow Mule!

Book Signings @ Booth #1213

Rae Armantrout (Itself)–Thursday, 3/31, 4:30PM

Robert Fernandez (Scarecrow)–Friday, 4/1: 10AM

Ben Doller (Fauxhawk) –Friday, 4/1, 12PM

Stop by check out our new books!

Treaty Shirts: October 2034—A Familiar Treatise on the White Earth Nation (Gerald Vizenor)

Reality by Other Means: The Best Short Fiction of James Morrow (James Morrow)

Common Sense (Ted Greenwald)

Age of Reasons: Uncollected Poems 1969–1982 (Ted Greenwald)

Azure: Poems and Selections from the “Livre” (Stéphane Mallarmé)

Fauxhawk (Ben Doller)

Scarecrow (Robert Fernandez)

The Book of Landings (Mark McMorris)

A Sulfur Anthology (edited by Clayton Eshleman)

A Lunch Time Reading @ ACE HOTEL #AWP2016

by tsjohnson • March 15, 2016

1913 Press, Sidebrow & Wesleyan University Press present:

A Lunch Time Reading at Ace Hotel

Rae Armantrout ♠ Fred Moten ♠ Ben Doller ♠ Sandra Doller ♠ Amaranth Borsuk
Kate Durbin ♠ Lily Hoang ♠ Mathias Svalina

Join us on March 31st at the historic Ace Hotel in Los Angeles for a readings and performances by poets Rae Armantrout, Ben Doller, Fred Moten & more!
Noon–2PM in lovely Segovia Hall.

Readers/performers include:Mathias Svalina (Sidebrow), Ben & Sandra Doller (Sidebrow), Amaranth Borsuk & Kate Durbin (1913), Lily Hoang (1913), Ben Doller (Wesleyan), Fred Moten (Wesleyan), and Rae Armantrout (Wesleyan).

About Ace Hotel

“The hotel is housed in the historic United Artists building in Downtown LA. Built in 1927 for the maverick film studio, this ornate, storied and vibrant Los Angeles gem stands as a monument to a group of seminal American artists.”

A 15 minute walk from JW Marriott, the site of this year’s AWP Conference and Bookfair, the Ace Hotel is located at 929 south Broadway. Directions here.

Grab lunch on your way!

-Fernando’s Taco Inn. Across the street (W Olympic Blvd) from the JW Marriott.
-The Ace Hotel’s coffee bar offers both sweet and savory items to go.
-Have a sit-down lunch at LA Chapter after the reading.

Mathias Svalina was born in Chicago. He is the author of Wastoid, The Explosions, I Am a Very Productive Entrepreneur, and Destruction Myths. With Zachary Schomburg, he co-edits Octopus Magazine and is an editor at Octopus Books. He currently teaches writing and literature in Denver, Colorado.

Sandra Doller’s books include Leave Your Body Behind, Oriflamme, Chora, and Man Years, and two chapbooks: Mystérieuse by Éric Suchère and Memory of the Prose Machine. The founder and editrice of 1913 Press & 1913 a journal of forms, Doller has taught at Hollins University and Boise State University, and she currently teaches film, literature, and writing at Cal State-San Marcos. She lives in California.

Ben Doller is the author of Dead Ahead, FAQ, and Radio, Radio, winner of the Walt Whitman Award, as well as his latest collection Fauxhawk. Along with the poet Sandra Doller, he has published two collaborative books. He is an associate professor of writing and literature at the University of California, San Diego.

Amaranth Borsuk is a poet working across media platforms. Her books include Handiwork, selected by Paul Hoover for the Slope Poetry Prize; Tonal Saw, a chapbook-length erasure; and Between Page and Screen, a book of augmented-reality poems created with Brad Bouse.

Kate Durbin is a Los Angeles-based writer and artist. She is the author of The Ravenous Audience (Akashic Books), E! Entertainment (Wonder Press), and five chapbooks. She is founding editor of the online journal, Gaga Stigmata, and her tumblr project, Women as Objects, archives the teen girl tumblr aesthetic.

Lily Hoang is the author of five books: Parabola, Changing, The Evolutionary Revolution, Unfinished, and Old Cat Lady (forthcoming 2014-15). With Blake Butler, she edited 30 Under 30, and with Joshua Marie Wilkinson, she is editing the anthology The Force of What’s Possible: Writers on the Avant-Garde and Accessibility. She is Associate Department Head at New Mexico State University, where she teaches in the MFA program and serves as Prose Editor for Puerto del Sol.

Fred Moten is a professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of Arkansas, Poems (with Jim Behrle), I ran from it but was still in it, Hughson’s Tavern, B Jenkins, The Feel Trio, and the critical works In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition andThe Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (with Stefano Harney).

Rae Armantrout is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Itself, Just Saying, Money Shot, and Versed, winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award. She is a professor of writing and literature at the University of California, San Diego.

March is Maple Month!

by selliott • February 26, 2016

According to the Maple Syrup Producers Association of Connecticut, March is Maple Month—the sweetest time of year. The longer days and melting snow reminds us that Spring is coming, and it is time to harvest maple sap and boil up some maple syrup. You can enjoy the process and product by attending one of the many maple festivals throughout New England. Learn about some of these festivals from Yankee Magazine’s list of “Best Maple Festivals in New England.”

You can learn more about the process of sugarmaking by attending a talk by David Leff, author of Maple Sugaring: Keeping it Real in New England. David has several events scheduled in Connecticut, where he will read from his book and share knowledge from his experience as a sugarmaker.

Photos courtesy of David Leff, Maple Sugaring: Keeping It Real in New England.

A Sampling of Maple Festivals in Connecticut

Stamford Museum & Nature Center’s “Maple Sugar Festival Weekend,” March 5–6
Sweet Wind Farm’s Maple Festival, March 12
Plymouth Maple Festival, March 15
AG Day at the Capitol, March 16
Hebron Maple Festival, March 19–20

Ralph Lemon coming to Wesleyan University 2/25/16

by jgagne • February 18, 2016

As part of the World of Arts in the Heart of Connecticut series hosted by the Wesleyan University Center for the Arts, Ralph Lemon will appear at Wesleyan’s Ring Family Performing Arts Hall on February 25, 2016. His presentation, Ceremonies Out of the Air, touches upon both his new and old work in relation to an imagined South.

As a choreographer, writer, director, and conceptualist, Ralph Lemon is a dynamic voice, canonizing what is African American literature and history through his in-depth research and presentation of traditionally African American culture through dance, art, and memoir. In his latest book, Come home Charley Patton, Lemon examines and imagines the South through memoir, documenting the Civil Rights era and contemporary southern culture through his journal entries. Sketches and photographs are included, capturing the haunting sites of lynchings, Civil Rights protests, and meetings between Lemon and the descendants of musicians and activists. A few images from the book, documenting Lemon’s travels, are included below:

One of the bedrooms in Mose Toliver’s home. Mose Toliver was a folk artist whose art can be found in the Rosa Parks Museum.

a framed image of Elvi Presley in Mrs. Kent's house in Memphis, TN

A framed image of Elvis Presley in Mrs. Helen Kent’s house in Memphis, TN.

Helen Kent, the daughter of Frank Stokes, an African American blues musician, in her living room.

In memory of the many protests and marches of Birmingham, AL, Lemon captures an image of a hose, a common weapon to deter peaceful protestors.

#tbt: Happy Birthday Emily!

by jgagne • December 10, 2015

Born December 10, 1830, Emily Dickinson did not became a literary icon until long after her death. Today, she is appreciated for her revolutionary poetic form and syntax . After the posthumous release of her journals, poems, and multitude of letters, Dickinson became one of American literature’s most prominent figures. Below is an excerpt from Wesleyan’s Dickinson anthology, A Spicing of Birds, a collection drawn from the 222 poems in which Dickinson mentions birds.

324

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church—

I keep it, staying at Home—

With a Bobolink for a Chorister—

And an Orchard, for a Dome—

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice—

I just wear my Wings—

And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,

Our little Sexton—sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman—

And the sermon is never long,

So instead of getting to Heaven, at last—

I’m going, all along.

NEA Awards includes $25,000 awarded to Wesleyan UP

by selliott • December 8, 2015

DATE: December 8, 2015

National Endowment for the Arts Awards More Than $27.6 Million Across Nation Includes $25,000 awarded to Wesleyan University Press

Middletown, CT—In its first 50 years, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) awarded more than $5 billion in grants to recipients in every state and U.S. jurisdiction, the only arts funder in the nation to do so. Today, the NEA announced awards totaling more than $27.6 million in its first funding round of fiscal year 2016, including an Art Works award of $25,000 to Wesleyan University Press to support its poetry program.

The Art Works category supports the creation of work and presentation of both new and existing work, lifelong learning in the arts, and public engagement with the arts through 13 arts disciplines or fields.

NEA Chairman Jane Chu said, “The arts are part of our everyday lives – no matter who you are or where you live – they have the power to transform individuals, spark economic vibrancy in communities, and transcend the boundaries across diverse sectors of society. Supporting projects like the one from Wesleyan University Press offers more opportunities to engage in the arts every day.

Funding will support the publication and promotion of books of poetry. The press will publish works by Rae Armantrout, Blunt Research Group, Peter Gizzi, Ted Greenwald, and Mark McMorris. Books will be accompanied by online reader companions for teachers, students, and general readers, and will be promoted through social media, the press’s website and newsletter, and author events.

To join the Twitter conversation about this announcement, please use #NEAFall15. For more information on projects included in the NEA grant announcement, go to arts.gov

Consider shopping local this holiday season!

by jgagne • November 19, 2015

We reached out to our local independent booksellers to find out what fun events they have planned for Small Business Saturday, Cyber (or CIDER) Monday, and the rest of the holiday season. If you shop for the holidays, please consider ordering or purchasing gifts from local retailers. You might also consider giving a book from a small press or university press. Wesleyan has number of books that would make great gifts, some are included here.

November 28th SMALL BUSINESS SATURDAY

Bank Square Books
53 W. Main St
Mystic, CT 06355
Day-long celebration with local authors: James R. Benn, L.M. Browning, Sarah MacLean, Ruth Crocker, Ann Haywood Leal, Susan Kietzman, David K. Leff, Adam Shaughnessy, and Robert Steele.

Breakwater Books
81 Whitfield St
Guilford, CT 06437
Book signing with Mary Sharnick, Orla’s Canvas, 12–2PM

Hickory Stick Bookshop
2 Green Hill Rd.
Washington, CT 06794
Book signing with Marilyn Singer, Tallulah’s Tap Shoes, 2PM

Mystic Seaport Museum Store
75 Greenmanville Ave
Mystic, CT 06355
Book signing with Roger C. Taylor, L. Francis Herreshoff: Yacht Designer, 3pm

November 30th CIDER MONDAY

Breakwater Books
81 Whitfield St
Guilford, CT 06437
Join us on “Cider Monday” (our version Cyber Monday) & enjoy warm cider and snacks as you do your holiday shopping. Leave your computer and shop in a local bookstore where real people can help you with your selections. Enjoy an old fashioned shopping experience! (View more events here.)

Hickory Stick Bookshop
2 Green Hill Rd.
Washington, CT 06794
Enjoy a cup of cider and a snack as you have an old-fashioned holiday shopping experience in a real bookstore with real people to help you. We promise our “servers” won’t crash, but instead will offer recommendations that will help you with your selections. We’ll even wrap your gifts!

Additional Events

Bank Square Books
53 W. Main St
Mystic, CT 06355
December 1 – Mystic Stroll, businesses in Mystic stay open late for holiday shoppers! That night, we will host cookbook author Ellen Stimson for a cookie contest and cookie swap. More info here.

Breakwater Books
81 Whitfield St
Guilford, CT 06437
December 3 – E-List’s annual Girls Night Out Guilford, 5PM. Meet at Whitfields, to start with a 1/2 price glass of wine! More info here.

Broad Street Books
45 Broad St
Middletown, CT 06457
December 19 – Scooby Doo books and read by Santa
Broad Street Books is also a one of the sponsors of Middletown’s Holiday on Main Street.

Burgundy Books
1285 Boston Post Rd
Westbrook, CT 06498
November 21 – Luncheon with Carl Safina, Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel, 12PM
December 15 – Book signing with Susannah Cahalan, Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, 12:30PM

Harbor Books
146 Main St
Old Saybrook, CT 06475
December 4 – Old Saybrook’s Winter Stroll, stop by at our table for a free novelty bookmark!

Hickory Stick Bookshop
2 Green Hill Rd.
Washington, CT 06794
December 5 – Donna Marie Merritt, We Walk Together, 2PM
December 6 – Jack Chaucer, Nikki Blue: Source of Trouble

Mystic Seaport Museum Store
75 Greenmanville Ave
Mystic, CT 06355
December 5 – Book signing with Carlo DeVito, Wreck of the Whale Ship Essex: The Complete Illustrated Edition, 1PM
December 6 – Book signing with Paul S. Krantz, Riding the Wild Ocean, 2pm

R.J. Julia Booksellers
768 Boston Post Rd
Madison, CT 06443
December 2 – Book signing with Ellen Stimpson, An Old Fashioned Christmas, 7PM
December 3 – Teens Talk Books Holiday Party, 6PM
December 6 – Santa Letter Writing Workshop, 12PM–1:30PM
December 18 – Voices In The Bookstore, local authors read their work, 6PM
December 20 – The Grinch Story Time, 10:30AM