All Announcements

Announcing “Letters from Amherst”

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Entertaining and informative letters written from 1984 to 1991

In these personal and pointed letters written between 1984 and 1991, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning writer Samuel Delany comments on literature, art, politics, aging, academia, his family’s history in Harlem, and black and white social life in another century. He details a visit from science fiction writer and critic Judith Merrill and reflects on his colleague and former student Octavia E. Butler.

Samuel R. Delany is a science fiction author and a retired professor at Temple University. After winning four Nebula Awards and two Hugo Awards, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2002. Visit samueldelany.com for more author news.

Nalo Hopkinson was born in Jamaica. She is the author of six novels and numerous short stories. She has received the Campbell and Locus Awards, the World Fantasy Award, and the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Award for her contributions to science fiction and fantasy. Currently she teaches creative writing at the University of California at Riverside.

“Letters from Amherst gives readers insight into the personal and professional life and aesthetic assessments of the author, Samuel R. Delany, one of the most important literary figures of our time.”—Nisi Shawl, author of the Nebula Award Finalist novel Everfair, and the James Tiptree Jr. Award-winning story collection Filter House

“Letters from Amherst is significant and important…Delany provides unseen glimpses into his important familial lineages, personal friendship and partnership, his assessment of universities and their politics, and a general joy in anything that has to do with intellectual culture.” —L.H. Stallings, author of Funk the Erotic: Transaesthetics and Black Sexual Cultures

June 4, 2019
160 pp., 9 x 6″
Paperback, $17.95 9780819578518
Cloth, $45.00 9780819578204

Announcing “Staging Brazil”

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How Capoeira Became A National Folk Form

“As elaborate and beautiful as capoeira itself! Drawing on interviews, manuals, sketches, photographs, and embodied knowledge, and highlighting the authorship of often overlooked actors, Staging Brazil demonstrates that capoeira elides and eludes the binaries purity/mixture, tradition/modernity, authentic/staged, angola/regional, and black/white.”
—Patricia de Santana Pinho, author of Mapping Diaspora: African American Roots Tourism in Brazil

Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian combat game practiced today throughout the world. Staging Brazil: Choreographies of Capoeira is the first in-depth study of the process of legitimization of capoeira and its globalization as Brazil’s national folklore. Using early illustrated capoeira manuals, the book contextualizes the two main styles of capoeira, angola and regional, within discourses of race and nation in mid-twentieth century Brazil and reveals the mutual influences between capoeira practitioners, tourism bureaucrats, intellectuals, artists, and directors of folkloric ensembles.

Ana Paula Höfling is an assistant professor of dance at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She splits her time between North Carolina and Brazil.

“As elaborate and beautiful as capoeira itself! Drawing on interviews, manuals, sketches, photographs, and embodied knowledge, and highlighting the authorship of often overlooked actors, Staging Brazil demonstrates that capoeira elides and eludes the binaries purity/mixture, tradition/modernity, authentic/staged, angola/regional, and black/white.” —Patricia de Santana Pinho, author of Mapping Diaspora: African American Roots Tourism in Brazil

“In this tour-de-force of painstaking archival work and theoretical sophistication, Höfling brings capoeira alive as a crucial area of study for understanding the role of bodies and movement in post-colonial nation-building.” —Jane C. Desmond, author of Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World

“This book is at once a fine biography of capoeira in its kinesthetic specificities and a necessary examination of the narratives that sustain the invention of a modern Brazil . . . it is a valuable addition to a growing body of work that challenges us to see beyond staged and authentic, loss and retention dichotomies.” —Bianca Freire-Medeiros, author of Touring Poverty

“Staging Brazil represents an important contribution to dance studies, martial arts studies, and Brazilian history . . . Rejecting false binaries of tradition versus innovation and Brazilian versus African, Höfling emphasizes choreographic authorship not as a sign of decline but as fundamental to capoeira. Meticulously researched and clearly articulated, Staging Brazil nuances understandings of capoeira by treating modernity and choreographic authorship as central to its practice.” —Janet O’Shea, author of Risk, Failure, Play: What Dance Reveals about Martial Arts Training

June 4, 2019
280 pp., 40 illus., 6 x 9”
Unjacketed Cloth, $85.00x  978-0-8195-7880-8
Paper, $26.95 978-0-8195-7881-5
eBook, $21.99 Y 978-0-8195-7882-2

Announcing “Konnakkol Manual”

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Exercises and theory for advanced students of Solkaṭṭu

“The South Indian rhythmic core, the demystifying strategies, transforming capability of the content and the manner of presentation, the authenticity of the rhythmic repertoire, the learning tips from the wealth of the author’s musical experience in South Indian drumming over half a century, gained from the acclaimed Karnatak music maestros—all this and much more, are most valuable for students, performers, teachers of improvisation in the world of music.”
— Karaikudi Subramanian, Founder and director of Brhaddhvani Research & Training Center for Musics of the World

 

Konnakkol Manual assists in the advanced study of Karnatak (South Indian) music. It picks up where Solkaṭṭu Manual left off, including advanced exercises and a discussion of the sources of Karnatak tāḷas (meters). In one chapter, the evolution of rhythmic compositions is illustrated through the work of three generations of musicians. The book contains full tani āvartanams (spoken percussion solos) in three tāḷas, together with instructions for practice and Solkaṭṭunotation. A hundred and fifty accompanying instructional videos are available at wesleyan.edu/wespress/konnakkol.

David P. Nelson has been performing and teaching South Indian drumming since 1975 and has a PhD. in ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University, where he is currently adjunct assistant professor.

“Konnakkol Manual is a very valuable addition to rhythm studies for any musician. The material is presented in a clear and systematic way, very appropriate for teachers and students.” —Glen Valez, New School

“The South Indian rhythmic core, the demystifying strategies, transforming capability of the content and the manner of presentation, the authenticity of the rhythmic repertoire, the learning tips from the wealth of the author’s musical experience in South Indian drumming over half a century, gained from the acclaimed Karnatak music maestros—all this and much more, are most valuable for students, performers, teachers of improvisation in the world of music.” —Karaikudi Subramanian, Founder and director of Brhaddhvani Research & Training Center for Musics of the World

“High caliber and innovative mrdangist David Nelson shares insights acquired over more than four decades in this well-paced guide to advanced rhythmic composition in South Indian music. Written in an inviting style and amply illustrated with video demonstrations, this manual will be useful for creative musicians of all backgrounds.” —Richard K. Wolf, author of The Voice in the Drum

“The lessons present the rhythmic concepts in a completely comprehensible and thorough way. This book may be the best way to dive into these concepts, short of getting on a flight to Chennai.” —Jamey Haddad, American percussionist

“Very courageous and musically friendly.” —Trilok Gurtu, percussionist and composer

June 4, 2019
200 pp. 28 illus., 8 1/2 x 11”
Paper, $34.95 978-0-8195-7878-5

Exploring Wild Nights with Emily with Open Me Carefully

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In the recently premiered film, Wild Nights with Emily, directed by Madeleine Olnek, starring Molly Shannon (Emily Dickinson) and Susan Ziegler (Susan Huntington Dickinson), the famous nineteenth-century American poet is brought to life in a new sapphic light.

Based on Ellen Louise Hart and Martha Nell Smith’s collection, Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson’s Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson, Olnek’s new film brings to the forefront Emily’s previously censured relationship with her sister-in-law, Susan. Departing from Terence Davies’ serious and abstinent film, A Quiet Passion (2016), Olnek partners with Smith to unveil the powerful intimacy of Dickinson’s letters, generating a new portrayal of Emily as someone who “lived on her own terms.”

Since its original publication in 1998 with Paris Press, Open Me Carefully, has struck a chord in the poetry world, compiling into a single volume for the first time, selections from Emily Dickinson’s thirty-six year correspondence to Susan Huntington Dickinson. Martha Nell Smith—who Olnek collaborated with to direct the film—is Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, Professor of English, and Founding Director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities at the University of Maryland. Ellen Louise Hart is the author of articles featured in The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin, Emily Dickinson Journal, An Emily Dickinson Encyclopedia, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, The Women’s Review of Books, and The Heath Anthology of American Literature.

To read more, visit your local bookstore or order a copy online with HFS Books.

excerpt from the book:

                                                             Sunday afternoon

So sweet and still, and Thee, Oh Susie, what I need more, to
make my heaven whole?

Sweet Hour, blessed Hour, to carry me with you, and to bring
you back to me, long enough to snatch one kiss, and whisper
Good bye, again.

The Age of Phillis, forthcoming from Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

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Wesleyan University Press is pleased to announce we have secured the world rights to The Age of Phillis, a new volume of poetry by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, who is represented by Sarah Burnes at The Gernert Company.

The Age of Phillis is the result of over a decade of research and contemplation by Jeffers. She draws on historical sources to take readers into the world of Phillis Wheatley, the first black American woman to publish a book. Wheatley published a volume of poetry entitled Poems of Various Subjects, Religion, and Morals on September 1, 1773. Jeffers imagines Wheatley’s thoughts as she navigates life as an intellectual, as an enslaved person, as an observant poet, and as a woman of African descent—eventually a freed woman, and wife, whose life would be cut short by poverty and illness.

Wesleyan plans for for a Spring 2020 publication date.

About the Author

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is the author of four previous books of poetry including The Glory Gets, published by Wesleyan University Press in May 2015. Her other books are: The Gospel of Barbecue (Kent State, 2000)—selected by Lucille Clifton for the Wick Poetry Prize and a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, Outlandish Blues (Wesleyan, 2003), and Red Clay Suite (Southern Illinois, 2007).

Her poetry has appeared in American Poetry Review, African American Review, Callaloo, The Kenyon Review, Iowa Review, Massachusetts Review, Obsidian III, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and has been anthologized in Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry (2011) and Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (Georgia, 2009). Her critical writing has appeared in The Kenyon Review and Virginia Quarterly Review. Jeffers has received numerous awards and honors, including a Witter Bynner Fellowship through the Library of Congress, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Julia Peterkin Award for Poetry, the Harper Lee Award for Literary Distinction, a lifetime achievement honor, and an award from the Rona Jaffe Foundation for Women Writers. For her research on Phillis Wheatley, Jeffers was elected into the American Antiquarian Society, a learned organization for the study of early American history and culture, to which fourteen US presidents have elected. She is a professor of English at the University of Oklahoma.

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Celebrating Ella Grasso’s 100th Birthday!

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We celebrate the Governor Ella Grasso’s 100th one hundredth birthday, May 10, 2019.

A ceremony marking the late Connecticut governor’s 100th birthday will be held at 11 a.m. Friday in the Old Judiciary Committee Room at the Connecticut State Capitol.

From the introduction of Ella Grasso: Connecticut’s Pioneering Governor, by Jon E. Purmont

Her life reflects much that is good about America. Like so many other Americans, Ella Tambussi Grasso was a child of immigrants who lived frugally and who achieved a better life for themselves and their daughter in this country. As a first generation Italian–American her remarkable ascent to political distinction represents the emergence of the first woman of that ethnic background elected Governor in the history of the United States.

She was encouraged by her parents, particularly her mother, to pursue her academic endeavors, first at Saint Mary’s School in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, then the Chaffee School in Windsor, Connecticut, and eventually Mount Holyoke College, in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Fortunately, Ella was endowed with superb intelligence and driving ambition, which enabled her to excel at her studies and eventually in public life.

This notable American woman’s story is an unusual one not characterized by the usual uphill struggle most women endured to gain a place at the table of political power. Rather, Ella Grasso reached the pinnacle of political success by the sheer force of her will, by disciplined work habits and determined ambition. Also, her close working relationship with John M. Bailey, Connecticut’s powerful Democratic leader, combined with the extensive network of women achievers in her life who served as significant role models, impacted her determination and drive to pursue a public career.

Blessed with considerable political talents and writing skills, she also possessed a keen understanding of people, combined with an intellectual brilliance that was matched by an uncanny ability to articulate and communicate opinions and views on issues with consummate adroitness. Unquestionably a great deal of luck, staying power, and endurance helped her rise steadily in that bastion of male dominance—the world of politics.

Check out the schedule of events celebrating “Ella Grasso 100th”

 

Images from Ella Grasso: Connecticut’s Pioneering Governor, by Jon E. Purmont

Check out the book!

Announcing “Sol LeWitt”

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An intimate portrait of a renowned conceptual artist

“One of the interesting things about living through a period is you know where the recorded history and the happenstance of the moment diverge. Consequently, having known Sol LeWitt since my days as an art student in New York in the 1960s, I appreciate the clear and concise manner that Lary Bloom has scrupulously chronicled not only Sol’s artistic development, but also his personal life and his ever-changing social milieu. The results are an insightful and intimate portrait of the artist, the man and his times.”
— Saul Ostrow, Founder of Critical Practices, Inc.

 

Sol LeWitt (1928−2007), one of the most influential and important artists of the twentieth century, upended how art is made and marketed. As a key figure in minimalism and conceptualism, he proclaimed that for the artist the work of the mind is more important than that of the hand. (He argued, “The idea becomes the machine that makes the art.”) But even as his wall drawings and sculpture were admired around the world (installed, over time, by thousands of young artists, and marketed not as objects but as concepts), and even as he championed the work of hundreds of colleagues including many women whose efforts were spurned by the bullies of a male-dominated profession, he remained an enigmatic figure, refusing to participate in the culture of celebrity. Lary Bloom’s biography Sol LeWitt: A Life of Ideas links the extraordinary arc of his life to his iconic work. The author draws on personal recollections of LeWitt, whom he knew during the last two decades of the artist’s life, as well as letters and papers and over one hundred original interviews, including those with Chuck Close, Ingrid Sischy, Adrian Piper, Philip Glass, and Carl Andre. The result is a full and absorbing portrait of a man who, following the flashy and self-aggrandizing period of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, stripped art down to its basics and, with a band of rebellious colleagues, started over again.

Lary Bloom has authored or co-authored ten books including The Writer Within, The Test of Our Times, with Tom Ridge, and Letters from Nuremberg, with Christopher Dodd. He has taught writing at Yale University, Fairfield University, Trinity College, and Wesleyan University. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

May 7, 2019
356 pp. 28 illus., 6 x 9”
Jacketed Cloth, $35.00 978-0-8195-7868-6

NYC panel on the artwork and life of Sol LeWitt, May 5th

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Please join biographer and friend to the author, Sol LeWitt; artist, author, and curator Pablo Helguera; and Karen Gunderson artist and colleague of Lewitt, at McNally Jackson bookstore (Prince Street), March 6, at 6PM. Read more about the event here.

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An excerpt relating to Gunderson’s relationship with LeWitt.

During the 1970s, LeWitt split his time between New York and Spoleto. And when he went to Italy it was often with his female companion at the time. The first to follow Wheeler and Conrad-Eybesfeld was a young artist (again, much younger than LeWitt).

Karen Gunderson—like Gene Beery, a native of Racine, Wisconsin—had earned a master’s degree at the University of Iowa and was teaching at Ohio State University (OSU), in Columbus, when she met LeWitt. Her classes included intermedia (she was a pioneer scholar in this new field), art history, and sculpture. As she recalled in an interview in 2014, “It was me and forty men at OSU. I got patted on top of my head or on my ass every day.”

Read more from this excerpt from Sol LeWitt.

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Three Wesleyan University Press Authors Receive 2019 Guggenheim Fellowships

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Congratulations to three Wesleyan University Press authors who have been awarded the 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship. This year, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation chose 168 recipients from 30,000 applicants from the United States and Canada. Guggenheim Fellowships are intended for individuals who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.

Winners from the Press include:

Ann Cooper Albright

Ann Cooper Albright is Professor and Chair of the Department of Dance at Oberlin College. She is the author of Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader (Wesleyan University Press, 2001), Traces of Light: Absence and Presence in the Work of Loïe Fuller (Wesleyan University Press, 2007), and Engaging Bodies: The Politics and Poetics of Corporeality (Wesleyan University Press, 2014). She is a recipient of the 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship for Dance Studies.

Camille Dungy

Camille Dungy is a professor in the English Department at Colorado State University. She is the author of Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), winner of the Colorado Book Award in 2018. She is a recipient of the 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry.

Shane McCrae

Shane McCrae is an Assistant Professor of Writing at Columbia University. He is the author of In the Language of My Captor (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), a finalist for the National Book Award in 2018. He is a recipient of the 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry.

 

 

 

Spring has sprung: What are you doing for fun?

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The sun is shining ever so radiantly, the morning breeze is just right, and if you are just as over the snow as I am, you are looking for any and every excuse to be outdoors. We have four insightful books that will cater to your favorite hobbies this Spring season. 

Fly Fishing 

In this beginner friendly guide to Fly Fishing in Connecticut , Kevin Murphy teaches novice anglers about the state’s trout hatcheries and stocking programs, the differences between brook, brown, and rainbow trout, and offers easy-to-follow instructions on the basics of fly fishing. In this concise text, the reader finds the essentials in fly fishing gear, stream tactics, casting, and a host of related topics. Whether you’re in the market for that first pair of waders, thinking of tuning up your casting technique, or just want to know where the fish are biting, this is the book to read.

KEVIN MURPHY is an independent historian and writer who lives in Rocky Hill, Connecticut. He is the author of Water for Hartford and Crowbar Governor.

 

How ’bout a Hike ? 

Lace up your boots and experience some of the best hiking in New England! The Connecticut Forest and Park Association (CFPA) maintains over 825 miles of Blue-Blazed Trails in Connecticut. The 20th edition of the Connecticut Walk Book  is a comprehensive guide to these trails, including detailed, full color maps, mileage/destination tables, and a lay flat design for ease of use. The Connecticut Walk Book also offers descriptions of the hikes with maps and trip-planning essentials.

THE CONNECTICUT FOREST AND PARK ASSOCIATION (CFPA) is the first private, nonprofit member-based organization established in Connecticut, and the founder and maintainer of over 825 miles of Blue-Blazed Hiking Trails.

 

Want to explore different neighborhoods in Connecticut and their histories?

Frog Hollow  is an ethnically diverse neighborhood just west of the Connecticut State Capitol in Hartford. Its row houses have been home to inventors, entrepreneurs and workers, and it was one of the first neighborhoods in the country to experiment with successful urban planning models, including public parks and free education. From European colonists to Irish and Haitian immigrants to Puerto Ricans, these stories of Frog Hollow show the multiple realities that make up a dynamic urban neighborhood. Features 40 illustrations.

SUSAN CAMPBELL is the author of the memoir Dating Jesus and Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker.

 

Are you interested in experiencing rare bird sightings?  

Birding in Connecticut  ,by Frank Gallo, is the definitive guide to where, when and, how to find birds in the Constitution State. This guide provides synopsis of local weather and a host of tips to finding and identifying birds. It’s the first guide of its kind to offer QR code links to continually updated information on the occurrence and abundance of birds at each location. Includes color photos and maps.

FRANK GALLO is a tour leader for Sunrise Birding, LLC, an international birding tour company, is a member of the Connecticut Avian Rare Records Committee, and a federally licensed master bird bander.