Tag Archive for Camille Dungy

Camille Dungy and “Trophic Cascade” at the 2020 Democratic National Convention

by mkolson • August 20, 2020

Tuesday August 18th marked the second night of the virtual 2020 Democratic National Convention. The daytime and pre-show schedule included many important caucus and council meetings. One meeting was held by the Council on the Environmental and Climate Crisis. Poet Camille Dungy was honored to be invited to read from her work during this event, alongside legislators, scholars, and climate experts. Dungy closed the program with her reading of “Characteristics of Life” from Trophic Cascade, published by Wesleyan University Press in 2017. Michelle Deatrick, Host and National Chair/Founder of the DNC Environment and Climate Crisis Council, was moved to tears by Dungy’s words. Read “Characteristics of Life” below and check out the rest of this year’s DNC schedule.

Camille Dungy reading from Trophic Cascade at the 2020 DNC

Trophic Cascade by Camille Dungy

Pick up your own copy of Trophic Cascade and experience the rest of the collection!

Wesleyan University Press’ Antiracist Reading Lists!

by mkolson • August 18, 2020

To celebrate the continuous struggle for freedom and equality in America, Wesleyan University Press has compiled a few antiracist reading lists in order to amplify BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) voices, experiences, and histories. Below are just a few of the fantastic titles Wesleyan University Press has published by BIPOC authors or about the Black historical legacy. Poetry, music and dance, autobiography, science fiction, historical novels, and more show the breadth of these lyrical, literary, and scholarly contributions. We are dedicated to supporting Black authors and stories, to listening and learning through publishing and reading. This moment is highlighting just how much work there is to be done in order to dismantle systemic racism in our country; these books help show us why that work is so important and how we can begin to integrate it into our daily lives and reading practices. Black lives matter!

To order books and view our full list of titles, please visit https://www.hfsbooks.com/publishers/wesleyan-university-press/ or click on the below cover images to visit a book page directly. And don’t forget to look out for Beyoncé in the World: Making Meaning with Queen Bey in Troubled Times edited by Christina Baade and Kristin McGee– forthcoming in Spring 2021!

The following list includes poetry, science fiction, historical novels, and non-fiction.

A Hubert Harrison Reader

Five Black Lives

African American Connecticut Explored

100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof

The Little Edges by Fred Moten	The Book of Landings by Mark McMorris	Zong! by M. NourbeSe Philip
Un-American by Hafizah Geter	The Lazarus Poems by Kamau Brathwaite	Magic City by Yusef Komunyakaa
The Peacock Poems by Sherley Anne Williams	semiautomatic by Evie Shockley	In the Language of My Captor by Shane McCrae
To See the Earth Before the End of the World by Ed Roberson	Butting Out: Reading Resistive Choreographies Through Works by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Chandralekha by Ananya Chatterjea	Trophic Cascade by Camille T. Dungy
The Age of Phillis by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers	Fela: Kalakuta Notes by John Collins	The Collected Poems of Lorenzo Thomas
Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae by Michael E. Veal	Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle by Gina Athena Ulysse	Come home Charley Patton by Ralph Lemon
Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America by Tricia Rose	The Logbooks: Connecticut’s Slave Ships and Human Memory by Anne Farrow	The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany
How to Dress a Fish by Abigail Chabitnoy	Blue Ravens by Gerald Vizenor	In Mad Love and War by Joy Harjo

Juneteenth, celebrating freedom

by sbazarian • June 19, 2020

On June 19, 1865, the Emancipation Proclamation was read by General Gordon to Texas, the last state to free enslaved people. Known as Juneteenth, this day marks the official end of slavery in the United States.

President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation almost two years before Juneteenth on January 1, 1863. However, at the time it was issued, the proclamation only applied to places under Confederate control, excluding other areas such as border states and rebel areas under Union control. Two years later, all enslaved people were officially freed.

Texas was the first state to make Juneteenth an official holiday in 1979. Today, it is recognized by many states and celebrated through parades, barbecues, and other outdoor activities.

On this Juneteenth, Wesleyan University Press celebrates old and new publications by black authors exploring the legacy of the black experience in America through poetry, essays, and historical texts. Make sure to check out the below titles to support Black authors on this holiday.

Three Wesleyan University Press Authors Receive 2019 Guggenheim Fellowships

by jhumphrey • May 3, 2019

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.

Announcing “Trophic Cascade” by Camille Dungy in PAPERBACK!

by sshehreen • September 4, 2018

Poems about birth, death, and ecosystems of nature and power

“Earthly and visionary, a soulful reckoning for our twenty-first century, held in focus through echoes of the past and future, but always firmly rooted in now. Each poem is a bridge in the music of a language that we believe and trust, that heals.”—Yusef Komunyakaa, author of Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems

Trophic Cascade by renowned poet Camille Dungy is out in paperback! In this fourth book in a series of award-winning survival narratives, Dungy writes positioned at a fulcrum, bringing a new life into the world even as her elders are passing on. In a time of massive environmental degradation, violence and abuse of power, a world in which we all must survive, these poems resonate within and beyond the scope of the human realms, delicately balancing between conflicting loci of attention. These poems are written in the face of despair to hold an impossible love and a commitment to hope.

Camille Dungy is the author of Smith Blue, Suck on the Marrow, and Guidebook to Relative Strangers, as well as the editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.

September

92 pp. 7 x 9″

Paper, $14.95

978-0-8195-7856-3

ebook, $19.99

978-0-8195-7720-7