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Some of the most prominent news organizations in the country have recently highlighted books and authors from UA Press.

By University Communications
August 20, 2008

Arizona’s only university press is turning heads. Some of the most prominent news organizations in the country have recently highlighted books and authors from The University of Arizona Press.

With a recent segment on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and book reviews in Ms. Magazine, The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, UA Press publications have brought the national spotlight to southern Arizona.

Richard Shelton’s memoir “Crossing the Yard” recounts the 30 years he has spent leading creative writing workshops in the Arizona prison system.

In June, Shelton’s story was featured on the nationally syndicated PBS program The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Broadcast on more than 300 stations, this show reaches 2.7 million people every evening.

The segment, titled “Poetry Program Gives Prisoners Unexpected Voice,” includes a 9-minute interview with Shelton and a number of prisoners talking about the hope that Shelton has given them through his poetry seminars.

Published quarterly since 1971, Ms. Magazine boasts the most extensive coverage of international women’s issues of any magazine in the United States and has more than 300,000 subscribers.

The summer 2008 issue features a review of Stella Pope Duarte’s novel “If I Die in Juárez.” Praising Duarte’s “keen eye for detail,” the reviewer points out the she so vividly “details survival within the grimy confines of la Zona del Canal that readers may be prompted to take a long, hot bath.”

Reaching more than a million people in every weekly issue, The New York Times Book Review is the most influential and widely read publication in the literary world.

The Aug. 20 issue features a review of Juan Felipe Herrera’s “Half of the World in Light” – an unprecedented collection of poems from 13 previously published books, a gathering of new work and an audio CD of the author reading 24 poems aloud.

The review confirms what many of his readers have known for years – that Herrera is a “wildly inventive, always unpredictable poet, whose work commands attention for its style alone.”

A review of Maud Lavin’s edited collection “The Oldest We’ve Ever Been” appeared in the June 14 issue of “The Chicago Tribune”, reaching more than 550,000 readers. The Tribune is one of 10 ten largest daily newspapers in the United States.

Delving into the essays and highlighting the contributors’ viewpoints, the reviewer shows how Lavin’s collection on midlife comprises stories that both see the value of experience and look back with a sense of opportunities missed.

With forthcoming titles from renowned poets Luci Tapahonso and Ofelia Zepeda, as well as Meredith L. Dreiss and Sharon Edgar Greenhill’s fascinating history of chocolate in Mesoamerica, UA Press continues to publish titles that garner national attention.