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New Books

USU Press was pleased to release seven new books between July and October. Click on any of these titles to see a full annotation or to order the book.

  • Bear River: Last Chance to Change Course, by Craig Denton (Univ of Utah). A documentary that tells of the stories of the river, the people who depend on it, and its uncertain future in light of the demands of a burgeoning Utah population.

  • The Centaur by May Swenson (1913-1989). Illustrated by Sherry Meidell (Bountiful, UT). First published in 1956, "The Centaur" is one of Swenson's most anthologized poems. In the USU Press edition, it appears as a children's picture book for the first time.

  • Folklore/Cinema: Popular Film as Vernacular Culture,, ed. Sharon R. Sherman (Univ of Oregon) and Mikel J. Koven (Univ of Worcester). One of the first volumes to explore elements of folklore in the popular cinema, this collection is a significant contribution to both folklore studies and popular culture studies.

  • Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore,, by Diane E. Goldstein (Memorial Univ of Newfoundland), Sylvia Ann Grider (Texas A&M), and Jeannie Banks Thomas (Utah State Univ). Three major folklorists examine ghost lore in contemporary legend and belief, unraveling the tangle of mass media, commodification, and popular culture that today puts old spirits into new contexts.

  • Madame Chair: The Political Autobiography of an Unintentional Pioneer,, by Jean Miles Westwood. During the 1972 US presidential election, the chair of the Democratic National Committee was Jean M. Westwood, a Utah committeewoman. Her autobiography reveals a period that reshaped national politics.

  • Manual of Grasses for North America, edited by Mary E. Barkworth, Laurel K. Anderton, Kathleen M. Capels, Sandy Long, and Michael B. Piep (all of Utah State Univ). A major reference work on all the grasses of North America north of Mexico, the Manual includes identification keys, illustrations, and distribution maps.

  • Neck of the World,, by F. Daniel Rzicznek (Bowling Green State Univ). Winner of the 2007 Swenson Poetry Award, this new volume gathers poems published in major poetry journals with previously unpublished pieces into a challenging, evocative collection.

Awards

Andrew Wingfield's Hear Him Roar received the honorable mention award for the best work of nature writing at the 2007 Conference of the Association for the Study of Literature & Environment. The novel was published by USU in 2006.

Recollections of Past Days: The Autobiography of Patience Loader, edited by Sandra Ailey Petree (Northwestern Oklahoma State University), received the 2007 Evans Biography Award recently at a ceremony at Utah State University. This prestigious annual award recognizes the best published biography of a person who played an important role in the history of the Interior West. It carries a $10,000 prize, made possible through an endowment created by the family of David W. and Beatrice C. Evans of Salt Lake City.

Recollections of Past Days has also won the 2007 award from the Smith-Pettit Foundation for Best Documentary Book in Utah History, presented by the State of Utah Division of History at the recent Utah State History Conference.

In the Media

Authors of USU books will be featured by the Utah Humanities Council at the Salt Lake Book Festival in October. F. Daniel Rzicznek, 2007 winner of the May Swenson Award for his book, Neck of the World, will be presented his award at the Book Festival opening ceremonies by the USU Press director, Michael Spooner. With the co-sponsorship of USU Press, USU English department, BYU English department and the Utah Humanities Council, Rzicznek will be reading from his work in Logan, Provo, and Salt Lake City. Christine Allen-Yazzie, author of the novel The Arc and the Sediment, will be featured in a Book Festival session titled "Fiction Writing: Speaking the Unspeakable: On Jolting Readers from Complacency."

An exhibition of photos by Craig Denton, author of Bear River: Last Chance to Change Course, opened this month at the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City. The exhibition begins a tour of Utah and Southwestern museums, and will be featured on regional public radio and television stations.

USU Press was the subject of a news article in the Logan, UT Herald-Journal newspaper on October 9. Describing the mission of university presses, reporter Kim Burgess noted that "knowledge is more important than profit." She stressed the contribution of a university press to the mission and prestige of a research university, and noted the reach of our books, carrying the name of Utah State University every year to tens of thousands of readers across the continent.

The Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley announced that Norma Ricketts, author of The Mormon Battalion: U.S. Army of the West, 1846?1848 (USU Press 1998) recently donated her extensive collection of research to the Bancroft. The research, including books, notes, and journals used in writing The Mormon Battalion and other books about the Mormon pioneers, will be added to the library's California Mormon Collection.

Did You Know?


  • USU Press publishes distinguished scholars from around the world? In FY 2006/07 alone, USU books showcased the work of 75 different authors, editors, and contributors, representing more than 50 institutions in 24 American states and Austria. Previous authors hail from Germany, England, Italy, Wales, Malta, Scotland, Japan, and Canada.

  • The acclaimed USU series "Life Writings of Frontier Women" is in its ninth volume? These award-winning documentary editions have significantly improved our understanding of the lives of frontier women and of how they expressed those lives in their everyday writing.

  • The Swenson Poetry Award Series is in its eleventh volume? This series honors the legacy of May Swenson by presenting important work from contemporary poets. Winning poets are frequently anthologized, two have won awards for later books, one is now a state poet laureate, and one was nominated for a Pulitzer.

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