Just in: The 2018 Fourth Genre Steinberg Essay Prize judge will be Robin Hemley! He is an award winning writer, founder of NonfictioNOW, former director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, and current director of the Writing Program and Writers’ Centre at Yale-NUS College, Singapore. His books include Do-Over! and Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madness.
The Prize opens for submissions on January 15, 2018. Find more info on our Prize page.
Congratu
lations to Brian D. McInnes
, a 38th Annual American Book Awards winner. McInnes is being honored for his book Sounding Thunder: The Stories of Francis Pegahmagabow—a unique synthesis of Ojibwe oral history, historical record, and Pegahmagabow family stories.
Previous winners include Toni Morrison, Edward Said, Isabel Allende, bell hooks, Don DeLillo, Robin D.G. Kelley, Joy Harjo, Miles Davis, Daniel Ellsberg, David Halberstam, Richard Holmes OBE, Laila Lalami, Helen Thomas, and Cornel West.
The Before Columbus Foundation sponsors the annual American Book Awards and views American culture as inclusive and has always considered the term “multicultural” to be not a description of various categories, groups, or “special interests,” but rather as the definition of all of American literature. The Awards are not bestowed by an industry organization, but rather are a writers’ award given by other writers. The awards will be formally recognized on October 22, 2017, in San Francisco, California. This event is open to the public.
John Smolens’ 
novel Wolf’s Mouth, Winner of a 2017 Michigan Notable Book Award, has been chosen as the book selection for 2017 by the NMU/Marquette County “One Book, One Community” committee. The “One Book, One Community” program encourages the Marquette County and Northern Michigan University community to read the same book and to come together to discuss it in a variety of settings. Although dozens of similar programs have been sponsored nationwide, this is one that brings together a county and a university.
John Smolens has published ten works of fiction, most recently Wolf’s Mouth. His work has appeared in publications such as The North American Review, The Southern Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Columbia Journal of Literature and Art, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. He has taught at Michigan State University, Western Michigan University, and is professor emeritus, Northern Michigan University. In 2010, he was the recipient of the Michigan Author of the Year Award from the Michigan Library Association.
Winterkill, by Todd Davis, Named 2016 INDIES Book of the Year Silver Winner, Poetry
Foreword Reviews announced the winners of its INDIES Book of the Year Awards at the American Library Association’s Annual Conference in Chicago. The awards recognize the best books published in 2016 from small, indie, and university presses, as well as self-published authors. Founded in 1998, Foreword Reviews is the only independent media company completely devoted to independent publishing.
2017 Alan Paton Award for Non-Fiction has been won by Greg Marinovich for Murder at Small Koppie: The Real Story of South Africa’s Marikana Massacre. In his speech at the June 24 award presentation, Marinovich stressed the importance of remembering that the Marikana massacre miners are at core of the story he told in the book. The award is in honor of Alan Paton, author of Cry, The Beloved Country.
The Alan Paton Award is a South African literary award for non-fiction, sponsored by the Johannesburg weekly the Sunday Times. The award is given in conjunction with The Sunday Times Fiction Prize. Together the two prizes are jointly called The Sunday Times Literary Awards.
Choice Reviews
OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLE for 2016 honors Paul Dumouchel’s The Barren Sacrifice: An Essay on Political Violence, published by MSU Press.
Choice Reviews, the American Library Association publishing division, publishes the complete list of winners in the January 2017 issue.
Choice Reviews selects its Outstanding Academic Titles each year, chosen from the many titles reviewed during the year. The books are selected for their “excellence in scholarship and presentation, the significance of their contribution to the field, and their value as important — and often first — treatment of their subject.”
Hundreds of books may be contenders, but only 20 titles made the 2017 Library of Michigan Notable Books list.
MSU 
Press is proud to have two books on the 2017 Notable Books Awards list: Twelve Twenty-Five: The Life and Times of a Steam Locomotive by Kevin Keefe and Wolf’s Mouth: A Novel by John Smolens. For lovers of lists in Michigan, one of the most rewarding annual arrivals is also the state’s best-known literary honor. Congratulations to authors Kevin Keefe and John Smolens!
Smolens
Each year the Michigan Notable Book list features 20 books, published the previous calendar year, which are about or set in Michigan or the Great Lakes region, or are written by a Michigan author. Selections include nonfiction and fiction books. This is a statewide program that began as part of the 1991 Michigan Week celebration, designed to pay tribute and draw attention to the many people, places and things that make Michigan life unique.
Congratulations!
Three translations from MSU Press are included in the Fifth Annual list from World Literature Today’s “75 Notable Translations of 2016.”
From WLT: “[A] notable first: Boubacar Boris Diop’s Doomi Golo: The Hidden Notebooks became the first novel translated from Wolof to English. …”
Special sale prices will be applied in our Shopping Cart through January 31, 2017. Remember to use the code HOLIDAY2016 when ordering. Ordering problems? Call 800-621-2736.
GREAT READS
Here: Women Writing on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula edited by Ronald Riekki. Over 30 authors, including Roxane Gay, April Lindala, Sharon Dilworth, and Gloria Whelan, appear in this exceptional volume of poetry, short fiction, and novel excerpts describing the unique character of the Upper Peninsula. List $24.95 / Sale $15.
Eight Mile High by Jim Ray Daniels. In these linked short stories, the constants are the places—from Eight Mile High, the local high school, to Eight Miles High, the local bar; from The Clock, a restaurant that never closes, to Stan’s, a store that sells misfit clothes. List $19.95 / Sale $12.
Lakeshore Living: Designing Lake Places and Communities in the Footprints of Environmental Writers by Paul J. Radomski & Kristof Van Assche. An approach to lakeshore living that addresses the need to create rich, sustainable places and communities on the water. List $29.95 / Sale $18.
Wolf’s Mouth by John Smolens. In WW II Michigan, a novel of a POW escape from an Upper Peninsula prison and an American woman helps him elude capture as they flee to the Lower Peninsula. List $26.95 / Sale $16.
Learning in the Plural: Essays on the Humanities and Public Life by David D. Cooper. Civic engagement can rescue the humanities from a prolonged identity crisis and yield knowledge contributing to the public good. List $24.95 / Sale $15.
Love Is My Savior: The Arabic Poems of Rumi. This new dual-language volume opens a treasury of Rumi’s mystic thought and startling poetry. List $19.95 / Sale $12.
The Unauthorized Audubon by Laura B. DeLind and Anita Skeen. Printmaker DeLind and poet Skeen never set out to produce a book when they began exchanging prints and poems. But, as they began to appreciate at a deeper level the skill involved in each other’s work, they began to find meaning in small things—patterns, memories, carefully chosen words. Illustrated. List $14.95 / Sale $9.
HISTORY
Confessions of a Presidential Speechwriter by Craig R. Smith. Describes being a speechwriter in a field where the only constant is change: from writing for President Ford, consulting with Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush, the Republican caucus of the U.S. Senate, and Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca. List $39.95 / Sale $24.
The Murder of Joe White: Ojibwe Leadership and Colonialism in Wisconsin by Erik M. Redix. In 1894, two Wisconsin game wardens were sent to arrest an Ojibwe ogimaa (chief), Joe White, for hunting deer out of season and off-reservation. They found White and tried to arrest him. This study of White’s murder shows this event within decades of struggle at Rice Lake to resist removal to Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation, created at the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe. List $34.95 / Sale $21.
The Edge of the Woods: Iroquoia, 1534–1701 by Jon Parmenter. Drawing on archival and published documents in several languages, archeological data, and Iroquois oral traditions, this explores how spatial mobility represented the geographic expression of Iroquois social, political, and economic priorities. Paperback List $24.95 / Sale $15.
Dangerous Friendship: Stanley Levison, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Kennedy Brothers by Ben Kamin. Long-concealed FBI surveillance documents produced this history of Martin Luther King Jr. that the government kept secret for years: the story of Stanley Levison, a well-known figure in the Communist Party–USA, who became one of King’s closest friends. List $22.95 / Sale $14.
Food in the Civil War Era: The North edited by Helen Zoe Veit. Vol. 1 in the American Food in History series. Excerpts from five Civil War–era cookbooks present a compelling portrait of cooking and eating in the urban north of the 1860s United States. List $29.95 / Sale $18.
· A Selection of Modernized Recipes from Food in the Civil War: The North. A companion book: recipes, updated and tested by food editor Jennifer Billock, using measurements and techniques that modern readers can use in their own kitchen. List $12.95 / Sale $8.
Food in the Civil War Era: The South. Edited by Helen Zoe Veit. Vol. 2 in the American Food in History series shows how seemingly neutral recipes reveal things about Southern life beyond the dinner plate. List $29.95 / Sale $18.
· A Selection of Modernized Recipes from Food in the Civil War: The South. A companion book: recipes, updated and tested by food editor Jennifer Billock. List $12.95 / Sale $8.
MICHIGAN and DETROIT
Malcolm X’s Michigan Worldview: An Exemplar for Contemporary Black Studies edited by Rita Kiki Edozie and Curtis Stokes. Topics include the Nation of Islam; was Malcolm antifeminist? How do Malcolm’s early childhood experiences in Michigan shape and inform his worldview? List $39.95 / Sale $24.
Ink Trails: Michigan’s Famous and Forgotten Authors by Dave Dempsey and Jack Dempsey. Michigan is the birthplace of many of the nation’s best-known authors. In this entertaining and well-researched book—the first of its kind—the secrets, legends, and myths surrounding some of Michigan’s literary luminaries are explored. List $19.95 / Sale $12.
Ink Trails II: Michigan’s Famous and Forgotten Authors. by Dave Dempsey and Jack Dempsey. This second volume of “ink trails” continues the story of the remarkable writers, powerful words, and sublime nature of Michigan. List $22.95 / Sale $14.
Detroit Resurgent edited by Howard Bossen and John P. Beck. Through photographic portraits, interviews, essays, and poetry, this book demonstrates the vitality and humanity of Detroit’s people, providing a powerful counternarrative to the vision of Detroit as a Rust Belt wasteland. List $29.95 / Sale $18.
Detroit: Race Riots, Racial Conflicts, and Efforts to Bridge the Racial Divide by Joe T. Darden and Richard W. Thomas. Focuses on the post-1967 social and political developments in Detroit, expanding on the black-white dynamic to address the influx of more recent populations to Detroit: Middle Eastern Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans. List $29.95 / Sale $18.
Ottawa Stories from the Springs: Anishinaabe dibaadjimowinan wodi gaa binjibaamigak wodi mookodjiwong e zhinikaadek edited by Howard Webkamigad. The stories in this collection, recorded by Anishinaabe people in the Harbor Springs area of Michigan, draw on legends, fables, trickster stories, parables, and humor. The tales were first kept in their original copper wire format by the American Philosophical Society. Side-by-side Anishinaabe/English translations. List $24.95 / Sale $15.
A Field Guide to the Natural Communities of Michigan by Joshua G. Cohen, Michael A. Kost, Bradford S. Slaughter, and Dennis A. Albert. The culmination of three decades of work by Michigan Natural Features Inventory ecologists, this field guide is small enough to carry in a backpack and provides a system for dividing the complex natural landscape of Michigan into easily understood and describable components called natural communities. List $34.95 / Sale $21.
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY SESQUICENTENNIAL HISTORY
Vintage photographs illustrate this three-volume history [sold separately], which relives the story of America’s premier land–grant institution from 1855 to today’s Michigan State University. Cloth in dust jacket, 8.5 x 11. List $39.95 each / Sale $24 each.
Vol. 1 Michigan Agricultural College: The Evolution of a Land–Grant Philosophy 1855-1925
Vol. 2 Michigan State College: John Hannah and the Creation of a World University, 1926-1969
Vol. 3 Michigan State University: The Rise of a Research University and the New Millennium, 1970-2005
“LOOK UP YOUR ROOTS”
Discovering the Peoples of Michigan series. Over 35 paperbacks by differing authors examine the multicultural heritage and ethnic dynamics of the Great Lakes State and its rapidly changing historical and social structures. Illustrated. List $12.95 / Sale $8 each. [The Reader List is $5 / Sale $3.]
| Sale special prices will be applied in our Shopping Cart. Remember to use the code HOLIDAY2016 when ordering. Ordering problems? Call 800-621-2736 |
Michael J. L
ee’s Creating Conservatism Wins 2016 NCA Roderick P. Hart Outstanding Book Award
Associate Professor Michael J. Lee (Creating Conservatism: Postwar Words that Made an American Movement) has been selected as the 2016 Roderick P. Hart Outstanding Book Award by the National Communication Association’s (NCA) Political Communication Division. This is the 5th international award won by Lee and this work. The award will be presented at NCA’s annual convention in Philadelphia, Friday, November 11, 2016.
NCA’s Political Communication Division is designed to support the work of scholars and practitioners engaged in the research, teaching, and practice of political communication: “… impressed with your work and the ways that it allows readers to gain new insights about an important modern U.S. political movement through that movement’s ‘galvanizing texts,’ and were pleased with the central role of communication in America’s political landscape that was featured in your argument.“
