Spring Catalog Highlights Poetry, Sports, Fiction, Politics, Architecture…and Fishing

Another Creature: Poems by Pamela Gemin

Sacred Spaces: The Architecture of Fay Jones written and produced by Larry Foley and Dale Carpenter

Season of the Gar by Mark Spitzer

Rivals, edited by David K. Wiggins and R. Pierre Rodgers

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The University of Arkansas Press Spring 2010 catalog features four volumes of poetry and books on Arkansas history, the history of sports, African American politics, Southern tales from the 19^th century, housing for people with disabilities and gar fishing.

“It’s a diverse and fascinating line-up,” said Larry Malley, director of the press.

A volume of poems by the inaugural winner of the $5,000 Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize will be published in March. The Dirt Riddles: Poems by Michael Walsh features poems centered on the world of a closeted young man and his surreal garden. As part of his prize, Walsh will be a featured reader at the Arkansas Festival of Writers, sponsored this spring by the University of Arkansas programs in creative writing and translation.

The work of two finalists in the poetry prize contest also will be published. Harm’s Way: Poems by Eric Leigh and Another Creature: Poems by Pamela Gemin are both part of the University of Arkansas Press Poetry Series, edited by Enid Shomer. Leigh’s poems examine the struggle to find and be found, to love and be loved. Gemin’s poems follow a woman through her mistaken and wise ways.

The voices of many poets are collected in Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry, edited by Neelanjana Banerjee, Summi Kaipa and Pireeni Sundaralingam. Bringing together 49 American poets with roots in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, the poems take readers from basketball courts to Bollywood, from the Grand Canyon to sugar plantations, from Hindu-Muslim riots in India to anti-immigrant attacks on the streets of post-9/11 America. The 141 poems also have something in common: They showcase a long history of grappling with a multiplicity of languages, cultures and faiths, just as other recent poetry and fiction anthologies published by the University of Arkansas Press on Arab Americans have done.

From South Asia, the press returns home with the publication of Statesmen, Scoundrels and Eccentrics: A Gallery of Amazing Arkansans by Tom Dillard, head of special collections at the University of Arkansas, with a foreword by Roy Reed, professor emeritus of journalism at the university. From American Indians, explorers and early settlers to entertainers, business people, politicians, lawyers, artists and many others, this collection of short biographies from Dillard’s “Remembering Arkansas” column in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette offers an introduction to the complex people who shaped the state.

Another type of history comes to light in Rivals: Legendary Matchups That Made Sports History, edited by David K. Wiggins and R. Pierre Rodgers. The 16 original essays in the book examine such rivalries as Ali and Frazer, the Yankees and the Red Sox, Nicklaus and Palmer and Bird and Johnson. The essays are diverse, but they illustrate the common aspects of rivalries: equally matched opponents with different backgrounds, styles and personalities. Fans and the media often intensify the rivalry between athletes.

Kevin R. Anderson explores the diverse approaches of civil rights activists in Agitations: Ideologies and Strategies in African American Politics. Anderson studies the activities of various groups, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to trace the ideological foundations of the groups and understand how diversity among African Americans created various political strategies. Agitations joins the press’s growing list of titles dealing with African Americans and Civil Rights history.

The press adds another volume to its long-running series of Southern fiction by William Gilmore Simms with Backwoods Tales: Paddy McGann, Sharp Snaffles and Bill Bauldy. Simms wrote about the major intellectual and social issues of the colonial and antebellum South and depicts the bonds and tensions among all of its inhabitants. The 12^th volume of the Arkansas Edition of his works brings together three examples of his comic writing that were written during the last decade of his life. These tales stand among the best examples of 19^th century American humor.

The press then turns from 19^th century humor to 21^st century concerns, as voiced by three University of Arkansas faculty members — architecture professor Korydon H. Smith, interior design professor Jennifer Webb and rehabilitation professor Brent T. Williams — in Just Below the Line: Disability, Housing and Equity in the South. In this book, the authors examine the lack of fit between existing houses and the needs of the aging Baby Boomer population. They suggest that the South, with its high rates of poverty, older residents, residents with disabilities and out-of-date housing policies, serves as a warning about an impending national housing crisis.

Just Below the Line is the inaugural volume in an exciting new joint publication venture between the Fay Jones School of Architecture and the University of Arkansas Press. Also part of this collaboration is a new DVD, University of Arkansas professors Larry Foley and Dale Carpenter’s documentary Sacred Spaces: The Architecture of Fay Jones, now available from the press.

Outdoor fans of the Buffalo River will welcome back Neil Compton’s classic, The Battle for the Buffalo River: The Story of America’s First National River, now being reissued in paperback with a foreword by popular author Ken Smith. The book is a joint project of the press and the Ozark Society Foundation.

The spring catalog also has information about new books from publishers whose books are distributed by the press. Moon City Press out of Missouri State University has two new novels. Three new books on Arkansas history are coming out from the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. And Fayetteville’s own Phoenix International has a photography book by local author Don House, and a children’s novel by Fayetteville author Mimi Mathis.

Finally, fish lovers and book lovers will be lured into reading Season of the Gar: Adventures in Pursuit of America’s Most Misunderstood Fish by Mark Spitzer. In it, Spitzer reveals his lengthy quest to catch this freshwater giant, which can grow up to 10 feet in length and weigh well over 300 pounds. Spitzer draws on folklore, science, history, his own pet gar and even recipes to tell the story of this mysterious fish.

Information about all these books can be found at the University of Arkansas Press Web site.