The University of Arizona Press

November 12, 2018

We’re thrilled to celebrate University Press Week along with our peers in the Association of University Presses. Since 2012, the Association has celebrated University Press Week each year to help tell the story of how university press publishing supports scholarship, culture, and local and global communities. Emphasizing the critical role of university presses in providing a voice for authors, ideas, and communities beyond the scope of mainstream publishing, this year’s theme is #TurnItUP.

“University presses publish authors from around the world and right at home, writing on subjects that are broad, niche, and at every level of inquiry in between,” said AUPresses Executive Director Peter Berkery. “Without university presses, many of these authors or subjects would not be heard in the marketplace of ideas. We’re delighted to make this aspect of our work the focus of UP Week 2018.”

Amplifying scholarship and minority voices has long been a mission of the University of Arizona Press.

Founded in 1959, the University of Arizona Press has been an ardent supporter of the international scholarly conversation in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, environmental science, history, Indigenous studies, Latinx studies, Latin American studies, and the space sciences. We continue to look for new opportunities to bring this scholarship to readers all over the globe. One such example of this is our Open Arizona initiative. Thanks to support from the Mellon Foundation, we’re exploring open access opportunities for foundational texts that document histories and experiences of Indigenous and Latino groups of the southwestern United States. The Open Arizona project will include works that touch on topics such as the impact of government policy on Indigenous communities and the experiences of Mexican American communities throughout the twentieth century.

We’ve supported emerging and established voices in Indigenous and Latinx fiction and poetry through our award-winning literary series for nearly fifty years.

The University of Arizona Press was one of the first publishers to celebrate Native American and Indigenous voices in poetry and fiction through our Sun Tracks series, established in 1971. One of the latest books in that series comes from Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, the first published Marshallese poet.

We were one of the first publishers to support Latinx voices in poetry and fiction through our Camino del Sol series, established in 1997. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera was the inaugural author in the series, and we had the honor of publishing the debut full-length collection from Vickie Vértiz, Palm Frond With Its Throat Cut, which was just named a Pen America Literary Award winner in Poetry.

We’re turning it up this spring with a brand new series.

We’re thrilled to release the first two books from The Feminist Wire Books, a new series from The Feminist Wire (TFW) and the University of Arizona Press that presents a cultural bridge between the digital and printing worlds. Marquis Bey’s debut essay collection unsettles normative ways of understanding Blackness, Black feminism, and queerness. Them Goon Rules is an un-rulebook, a long-form essayistic sermon that meditates on how Blackness and nonnormative gender impact and remix everything we claim to know. The Chicana M(other)work Anthology is a call to action for justice within and outside academia. Using an intersectional lens, this volume brings together emerging scholarship and testimonios by and about self-identified Chicana and Women of Color mother-scholars, activists, and allies who center mothering as transformative labor.

“At a time when misinformation and disinformation travel with head-spinning speed, TFW’s short-form books let readers pause,” said University of Arizona Press Director Kathryn Conrad. “They are provocative conversation starters that call us to think and to act.”

Thank you for celebrating with us this week!

Send us your #UPShelfies or tag us with your favorite University of Arizona Press titles that really #TurnItUP. From all of us at the Press, thank you for your support!