The University of Arizona Press
May 1, 2020
The university press community has compiled an “Escape the News” reading list! The escape theme was interpreted broadly: submissions range from music history and poetry, graphic novels, photography and illustrated books, short stories, novels, memoirs, and natural history. There is also an international flavor to the list—especially in the areas of creative literature, fiction, poetry, and fine arts—indicating the global nature of the university press community. The goal for the list is to offer readers a way to entertain and inform in a time when reading allows us a portal to other worlds, when we can’t quite get there in person.
Our book picks for this “Escape the News” reading list are Kafka in a Skirt by Daniel Chacón and Ladies of the Canyons by Lesley Poling-Kempes.
“Daniel Chacón’s collection of stories challenges convention and resolution, offering us thought-provoking insights into our current (and oftentimes surreal) political climate. Kafka in a Skirt breaks new ground in the art of social commentary that highlights the strangeness of our human condition and the follies of the skewed perceptions we maintain of ourselves, our neighbors, and the troubled world we live in.”—Rigoberto González
“Poling-Kempes has done an admirable job scouring archives for these women, who have been largely left out of the historical record of the West. It’s a kind of prequel to our common history of the Southwest, peopled by women with long skirts and cinched waists in the desert heat, riding cowboy style, trying to do right by the land they all loved.”—Los Angeles Times
Discover more books from this reading list here.
