Category: Author news

Texas Book Festival Invites García and Momen

Posted on by maryreynolds

September 15, 2023

Authors Alma García and Mehnaaz Momen have been invited to the Texas Book Festival in Austin, Texas, November 11 -12. García will talk about her debut novel, All That Rises, and Momen will discuss Listening to Laredo, A Border City in a Globalized Age.

The Texas Book Festival (TBF) began with a simple purpose: to bring authors and readers together in a celebration of literature and literacy. Founded in 1995 by Laura Bush (a former librarian and then First Lady of Texas), Mary Margaret Farabee, and a dedicated group of volunteers, the TBF set out to honor Texas authors, promote the joys of reading, and benefit the state’s public libraries. The first Festival took place in November 1996 and is now one of the nation’s premier annual literary events, featuring 300 authors of the year’s best books and drawing 50,000 book lovers. Discover all the 2023 Festival authors.

Congratulations to Alma and Mehnaaz!

About All That Rises:

In the border city of El Paso, Texas, two guardedly neighboring families have plunged headlong into a harrowing week. Rose Marie DuPre, wife and mother, has abandoned her family. On the doorstep of the Gonzales home, long-lost rebel Inez appears. As Rose Marie’s husband, Huck (manager of a maquiladora), and Inez’s brother, Jerry (a college professor), struggle separately with the new shape of their worlds, Lourdes, the Mexican maid who works in both homes, finds herself entangled in the lives of her employers, even as she grapples with a teenage daughter who only has eyes for el otro lado—life, American style.

About Listening to Laredo:

Nestled between Texas and Tamaulipas, Laredo was once a quaint border town, nurturing cultural ties across the border, attracting occasional tourists, and serving as the home of people living there for generations. In a span of mere decades, Laredo has become the largest inland port in the United States and a major hub of global trade. Listening to Laredo is an exploration of how the dizzying forces of change have defined this locale, how they continue to be inscribed and celebrated, and how their effects on the physical landscape have shaped the identity of the city and its people.

Tom Zoellner Is Keynote Speaker for Arizona Library Association

Posted on by maryreynolds

August 31, 2023

Tom Zoellner will speak on “The Arizona Literary Tradition” at the Arizona Library Association conference on October 19, 2023, at the We Ko Pa Resort in Fort McDowell, Arizona. Zoellner, author of Rim to River, will talk about the writing tradition in Arizona. Many great works of non-fiction come from Arizona; however, something is missing. He says, “There have been plenty of very good novels set here, but none that has truly captured the essence of the state. This is a challenge laid before the state’s fiction writers: where is the Great Arizona Novel? Can you write it, please?”

About the book:

Rim to River is the story of Zoellner’s walk on the Arizona Trail. Follow his extraordinary journey through redrock country, down canyons, up mesas, and across desert plains to the obscure valley in Mexico that gave the state its enigmatic name. The trek is interspersed with incisive essays that pick apart the distinctive cultural landscape of Arizona: the wine-colored pinnacles and complex spirituality of Navajoland, the mind-numbing stucco suburbs, desperate border crossings, legislative skullduggery, extreme politics, billion-dollar copper ventures, dehydrating rivers, retirement kingdoms, old-time foodways, ghosts of old wars, honky-tonk dreamers, murder mysteries, and magical Grand Canyon reveries.

Aldama, Lomelí & Gómez Finalists for 2023 International Latino Book Award

Posted on by Cameron Quan

August 28, 2023

We are pleased to announce that two of our books were recently selected as finalists for the 2023 International Latino Book Awards: Latinx TV in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama in the “Best Academic Themed Book, College Level – English” category, and Juan Felipe Herrera: Migrant, Activist, Poet Laureate, edited by Francisco A. Lomelí and Osiris Aníbal Gómez in the “Best Biography” category.

The International Latino Book Awards recognize excellence in literature, honoring books written in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, with the goal of “growing the awareness for books written by, for and about Latinos.”

Frederick Luis Aldama, also known as Professor Latinx, is the Jacob & Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as Adjunct Professor and Distinguished University Professor at The Ohio State University. He is the award-winning author of more than forty-eight books, including the bilingual children’s books The Adventures of Chupacabra Charlie and With Papá. He is editor or co-editor of nine academic press book series, including Latinographix, which publishes Latinx comics. He is the creator of the first documentary on the history of Latinx superheroes and the founder and director of UT Austin’s Latinx Pop Lab.

Francisco A. Lomelí is professor emeritus and distinguished professor of Chicano/a studies and Latin American literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has published extensively on Mexican, Chilean, Argentine, and Chicano/a literatures, as well as multiple reference works in the field of Chicano/a studies.

Osiris Aníbal Gómez is an assistant professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. His areas of expertise include contemporary Indigenous literatures of Mexico, Mexican literature, Chicano/a literature, and translation studies. His work explores the condition, aesthetics, and social justice possibilities of bilingual Indigenous and Chicanx writers.

Congratulations to all!

Dante Lauretta and Brian May Interviewed about “Bennu 3-D”

Posted on by maryreynolds

August 29, 2023

In England, The Guardian newspaper featured Bennu 3-D, Anatomy of an Asteroid and its authors in the week leading up to the book launch at the London Museum of Natural History on July 27. Dante Lauretta told his side of the story about how he and Brian May came to collaborate: “As the OSIRIS-REx mission progressed, I couldn’t help but share some of the latest developments with him … To my delight, Brian showed a keen interest in the mission and the science behind it. It was clear that he was not just a casual fan, but a true space enthusiast and an advocate for space exploration.” Lauretta eventually brought May on to the mission, who, alongside his collaborator Claudia Manzoni, created stereo images from original images that were collected by the OSIRIS-REx cameras.

Space.com’s Tereza Pultarova interviewed Brian May, co-author of Bennu 3-D. She spoke with May about his role in bringing stereoscopic photography to the OSIRIS-REx NASA mission.

The rock-star-turned-astrophysicist explained how he came to be part of the team: “So what happened with me and Dante, is that I sent him just off the cuff a couple of OSIRIS-REx images which I’d made into 3D. And he was amazed. He said ‘I have never seen it like this, this is such a great tool and this might be able to help us find the landing site that we need in order to get that sample safely.'”

In another article focusing on the book, Space.com listed May’s other scientific projects. May, who holds a PhD in astronomy, had previously collaborated with the science teams behind Europe’s comet-chasing Rosetta probe and NASA’s Pluto explorer New Horizons. He joined the OSIRIS-REx team in January 2019, a few months after the probe reached its destination, after striking up a friendship with Lauretta over shared interests.

In fact, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx chief scientist Dante Lauretta and Brian May challenge Space.com readers to photograph objects in the solar system. The prize? A signed copy of Bennu 3-D, Anatomy of an Asteroid. Watch the contest announcement video here. Astrophotographers can submit their entries into the competition by email to spacephotos@space.com by Sept. 15. Be sure to include “astrophoto competition” in the subject line to be considered.

About the book:

The world’s first complete (and stereoscopic) atlas of an asteroid, this book is the result of a unique collaboration between OSIRIS-REx mission leader Dante Lauretta and Brian May’s London Stereoscopic Company. Lauretta’s colleagues include Carina Bennett, Kenneth Coles, and Cat Wolner, as well as Brian May and Claudia Manzoni, who became part of the ultimately successful effort to find a safe landing site for sampling. The text details the data collected by the mission so far, and the stereo images have been meticulously created by Manzoni and May from original images collected by the OSIRIS-REx cameras.


The print edition includes 120 illustrations, 50 maps, 80 stereoscopic images, and includes stereoscopic glasses.

Diego Báez and the Evolution of his Political Consciousness in Alta

Posted on by Riley Brown

August 28, 2023

In the Alta article Abolition, Anarchism, and a Question of Action, Diego Báez reflects on the books and editorials that have shaped his political view. He begins his review in 2009 and concludes with the present time. These writings include Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire and Revolution in the Borderlands, and an editorial for the New York Times titled “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police.”

Diego Báez has a debut collection coming out in February 2024, Yaguareté White. In this collection English, Spanish, and Guaraní encounter each other through the elusive yet potent figure of the jaguar. 

The son of a Paraguayan father and a mother from Pennsylvania, Baéz grew up in central Illinois as one of the only brown kids on the block—but that didn’t keep him from feeling like a gringo on family visits to Paraguay. Exploring this contradiction as it weaves through experiences of language, self, and place, Baéz revels in showing up the absurdities of empire and chafes at the limits of patrimony, but he always reserves his most trenchant irony for the gaze he turns on himself.

“Discover Arizona” Class with Our Authors

Posted on by maryreynolds

August 24, 2023

Our authors are teaching a class this fall at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Arizona! Tim Hunter, Juliet Stromberg, Tom Zoellner, and William L. Bird take you behind the scenes of their books in “Discover Arizona Days and Nights with The University of Arizona Press Authors,” four Wednesdays starting October 18. The classes meet 1:00 – 2:45 p.m., at the Central Tucson campus, 4485 N. 1st Ave. (at the NW corner of 1st Avenue and Wetmore Road). Classes will be in person and via zoom. Registration is open for all fall OLLI-UA classes.

Tim Hunter, author of The Sky at Night, covers all the basics—from the Moon, planets, and stars to the history and origins of constellations and selected famous astronomers and events. Emphasis is on naked-eye viewing with an occasional reference to using a pair of binoculars or a small telescope, encouraging beginners to explore the skies.

Tom Zoellner, author of Rim to River, hiked the Arizona Trail through redrock country, down canyons, up mesas, and across desert plains. The trek is interspersed with incisive essays that pick apart the distinctive cultural landscape of Arizona: the wine-colored pinnacles and complex spirituality of Navajoland,  desperate border crossings, extreme politics, billion-dollar copper ventures, old-time foodways, and more.

William “Larry” Bird, author of In the Arms of Saguaros, shows how, from the botanical explorers of the nineteenth century to the tourism boosters in our own time, saguaros and their images have fulfilled attention-getting needs and expectations. The history of the saguaro’s popular and highly imaginative range points to the current moment in which the saguaro touches us as a global icon in art, fashion, and entertainment.

In Bringing Home the Wild, Juliet Stromberg tells of her 20-year journey in ecologically guided gardening on a four-acre irrigated parcel in Phoenix, from the perspective of a retired botanist. Some plants are indigenous to the American Southwest, while others are part of the biocultural heritage of the cityscape. She makes the case for valuing inclusive biodiversity.

Class Schedule

Oct. 18 Tim Hunter, The Sky at Night (in person)

Oct. 25 Tom Zoellner, Rim to River (zoom or in person, to be determined)

Nov. 1 William “Larry” Bird, In the Arms of Saguaros (in person)

Nov. 8 Juliet Stromberg, Bringing Home the Wild (zoom)

Sarah Hernandez and Tom Zoellner Represent Their States at National Book Festival

Posted on by maryreynolds

August 8, 2023

Sarah Hernandez and Tom Zoellner will represent South Dakota and Arizona, respectively, at the National Book Festival in Washington, DC, on August 12. Hernandez wrote We are the Stars: Colonizing and Decolonizing the Oceti Sakowin Literary Tradition, selected by The South Dakota Humanities Council. Tom Zoellner wrote Rim to River, selected by the Arizona State Library, Archives & Public Records.

The South Dakota Humanities Council plans to give away ten copies of We Are the Stars at their Festival booth. Meanwhile, at the Arizona booth, Tom Zoellner will be available 1:00 – 2:30 p.m. to talk with readers.

Both books will be part of the “Great Reads from Great Places” reading list, distributed by the Library of Congress’s Center for the Book. Books may be written by authors from the state, take place in the state, or celebrate the state’s culture and heritage.

One way the Library of Congress strives to bring the 2023 festival experience to all Americans is through the creation of recorded online conversations featuring the Great Reads authors talking about their books and about the theme of this year’s festival: “Everyone Has a Story.” Videos from both Hernandez and Zoellner will be available here, shortly after the Festival.

The 23rd annual Library of Congress National Book Festival will be held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., on August 12, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. A selection of programs will be live-streamed online and videos of all programs will be available shortly after the Festival.

Congratulations Sarah and Tom!

About We Are the Stars:

Women and land form the core themes of the book, which brings tribal and settler colonial narratives into comparative analysis. Divided into two parts, the first section of the work explores how settler colonizers used the printing press and boarding schools to displace Oceti Sakowin women as traditional culture keepers and culture bearers with the goal of internally and externally colonizing the Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota nations. The second section focuses on decolonization and explores how contemporary Oceti Sakowin writers and scholars have started to reclaim Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota literatures to decolonize and heal their families, communities, and nations.

About Rim to River:

Rim to River is the story of this extraordinary journey through redrock country, down canyons, up mesas, and across desert plains to the obscure valley in Mexico that gave the state its enigmatic name. The trek is interspersed with incisive essays that pick apart the distinctive cultural landscape of Arizona: the wine-colored pinnacles and complex spirituality of Navajoland, the mind-numbing stucco suburbs, desperate border crossings, legislative skullduggery, extreme politics, billion-dollar copper ventures, dehydrating rivers, retirement kingdoms, old-time foodways, ghosts of old wars, honky-tonk dreamers, murder mysteries, and magical Grand Canyon reveries.

Reyes Ramirez Receives Honorable Mention for the 2023 Eric Hoffer Book Award

Posted on by Cameron Quan

July 28, 2023

Reyes Ramirez has received an honorable mention for The Book of Wanderers in the short story/anthology category for the 2023 Eric Hoffer Book Award.

The Eric Hoffer Book Award “honors the memory of the great American philosopher Eric Hoffer by highlighting salient writing, as well as the independent spirit of small publishers. Since its inception, the Hoffer has become one of the largest international book awards for small, academic, and independent presses.”

Congratulations, Reyes!

About the book:

What do a family of luchadores, a teen on the run, a rideshare driver, a lucid dreamer, a migrant worker in space, a mecha soldier, and a zombie-and-neo-Nazi fighter have in common?

Reyes Ramirez’s dynamic short story collection follows new lineages of Mexican and Salvadoran diasporas traversing life in Houston, across borders, and even on Mars. Themes of wandering weave throughout each story, bringing feelings of unease and liberation as characters navigate cultural, physical, and psychological separation and loss from one generation to the next in a tumultuous nation.

The Book of Wanderers deeply explores Houston, a Gulf Coast metropolis that incorporates Southern, Western, and Southwestern identities near the borderlands with a connection to the cosmos.

Authors Dante Lauretta and Brian May featured in the Arizona Daily Star

Posted on by maryreynolds

July 27, 2023

Recently, the Arizona Daily Star interviewed author Dante Lauretta about how Brian May and his London Stereoscopic Company came to be involved in the publication of Bennu 3-D, Anatomy of an Asteroid.

Lauretta, Director of NASA Mission OSIRIS-REx, explained to reporter Henry Brean how he started working with Brian May, “Brian and I corresponded briefly about the mission and my hometown of Tucson, Arizona, where he had spent some time enjoying the natural beauty of the Sonoran Desert and using it for self-reflection, as many do.”

Lauretta had always been a fan of Brian May’s music, May was a founding member of the band Queen. Lauretta mentioned that Queen’s song “Under Pressure,” helped him through some tough times as a kid.

Lauretta said, “The fact that I was corresponding with one of my childhood heroes was beyond cool.”

Lauretta told Brean that he May kept in touch as the mission progressed. Lauretta said, “I couldn’t help but share some of the latest developments with him. To my delight, Brian showed a keen interest in the mission and the science behind it. It was clear that he was not just a casual fan, but a true space enthusiast and an advocate for space exploration.”

After Lauretta invited May to officially join the team, May and his London Stereoscopic team went to work. May and his collaborator, Claudia Manzoni, used early, publicly available data collected by the spacecraft to produce stereoscopic images that showed Bennu’s rugged and dangerous landscape in what Lauretta describes as “glorious 3-D.”

Watch preparation behind the scenes and evening book launch from London on Thursday, July 27. Live streaming starts at noon (GMT+1), 2:00 a.m. AZT, on Brian May’s Instagram: @brianmayforreal.

About Bennu 3-D, Anatomy of an Asteroid:

The world’s first complete (and stereoscopic) atlas of an asteroid is the result of a unique collaboration between OSIRIS-REx mission leader Dante Lauretta and Brian May’s London Stereoscopic Company. Lauretta’s colleagues include Carina Bennett, Kenneth Coles, and Cat Wolner, as well as Brian May and Claudia Manzoni, who became part of the ultimately successful effort to find a safe landing site for sampling. The text details the data collected by the mission so far, and the stereo images have been meticulously created by Manzoni and May from original images collected by the OSIRIS-REx cameras.

The print edition includes 120 illustrations, 50 maps, 80 stereoscopic images, and stereoscopic glasses.

Gloria Muñoz and Brandy Nālani McDougall Named Poet Laureate Fellows

Posted on by maryreynolds

July 25, 2023

Congratulations to Gloria Muñoz, author of Danzirly, and Brandy Nālani McDougall, author of Aina Hanau / Birth Land ! They are two of 23 poets laureate in the United States to receive $50,000 as Poet Laureate Fellows in The Academy of American Poets. These 23 individuals serve as poets laureate of states, counties, and cities across the United States and will be leading public poetry programs in their respective communities in 2023–24. Muñoz is St. Petersburg, Florida, poet laureate, and McDougall is Hawai’i poet laureate.

“The Academy of American Poets celebrates the unique position poets laureate occupy at state and local levels, elevating the possibilities poetry can bring to community conversations and reminding us that our national spirit can be nourished by the power of the written and spoken word,” said Ricardo Maldonado, president and executive director of the Academy.

Francisco Aragón, editor of Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry, was one of the panelists who recommended the recipients of the 2023 Fellowships. Aragón is the founding director of Letras Latinas at Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies.

Congratulations again to Gloria and Brandy!

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