The University of Arizona Press

April 4, 2019

Margaret M. Bruchac and her book Savage Kin: Indigenous Informants and American Anthropologists received the prestigious Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award.  The book is the 11th winner of the award, which honors books in Indigenous studies.

Savage Kin restructures readers’ views of relationships between Indigenous informants, such as Gladys Tantaquidgeon, Jesse Cornplanter, and George Hunt, and anthropologists, such as Frank Speck, Arthur C. Parker, William N. Fenton, and Franz Boas. Like other texts focused on this era, it features anthropological luminaries credited with saving material that might otherwise have been lost. Unlike other texts, it highlights the intellectual contributions of unsung Indigenous informants without whom this research could never have taken place.

The book “distinguished itself among an impressive field of Indigenous scholars nominated for this year’s award,” said Labriola Book Award Selection Committee Chair David Martínez.

Established in 2008, the Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award celebrates books that focus on topics and issues that are pertinent to Indigenous peoples and nations. Of particular interest are those works written by Indigenous scholars or in which Indigenous persons played a significant role in the creation of the nominated work.

This is the second time a University of Arizona Press title has been honored with the award. In 2012, Daniel Herman was awarded for his work Rim Country Exodus: A Story of Conquest, Renewal, and Race in the Making, which examines the complex, contradictory, and very human relations between Indians, settlers, and Federal agents in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Arizona—a time that included Arizona’s brutal Indian wars.

March 12, 2019

Jenny Davis has been named the recipient of the Beatrice Medicine Award for Best Monograph in American Indian Studies from the Native American Literature Symposium for her University of Arizona Press book Talking Indian: Identity and Language Revitalization in the Chickasaw Renaissance.

Talking Indian explores community, tribal identity, and language during rapid economic and demographic shifts in the Chickasaw Nation. These shifts have dramatically impacted who participates in the semiotic trends of language revitalization, as well as their motivations. Jenny L. Davis uncovers how such language processes are intertwined with economic growth.

Jenny L. Davis is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where she is also the director of the Native American and Indigenous Languages (NAIL) Lab and affiliated faculty in the American Indian Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies Departments.

March 11, 2019

Two University of Arizona Press books were named finalists today in the Foreword Reviews 2018 Indies Book of the Year Awards.

Mark Nelson’s Pushing Our Limits is a finalist in the Ecology & Environment category. One of the eight crew members locked in Biosphere 2 during its first closure experiment, Mark Nelson offers a compelling insider’s view of the dramatic story behind the mini-world. Nelson clears up common misconceptions about the 1991–1993 closure experiment as he presents the goals and results of the experiment and the implications of the project for today’s global environmental challenges and for reconnecting people to a healthy relationship with nature.

Stephen Strom’s Bears Ears: Views from a Sacred Land was named a finalist in the Regional Books category. This book captures the singular beauty of Bears Ears country in all seasons, its textural subtleties portrayed alongside the drama of expansive landscapes and skies, deep canyons, spires, and towering mesas. To photographer Stephen E. Strom’s sensitive eyes, a scrub oak on a hillside or a pattern in windswept sand is as essential to capturing the spirit of the landscape as the region’s most iconic vistas. Years from now, this book may serve as either a celebration of the foresight of visionary leaders or as an elegy for what was lost.

According to a Foreword Reviews press release, more than 2,000 entries spread across 56 genres were submitted for consideration. Finalists were determined by Foreword’s editorial team. Winners are now being decided by a panel of librarian and bookseller judges from across the country.

Winners in each genre—along with Editor’s Choice Prize winners and Foreword’s Independent Publisher of the Year—will be announced June 14, 2019.

January 18, 2019

Congratulations to Katherine G. Morrissey and John-Michael H. Warner who were named BRLA Southwest Book Award recipients for their University of Arizona Press book Border Spaces: Visualizing the U.S.- Mexico Frontera. Since 1971 the Southwest Book Awards have been presented in recognition of outstanding books about the Southwest published each year in any genre (e.g. fiction, nonfiction, reference) and directed toward any audience (scholarly, popular, children). Original video and audio materials are also considered.

In Border Spaces, Katherine G. Morrissey, John-Michael H. Warner, and other essayists build on the insights of border dwellers, or fronterizos, and draw on two interrelated fields—border art history and border studies. The editors engage in a conversation on the physical landscape of the border and its representations through time, art, and architecture.

 

 

October 26, 2018

Last evening, Tim Z. Hernández received this year’s Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature. The Leal Award is named in honor of Luis Leal, a professor emeritus of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UC Santa Barbara, who was internationally recognized as a leading scholar of Chicano and Latino literature. Previous recipients of the award include Norma Cantú, Francisco Jiménez, Demetria Martínez, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Graciela Limón, Pat Mora, Alejandro Morales, Helena Maria Viramontes, Oscar Hijuelos, Rudolfo Anaya, Denise Chávez, Hector Tobar, John Rechy and Reyna Grande.

“Tim Hernández is one of the most exciting and innovative new literary voices linking history and fiction to the Chicano/a experience,” said Mario T. García, professor of Chicana and Chicano studies and of history at UC Santa Barbara, and the organizer of the annual Leal Award.

Tim Z. Hernandez was born and raised in California’s San Joaquin Valley. An award-winning poet, novelist, and performer, he is the recipient of the American Book Award for poetry, the Colorado Book Award for poetry, the Premio Aztlán Literary Prize for fiction, and the International Latino Book Award for historical fiction. His books and research have been featured in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, CNN, Public Radio International, and National Public Radio. His most recent book, All They Will Call You,  is the harrowing account of “the worst airplane disaster in California’s history,” which claimed the lives of thirty-two passengers, including twenty-eight Mexican citizens—farmworkers who were being deported by the U.S. government.

October 2, 2018

The New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards 2018 Finalists were announced late last week and we’re pleased to share that six UA Press titles were honored:

Mimbres Life and Society by Patricia Gilman and Steven LeBlanc (Anthropology/Archaeology)

Betrayal at the Buffalo Ranch by Sara Sue Hoklotubbe (Fiction – Cozy Mystery)

Border Spaces edited by Katherine Morrissey and John-Michael H. Warner (History Book)

No Species is an Island by Theodore Fleming (Nature/Environment Book)

Pushing Our Limits by Mark Nelson (Nature/Environment Book)

Cuba, Hot and Cold by Tom Miller (Travel Book)

The New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards are organized by The New Mexico Book Co-Oop, a not-for-profit organization serving authors and publishers. View the full list of finalists. Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony and banquet on November 16, at the Tanoan Country Club in Albuquerque.

Congratulations to all of the finalists!