Category: Press News

Celebrating the People of the Press: Amanda Krause

Posted on June 26, 2019August 21, 2026 by Savannah Hicks

June 27, 2019

Inspired by the Association of University Presses celebration of the people of AUPresses, we would also like to celebrate our dedicated publishing professionals throughout our 60th anniversary year!

This week, we’re featuring our Editorial, Design, and Production Manager, Amanda Krause.

What do you do at the Press, Amanda?

I help shepherd books through the Editorial, Design, and Production process, answering author queries; working with freelance copyeditors, proofreaders, and indexers and print vendors; maintaining our house style guide; and managing the schedules for book production to make sure books are published (and reprinted) on time.

How long have you worked at UA Press?

Six and a half years.

The University of Arizona Press is committed to helping contribute to an informed society and enlightening readers. What’s one thing you’ve learned from your work?

I feel like I am constantly absorbing knowledge from our authors and from our location at the University of Arizona Main Library, but perhaps my favorite piece of oddly specific trivia I’ve learned is that “on” is the correct usage when talking about national forests (as in “work on the national forest” rather than “work in the national parks”) — according to our author Ted Catton, this harkens back to the Forest Service’s early days when their primary role was managing grazing lands; you say “on the forest” just as you say “on the range”.

What would people be surprised to learn about your work?

Despite my role in editorial, I actually spend very little of my work day reading — because my role is so focused on project managing and finding and correcting specific errors in the text, I rarely have an opportunity to read our books cover to cover for work (though I do enjoy reading them for fun!).

Tucson has a thriving literary and scholarly community. What’s one of your favorite spots to hear authors, find a good book, or just curl up and read?

I am a huge fan of both Bookman’s and Antigone.

Kathryn Conrad Begins Term as President of AUPresses

Posted on June 26, 2019August 21, 2026 by Abby Mogollon

June 26, 2019

Kathryn Conrad, director of the University of Arizona Press, assumed the presidency of the Association of University Presses (AUPresses) on June 12, 2019, during the Association’s Annual Meeting. Conrad was preceded by Jennifer Crewe, associate provost and director of Columbia University Press.

In her inaugural address, Conrad commended university presses for working “to advance scholarship, to preserve cultural heritage, and to build the scholarly record.” Read Conrad’s full remarks.

Conrad began her publishing career as an editorial assistant for both Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill and Houghton-Mifflin’s Best American Short Stories, an editor for River Styx—a literary magazine based in St. Louis—and a typesetter. She joined the marketing department of the University of Missouri Press in 1989, where she worked as advertising manager, promotion manager, and finally assistant marketing manager. She moved to Tucson in 1995 as the marketing and sales manager of the University of Arizona Press and served as its interim director, while continuing in her marketing and sales duties, for four years before her appointment as director in 2012.

The leader of a university press that reports to its university’s library—as do 20 percent of the Association’s member presses—Conrad speaks and writes frequently on the synergies that academic libraries and scholarly presses share. In addition, she earned a master’s degree in information and library sciences (MALIS) from the University of Arizona last year.

Conrad has advanced the work of the AUPresses community in many volunteer capacities. She served on the Association’s Board of Directors from 2002-2005 and also for three, multi-year terms on the Marketing Committee, including a stint as its chair. She has been a member and chair of the Library Relations Committee and has served on the Nominating and Program Committees and the University Press Week Task Force.

As a longtime leader within the Association, President Conrad offered her special thanks at the Detroit conference to all volunteers who will lead and serve AUPresses committees this year, including a new Equity, Justice, and Inclusion Committee.

She also welcomed all newcomers to the conference and profession. “The university press of the future may not look like the university press of today, but it will keep quality and expertise at its core,” she concluded. “I have a lot left to learn about publishing, and I expect to learn it from you. You are the future of AUPresses.”

About the 2019-2020 AUPresses Board of Directors

Kathryn Conrad, the 69th president, is the 16th woman to serve in that role.
Conrad is the first University of Arizona Press director to serve as President. (See complete list: http://www.aupresses.org/about-aaup/board-of-directors/past-presidents)

Other AUPresses leadership changes for 2019-2020 include:

Treasurer Jean Kim, Stanford University, took office, as Robbie Dircks, University of North Carolina Press, wrapped up his 2018-2019 term.
Niko Pfund, president of Oxford University Press USA, was chosen as President-Elect.
Alice Ennis, chief financial officer of University of Illinois Press, was named Treasurer-Elect.
New board members began three-year terms: Mary C. Francis, editorial director of the University of Michigan Press/Michigan Publishing, and Lara Mainville, director of the University of Ottawa Press.
Past president Nicole Mitchell, director of the University of Washington Press; past treasurer Nadine Buckland, finance manager of University of West Indies Press; John Donatich, director of Yale University Press; and Donna Shear, director of the University of Nebraska Press concluded their terms on the board as the Association thanked them for their dedicated service.

About the Association

The Association of University Presses is an organization of 150+ international nonprofit scholarly publishers. Since 1937, the Association of University Presses has advanced the essential role of a global community of publishers whose mission is to ensure academic excellence and cultivate knowledge. The Association holds integrity, diversity, stewardship, and intellectual freedom as core values. AUPresses members are active across many scholarly disciplines, including the humanities, arts, and sciences, publish significant regional and literary work, and are innovators in the world of digital publishing.

Celebrating UA Press: Past, Present, and Future

Posted on June 12, 2019August 21, 2026 by Abby Mogollon

June 12, 2019

This week, our university press colleagues are gathering in Detroit for the annual Association of University Presses meeting where they are celebrating publishing successes and learning from each other about the important work of scholarly publishing. Just last week, the University of Arizona Press staff came together for its own celebration and brainstorming session.

Our hard-working staff of eleven put a pause on author meetings, copy editing, e-book making, and marketing to brainstorm and discuss the University of Arizona Press of the future.

It seems like the right moment.

This year marks sixty years of publishing in the Sonoran Desert. We are enjoying looking back and celebrating our growth and evolution into one of the premier scholarly presses in the Southwest. With sixty years of authors, editors, directors, advisory board member, peer reviewers, designers, booksellers, and, best of all, readers, there is so very much to be grateful for and celebrate.

Last week, we gathered in downtown Tucson for a day-long retreat, applying design-thinking practices to reflect and brainstorm around ideas of the UA Press of the future. The entire staff wholly and fully engaged in thoughtful and creative thinking. We asked ourselves provocative “what ifs.” Grounded in our mission to share scholarly communications and research, we proposed possible and even daring solutions that could continue to march that mission forward well into the future.

Every staff member is genuinely committed to continuing our growth and evolution. We are devoted to the legacies left to us by all who have worked for and supported the Press in the past.

After the retreat, our facilitator Shannon Jones wrote, “Watching you work as a dedicated, fun team was inspiring. Thank you for everything you are doing to make the Press such a valuable part of the UA and our community.”

To the University of Arizona Press past, present, and future, we celebrate your spirit, passion, commitment, and sense of community. Onward.

Why University Presses are a Good Investment

Posted on April 30, 2019August 21, 2026 by Abby Mogollon

April 30, 2019

University presses ensure academic excellence and amplification of valuable scholarly research. We are also a good investment. As stewards of the resource investment from our parent institutions, we extend their brands to local and global audiences. Our colleagues Darrin Pratt, director of the University Press of Colorado, and Susan Doerr, assistant director of the University of Minnesota Press, recently wrote about the many ways university presses are a good investment in an article in University Business. Today we offer a brief excerpt:

Universities mobilize tremendous resources in support of a single pursuit: the advancement of research-based knowledge. Their careful stewardship of public and private resources to nurture knowledge yields returns that can be recognized not only on spreadsheets but also in the lives of students and communities.

More than 100 North American universities and colleges choose to invest in a university press—a mission-driven publisher that maintains rigorous standards in identifying, preparing, and delivering scholarly research to local, national, and global audiences. And, as a recent Association of University Presses’ survey indicates, university presses deliver substantially on these investments.

In 2018, the 61 US and Canadian presses that participated in this annual survey reported receiving a collective institutional budget of $32.3 million. From that allocation, the presses generated… read more

More than 100 North American universities and colleges choose to invest in a university press

Farid Matuk Receives Holloway Residency for Poetry

Posted on April 25, 2019August 21, 2026 by Abby Mogollon

April 25, 2019

Congratulations to poet Farid Matuk, author of collection The Real Horse. He has been named visiting Holloway Professor in Poetry & Poetics at UC Berkeley. Farid will occupy the post in the spring of 2020.

The Holloway Series in Poetry is funded through an Endowment made by Roberta C. Holloway in 1981. Each academic year the Holloway Series honors one distinguished poet with a residency at the University of California, Berkeley. Residents teach a semester-long creative writing workshop, are welcomed in the annual fall faculty poetry reading, and give a featured reading in the Holloway Series.

A sustained address to the poet’s daughter, The Real Horse takes its cues from the child’s unapologetic disregard for things as they are, calling forth the adult world as accountable for its flaws and as an occasion for imagining otherwise. Offering a handbook on the possibilities of the verse line, the collection is precise in its figuring, searching in its intellect, and alert in its music. Farid interrogates the confounding intersections of gender, race, class, and national status not as abstract concepts but as foundational intimacies.

Learn More about the Halloway

Bridging the Print and Digital Publishing Worlds

Posted on April 2, 2019August 21, 2026 by Rose Brandt

April 2, 2019

This spring marks the long-anticipated launch of The Feminist Wire Books: Connecting Feminisms, Race, and Social Justice. The series is an innovative collaboration between The Feminist Wire (TFW) and the University of Arizona Press that bridges the digital and print worlds.

The Feminist Wire has long provided an online community and intellectual home for more than a million activists, scholars, and artists.
Building on their mission to “valorize and sustain pro-feminist representations and create alternative frameworks to build a just and equitable society,” the book series provides a platform for longer-format critiques of popular culture, media, and politics from a diversity of perspectives The Feminist Wire followers have come to expect.

“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 during this year’s University Press Week. “They are provocative conversation starters that call us to think and to act.”

From Indigenous and Latinx studies to current anthropology, the Press has a long history in publishing works that elevate and examine the social and political issues our world faces. As we enter our sixtieth year, this series provides yet another exciting avenue to explore both contemporary and pertinent social justice issues.

“This partnership benefits both parties,” said Tamura Lomax, co-founder of The Feminist Wire. “The UA Press has an established reputation publishing books about race and social justice, thus serving as a strategic and welcoming outlet for books in this series.”

“Not only does it complement the Press’s charge to bring scholarship to readers all over the world, but it is yet another opportunity to engage with the wonderful students and faculty in our campus community,” said Conrad.

With the release of the first two titles within the series, we’re excited to bring the conversation to the University of Arizona campus with The Feminist Wire Books Symposium.

Slated for April 10, the symposium will host series editors Tamura Lomax and Monica Casper for an evening of readings and panel discussions with authors, contributors, and editors.

Marquis Bey will present his debut essay collection, Them Goon Rules, and his work to unsettle normative ways of understanding Blackness, Black feminism, and queerness.

“I’m hoping those who tune in take away a sense of how life persists amid abjection, and how radically recalibrating what we’ve come to know about Blackness and feminism and gender might give us over to a world that is otherwise than this, a world in which we all might finally be able to live,” said Bey, who is currently a PhD candidate in English at Cornell University.

Editors from The Chicana M(other)work Anthology will speak to their work to bring 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.

“I’m thrilled to have our project be part of this event not only because we get to be in conversation with other brilliant scholars and writers, but also because The Feminist Wire Books series already shows evidence of highlighting intersectional, groundbreaking scholarship and activism that is central to transforming the ways in which we understand knowledge production inside and outside of the academy,” said Michelle Tellez, an editor of The Chicana M(other)work Anthology and assistant professor in the UA Department of Mexican American Studies.

To close out the evening, Julia Jordan-Zachery and Duchess Harris will preview their forthcoming book in the series, Black Girl Magic Beyond the Hashtag, which

Special thanks to the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, the University Libraries, the Office of the Provost, the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, the Africana Studies Program and the Department of Religious Studies and Classics for their generous support of The Feminist Wire Book Symposium.

Join us in celebrating The Feminist Wire Books, Wednesday, April 10 at 5:30 p.m. at the UA Women’s Studies Building (925 N. Tyndall Ave.) or via the livestream and stay tuned for more from the series.

Pushing Publishing Boundaries, Sharing Open Access Scholarship

Posted on February 6, 2019August 21, 2026 by Abby Mogollon

February 6, 2019

The University of Arizona Press is pleased to announce the launch of Open Arizona. This new online portal allows the press to bring back out-of-print titles as open access (OA) e-books.

The books available on Open Arizona focus on the histories and experiences of Indigenous and Latino groups in the southwestern United States, foundational areas of the Press’s long publishing history. The first eight projects now available touch on topics that range from the impact of government policy on Indigenous communities to the experiences of Mexican American communities throughout the 20th century.

Open Arizona was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2017 and is a three-year initiative to make available in open access format two dozen critical works of scholarship.

Please join us in celebrating these new OA books:

Deliberate Acts
Peter M. Whiteley

Drawing on oral accounts from Hopi consultants and contemporary documents, Peter M. Whiteley argues that the Oraibi split of 1906 was the result of a conspiracy among Hopi politico-religious leaders, a revolution to overturn the allegedly corrupt Oraibi religious order.

Farmers, Hunters, and Colonists

Edited by Katherine A. Spielmann

Eight contributors discuss early trade relations between Plains and Pueblo farmers, the evolution of interdependence between Plains hunter-gatherers and Pueblo farmers between 1450 and 1700, and the later comanchero trade between Hispanic New Mexicans and the Plains Comanche.

In Defense of La Raza

Francisco E. Balderrama

Mexican communities in the United States faced more than unemployment during the Great Depression. Discrimination against Mexican nationals and similar prejudices against Mexican Americans led the communities to seek help from Mexican consulates, which in most cases rose to their defense.

Life and Labor on the Border

Josiah McC. Heyman

This book traces the development of the urban working class in northern Sonora over the period of a century. Heyman describes what has happened to families over several generations as people have left the countryside to work for American-owned companies in northern Sonora or to cross the border to find other employment.

Mexican Americans in a Dallas Barrio

Shirley Achor

This book vividly describes day-to-day barrio life in Dallas. Achor’s portrayal of the residents challenges stereotypes of traditional Mexican American culture and southwestern barrio life.

Missionaries, Miners, and Indians

Evelyn Hu-Dehart

More than a tale of Yaqui Indian resistance, Missionaries, Miners, and Indians documents the history of the Jesuit missions during a period of encroaching secularization. The Yaqui rebellion of 1740, analyzed here in detail, enabled the Yaqui to work for the mines without repudiating the missions; however, the erosion of the mission system ultimately led to the Jesuits’ expulsion from New Spain.

Reconstructing a Chicano/a Literary Heritage

Edited by María Herrera-Sobek

This collection of essays offers a critical examination of key texts produced in the Southwest from 1542 to 1848. Drawing on research in the archives of southwestern libraries and applying literary theoretical constructs to these centuries-old manuscripts, the contributors demonstrate that these works should be recognized as an integral part of American literature.

Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great Depression

Abraham Hoffman

Discouraged by widespread unemployment and alarmed by anti-Mexican sentiment, nearly five hundred thousand Mexican Americans returned to Mexico between 1929 and 1939. Historian Abraham Hoffman captures the despair of these thousands of people of Mexican descent—including those with U.S. citizenship—who were actively coerced into leaving the country.

Turning It Up! University Press Week 2018

Posted on November 12, 2018August 21, 2026 by Rose Brandt

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!

Mark Nelson wins Independent Publisher’s Evergreen Medal

Posted on August 27, 2018August 21, 2026 by Rose Brandt

August 27, 2018

We’re thrilled to announce that Mark Nelson has been honored with an Independent Publisher Living Now Evergreen Medal for his book Pushing Our Limits: Insights from Biosphere 2.

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. His book is a fresh examination of Biosphere 2, the world’s first man-made mini-world, twenty-five years after its first closure experiment. Exploring the project’s implications for today’s global environmental challenges, Pushing Our Limits offers a pathway for reconnecting people to a healthy relationship with nature.

Conducted annually, the Independent Publisher Book Awards honor the year’s best independently published titles from around the world and their Living Now Award Evergreen Medals commemorate world-changing books for “their contributions to positive global change.”

Native American and Indigenous Studies Association 2018 Meeting Recap

Posted on May 24, 2018August 21, 2026 by Nora Evans-Reitz

May 24, 2018

Last weekend we attended the tenth annual meeting of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA), the largest scholarly organization devoted to Indigenous issues, communities, and research. Indigenous studies is a key area for the University of Arizona Press, and we’ve been attending this meeting since its inception. It’s exciting to see how attendance has grown, and we appreciate the opportunity to meet scholars from around the world and learn more about important issues in Indigenous studies.

This year’s meeting in downtown Los Angeles had a fantastic turnout and a roster of fascinating panels. As always, we were delighted to see UAP authors and other friends of the Press. Thanks to all who stopped by and to the organizers for a great conference!

The University of Arizona Press