Category: Press News

Book Lovers of UA Press: Cameron Quan

Posted on by Cameron Quan

July 25, 2023

Summer is a great time to meet the people at the University of Arizona Press who turn book dreams into reality. We are a small but mighty team.

Today, we feature our Marketing Specialist, Cameron Quan.

Hello Cameron, what do you do for the Press?

I am the Marketing Specialist for the University of Arizona Press. One of the major components of my job is facilitating exhibits, which is all about the press’s physical presence: knowing which conferences and events make sense to attend, handling pre-exhibit logistics, representing the press at events, and generally just making sure that our books and authors are visible in their communities. I also contribute to advertising and social media, and I submit our authors’ books for awards.

How long have you been at UAP?
About a week—I’m brand new! While I have a background in literature, publishing, advertising, and education, this is my first time working at a university press. In my previous life as a student at the University of Arizona, I always admired the mysterious folks on the fifth floor of the library, who seemed to materialize incredible books at a breakneck pace, and now I’m excited to be part of the action.

What do you like most about working here?
The experience and knowledge of my colleagues is incredible. Being surrounded by people who are passionate about literature and language is nurturing, and everyone I’ve met has been welcoming and supportive. I love being part of a culture that acknowledges the profound responsibility and privilege of getting to help shepherd these books into the world. I also love that marketing is involved in the whole life of the book, getting to see it in its primordial state and then being able to observe its impact on people out in the world. It’s pretty magical.

What would people be surprised to learn about your work?
One of the things that is currently boggling my mind is how far out the planning needs to happen. Everyone is constantly thinking about the next season, the next year. Marketing requires so much attention to detail, and when those details are provisional, or TBD, or a year out, it requires a lot of flexibility and scrappiness to make sure that people and things are where they need to be. The stakes are high, too! Our authors’ ideas are crucial.

What do you like to do in your free time?
I’ve been rock climbing since I was a teenager, and it’s my favorite way to catch up with friends, spend time outside in the desert, move around, and (cheesy as it sounds) be in the present. Climbing is playful, social, and mentally/physically engaging, so it checks all my boxes for quality recreation.

Book Lovers of UA Press: Mary Reynolds

Posted on by maryreynolds

July 20, 2023

Summer is a great time to meet the people at the University of Arizona Press who turn book dreams into reality. We are a small but mighty team.

Today, we feature our Publicity Manager, Mary Reynolds.

Hello Mary, what do you do for the Press?

I let everyone know about our awesome books! Book promotion starts early. Pre-publication, I work with trade authors to find people to write blurbs for their books. I send out press releases, digital and print Advance Reader Copies of books, review copies to scholarly journals and popular media outlets. I contact podcasters, bloggers, radio shows, and more to get our authors and books promoted in as many places as possible. I manage UA Press social media and write news and event items for our website. I also coordinate author events for our trade authors.

How long have you been at UAP?
Seven whole months! I’m a rookie at the Press, but I’ve worked in the areas of publicity, writing, and editing for 20 years or so. And once upon a time, I even worked in a bookstore.

What do you like most about working here?
I like knowing what’s behind the scenes in book publishing and working with other friendly people who love books. I love working with authors to bring their books out into the world, and learning about how authors came to write a particular book. But my favorite part so far is working at the UA Press tent at the Tucson Festival of Books where I can see authors interacting with readers, and witness the joy on everyone’s faces. I also see this at author events, authors enjoy answering readers’ questions.

What would people be surprised to learn about your work?
Unless you are a published author, you would be surprised at how early our team starts to work on publicity for your book. About a year before the publication date, we contact trade authors and talk with them about our process. We partner with authors on publicity; authors come up with great ideas themselves about book promotion, and how to reach their target audiences. For trade and scholarly titles, we work way in advance of publication date to get books into our catalog, on our website, on other online distribution sites; and for scholarly titles, we send their books to appropriate journals for review. I am always looking for ways to promote our authors. Early book buzz is the best book buzz.

If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go and why?
Someday, I will travel to Machu Pichu and hike the Inca Trail. I’ve wanted to make the trip since I learned about the Incas in my 7th grade Spanish class. I’m in awe of the stone remains of this intriguing civilization. I’m happy in high mountains, I enjoy hiking, and I would love to visit other Inca sites in the Peruvian Andes, too.

Book Lovers of UA Press: Amanda Krause

Posted on by maryreynolds

June 28, 2023

Summer is a great time to meet the people at the University of Arizona Press who turn book dreams into reality. We are a small but mighty team.

Today, we feature our Editorial, Design, and Production Manager, Amanda Krause.

Hello Amanda, what do you do for the Press?

I oversee our Editorial, Design, and Production department, handle manuscript editorial tasks like maintaining our house style guide and hiring freelance copyeditors, manage the production schedules of all our new books and reprints, and host of other tasks to make sure our books are both timely and something we and the authors can be really proud of.

How long have you been at UAP?
I just hit my ten-year anniversary earlier this year, though I’ve been in university press publishing in some capacity or another for about fifteen. In a past life, I’ve also worked in other editorial and publishing jobs as a proofreader for a company that made marketing materials for colleges and universities, an assistant editor at a buildings and facilities trade magazine, and a beat reporter for covering school boards for two small-town newspapers in eastern Iowa.

What do you like most about working here?
The people! Both our authors and our staff here at the press are some of the smartest, most creative and passionate people you’ll ever meet. I constantly learn new things from the people I get to work with—both interesting facts and new ways of thinking. . . . And I’d be remiss in my duties as a bibliophile if I didn’t also say that I love that new-book smell.

What would people be surprised to learn about your work?
How collaborative a process making a book is. When a manuscript goes through copyediting, it isn’t just a “hey we’ve edited your book to conform to the press’s house style and we’re done”; there’s a lot of back-and-forth between the copyeditor and the author, and then oftentimes consultation with me on the best way to handle a particular style issue for a particular book. Grammar isn’t a one-size-fits-all thing where all the rules can or should apply uniformly to all text. The goal instead is to make sure the author’s ideas are communicated clearly and the style is consistent, and you have to take into consideration how to make sure the language is free of bias, which could undermine the author’s expertise. And language doesn’t stay static over time. Plus there’s all the internal communication on everything from schedules to cover design. It’s a lot of meetings and emails.

If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go and why?
Morocco! I studied French from middle school up through college (I missed the last class needed for a minor in order to do an internship at Northwestern University Press), and I became fascinated with Francophone Africa. Morocco has such a unique blend of French, Arabic, and African cultures. And I recently read one of Karen Armstrong’s books about the prophet Muhammad and am very interested in learning more about the Islamic world as well. Unfortunately, I’d really need to brush up on my French before I go—my language skills are VERY rusty after years of disuse, though I used to be pretty conversational.

Book Lovers of UA Press: Abby Mogollon

Posted on by maryreynolds

June 22, 2023

Summer is a great time to meet the people at the University of Arizona Press who turn book dreams into reality. We are a small but mighty team.

Today, we feature our Marketing Director, Abby Mogollon.

Hello Abby, what do you do for the Press?
I am the Marketing Manager for the University of Arizona Press. With a three-person marketing team, we have an all-hands-on-deck approach to our marketing and communications. It takes everyone doing their part. I have a wide variety of duties, from guiding our overall marketing strategy to overseeing our website and metadata. I work on book covers and jackets with our designer, coordinate with our sales reps across the country, and much more. All to help our authors share their vital scholarship! My favorite work is when I get to spend time at an exhibit or book festival, hand-selling our books and meeting authors and customers.

How long have you been at UAP?
I’ve worked at the Press since 2009. I started doing marketing for the press’s Andrew W. Mellon funded project, First Peoples: New Directions in Indigenous Studies. This was a tremendous, four-press project. After that, I was able to move into the Press’s amazing marketing department!

What do you like most about working here?
I am constantly learning from our authors and my colleagues. I feel so lucky to be in such a dynamic field. Publishing is constantly changing and evolving. It is not boring. And the scholarship our authors produce is truly cutting-edge and vital. I also really love when we get to see an author present their work. It isn’t always possible because our authors are all over the world. But for those rare times when I can hear an author present their scholarship at an academic conference, book festival, or cozy book event, it’s just the best.

What would people be surprised to learn about your work?
So much of book publishing is invisible. It takes a great partnership between the Press and the author to spread the word about a book, and a lot of thought and planning is happening behind the scenes. For example, for every review a book receives, there were probably ten or even twenty pitches to outlets. I think people may also be surprised to learn how much thought goes into those quotes on the back of a book. We call them blurbs and think carefully about who we request them from, and the authors who provide blurbs spend a significant amount of time with a work to come up with those two sentences that appear on the back of a book. It’s a real craft. With the advent of digital marketing and metadata, the traditional channels for sharing and publishing information has become exponentially more interesting and complex.

What is something you like to do in your free time to relax?
I read! In my free time you’re likely to find me snuggled up with one of my pets reading a mystery.

Book Lovers of UA Press: Leigh McDonald

Posted on by maryreynolds

June 13, 2023

Summer is a great time to meet the people at the University of Arizona Press who turn book dreams into reality. We are a small but mighty team.

Today, we feature our Art Director, Leigh McDonald.

Hello Leigh, what do you do for the Press?
I’m the Art Director, working within the Editing, Design, and Production department to produce great books! I am in charge of all the cover designs and interior art for UA Press titles, as well as some of the interior design and typesetting (and I sometimes put my marketing hat on as well).

How long have you been at UAP?
A long time now! I started at UAP in 2006 as the Marketing Assistant and Exhibits manager, after some previous years spent working in commercial publishing as a manuscript editor. After joining the Press, I discovered an untapped passion for book design and production, and worked my way into the Art Director role over the next few years.

What do you like most about working here?
I love working with a small, passionate, engaged team who really care about the books we produce. And I love that we get to learn a little bit about all the amazing scholarship and creativity in the areas we publish—our authors keep us learning and growing as we use our skills to help their work reach its audience. It is always a dynamic job, never boring!

What would people be surprised to learn about your work?
Most of it, probably. I think publishing is one of those fields hidden in plain sight—everyone knows and loves the end product, but the work that goes into creating that great book and getting it into your hands is mostly unseen. One thing people ask me about quite often is the cover design process—who chooses the art and decides on the final version? How does that work? The truth is, projects vary widely and there is no simple answer to that question. I really enjoy the process, though, and work to ensure that every book has a cover that fits the content inside and helps it to reach its widest possible audience.

What is something you like to do in your free time to relax?
My day to day free time is mostly spent with my family enjoying great food, playing games, reading, or practicing capoeira. My greatest and most relaxing joy, though, is when we are able to get out camping in the wilderness and immerse ourselves in the natural world. The Southwest has so many wonderful places to explore and discover–any time I get to focus on getting out there and being present in this incredible environment we share is a gift.

University of Arizona Press Presents Our Fall 2023 Books

Posted on by maryreynolds

May 30, 2023

We have another amazing season ahead of us at the University of Arizona Press. Here’s a preview of our upcoming fall 2023 season with the best the Press has to offer, from a debut novel and Indigenous poetry to space science, saguaros, Latinx studies, Indigenous studies, and the borderlands. Fall books are available for pre-order today! We highlight a few of our forthcoming books here.

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.

Nestled between Texas and Mexico, the city of Laredo was a quaint border town, nurturing cultural ties across the river, attracting occasional tourists, and populated with people living there for generations. In Listening to Laredo, Mehnaaz Momen traces Laredo’s history and evolution through the voices of its people. She examines the changing economic and cultural infrastructure of the city, its interdependence with its sister city across the national boundary, and, above all, the resilience of the community as it adapts to and even challenges the national narrative on the border.

Humans have always been fascinated by the possibility of extraterrestrial life, often wondering if we are alone in the universe. Drawing on Louis Friedman’s fifty years in the field, Alone but Not Lonely looks at the subject of extraterrestrial life, separating knowledge from conjecture, fact from fiction, to draw scientific and technical conclusions that answer this enduring question and examine the possibility of remotely exploring life on other worlds.

Alma García’s debut novel, All That Rises is set in El Paso, Texas. This multiple viewpoint novel is a story of two families—one Mexican American, one Anglo—who find themselves unexpectedly entangled with one another when each of their households separately implode. When the Mexican maid working in both houses begins to suspect that all is not what it seems, she is implicated in the unfolding of a web of mysteries, history, and border politics that forces all concerned to question their own pasts, their understanding of family, and their relationships to a part of the world like no other.

Light As Light is acclaimed poet Simon J. Ortiz’s first collection in twenty years. The poems in this volume are a powerful journey through the poet’s life—both a love letter to the future, and a sentimental, authentic celebration of the past.

Bringing Home the Wild follows a two-decade journey in ecologically guided urban gardening on a four-acre irrigated parcel in Phoenix, Arizona, from the perspective of a retired botanist and her science historian partner. Through humor and a playful use of language, author Juliet C. Stromberg introduces the plants who are feeding the couple, buffering the climate, and elevating their moods. She also acknowledges the animals and fungi who are pollinating the plants and recycling the waste. This work shows all of us the importance of observing, appreciating, and learning from the ecosystems of which we are a part.

In the Arms of Saguaros pictures how nature’s sharpest curves became a symbol of the American West. 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. According to author William L. Bird, Jr., 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.

Chicana Portraits details critical biographies of twelve key Chicana writers, offering an engaging look at their work, contributions to the field, and major achievements. Portraits of the authors are each examined by a noted scholar, who delves deep into the authors’ lives for details that inform their literary, artistic, feminist, and political trajectories and sensibilities. Editor Norma E. Cantú and artist Raquel Valle-Sentíes create a brilliant intersection of visual and literary arts that explores themes of sexism and misogyny, the fragility of life, Chicana agency, and more.

When Language Broke Open, edited by Alan Pelaez Lopez, collects the creative offerings of forty-five queer and trans Black writers of Latin American descent who use poetry, prose, and visual art to illustrate Blackness as a geopolitical experience that is always changing. Telling stories of Black Latinidades, this anthology centers the multifaceted realities of the LGBTQ community. Contributors challenge everything we think we know about gender, sexuality, race, and what it means to experience a livable life.

Woven from the Center presents breathtaking basketry from some of the greatest weavers in the Greater Southwest. Each sandal and mat fragment, each bowl and jar, every water bottle and whimsy is infused with layers of aesthetic, cultural, and historical meanings. In this book, Diane D. Dittemore offers stunning photos and descriptions of woven works from Indigenous communities across the U.S. Southwest and Northwest Mexico.

April 11, 2023

We were thrilled to see so many authors and volume editors stop by our booth at the Society of American Archaeology meeting in Portland earlier this month. If you weren’t able to stop by, there’s still time to order our archaeology titles. For 30% off and free shipping in the continental U.S. use discount code AZSAA23 at checkout in our website shopping cart. The discount ends 5/5/23.

Author Paul Minnis with his works The Neighbors of Casas Grandes and Famine Foods.
Stephen Acabado, co-author of Indigenous Archaeology in the Philippines, and Allyson Carter, Senior Editor
John G. Douglass with his works The Global Spanish Empire and Forging Communities in Colonial Alta California
Randal H. McGuire, co-editor of The Border and Its Bodies, and Ruth M. Van Dyke, editor of Practicing Materiality
Samuel Duwe, author of Tewa Worlds and co-editor of Continuous Path
Shelby Tisdale, author of the forthcoming work No Place for a Lady
Andrew Turner co-editor of Flower Worlds
Patrick D. Lyons, editor of The Davis Ranch Site
Thomas H. Guderjan, co-editor of The Value of Things
Barbara J. Roth with her new work Households on the Mimbres Horizon
Allyson Carter, senior editor, meets with authors. If you have publishing questions about your archaeology manuscript, email her at acarter@uapress.arizona.edu.

UA Press earns three PubWest design awards

Posted on by maryreynolds

February 8, 2023

Congratulations to The University of Arizona Press Editorial Production and Design team: Amanda Krause, Leigh McDonald, and Sara Thaxton! Because of their amazing creativity and dedication to excellence, the team received three awards for book design at The Publishers Association of the West’s (PubWest) 2023 conference.

UA Press designers dominated the podium in the category of Short Stories/Poetry/Anthologies. Raven’s Echo by Robert David Hoffmann, won gold. Cardinal in My Window with a Mask on Its Beak, by Carlos Aguasaco won silver.

And just in time for the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show, the beautiful full-color Mineralogy of Arizona, Fourth Edition, by Raymond W. Grant, Ron Gibbs, Harvey Jong, Jan Rasmussen, and Stanley Keith, won silver in the Reference Book category.

PubWest is a national trade organization of publishers and of associated publishing-related members. The association presents annual design awards for book design, book cover design, and graphic novel design.

Ask UP & Ask the University of Arizona Press

Posted on by Abby Mogollon

September 15, 2022

We’re thrilled to announce that this fall the University of Arizona Press is hosting the Association of University Presses popular site Ask UP. The site is a resource for authors looking to learn more about scholarly publishing, university presses, and the publishing process in general. Hosted each quarter by a different member of the AUP community, the University of Arizona Press looks forward to answering your questions!

In addition to an “Ask A Question” feature, the site also includes resources related to teaching, promotion, copyright and intellectual property, and preparing materials for publication. It also provides links to describe the life cycle of a book, from the perspective of a variety of university presses.

Learn more about Ask Up here.

Arizona Crossroads Series Launch

Posted on by Savannah Hicks

September 12, 2022

Below, find a recording of the Arizona Crossroads series launch. Arizona Crossroads explores the history of peoples and cultures, events and struggles, ideas and practices in the place we know today as Arizona. Open to any topic within any time period of Arizona history, the series will publish scholarship that is cutting-edge and innovative, yet generally accessible and readable to an educated general audience. We are open to a variety of book formats: monographs, multi-authored works, and edited collections, as well as broader more synthetic works. Interdisciplinary projects that engage the past are encouraged.

Learn more about Arizona Crossroads here.

Learn more about the Arizona Historical Society here.

Many thanks to David Turpie, Vice President of Education, Exhibitions, and Publications at the Arizona Historical Society; Kristen Buckles, Editor-in-Chief at the University of Arizona Press; and the Arizona Crossroads series editors: Katherine G. Morrissey, Eric V. Meeks, and Anita Huizar-Hernández for joining us for this discussion!

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