Thank you to Bright Side Bookshop in Flagstaff, Antigone Books in Tucson, and the University of Arizona Bookstore for highlighting University of Arizona Press books this week! They are part of a national independent bookstore campaign to celebrate University Press Week, November 13 – 17, 2023.
The Association of University Presses‘s theme for this year’s University Press Week is ”Speak UP.” See the complete list of SpeakUP books here. The SpeakUP list of 103 publications represent the many areas in which university presses and their authors #Speak UP. Below are a few photos from Arizona bookstores that show the range of University of Arizona Press books.
Photos from University of Arizona bookstore above show our latest books in borderlands studies, Chicano/Chicana studies, Indigenous studies, best-selling poetry, and desert natural history books.
We were thrilled to see so many authors and editors stop by our booth at the Western History Association Conference in Los Angeles in October. If you weren’t able to stop by, there’s still time to order our western history titles. For 30% off and free shipping in the continental U.S., use discount code AZWHA23 at checkout in our website shopping cart. The discount ends 11/28/23.
Yvette Saavedra and Vanessa Fonseca-Chavez with their books. They are also editors for our new series BorderVisions.
Author Doug Hurt speaks with Editor-in-Chief Kristen Buckles.
Co-Editor Elise Boxer with her new book!
José Alamillo (center) speaks with Arizona Crossroads series editors Katherine Morrissey (left) and Eric Meeks (right).
Author Nancy Marie Mithlo speaks with Kristen Buckles.
Yvette Saavedra (Pitzer) and Publicity Manager Mary Reynolds (Pomona) realize they are both Claremont Colleges graduates. Go Sagehens!
On October 14, author Dante Lauretta hosted an “Orbits and Elixirs Celebration” for contributors and supporters of the NASA OSIRIS-REx Mission, at the Don Martini Bar on top of the Rialto Theater in downtown Tucson. Lauretta and Mayor Regina Romero spoke; they talked about the sample return mission, the work of the mirror lab for the Giant Magellan Telescope, and the opening of the Center for Astrobiology. UA Press Director Kathryn Conrad and Editor Allyson Carter joined in the celebration, along with UA Lunar Planetary Laboratory Director Mark Marley. Below are photos from the event.
About the book: Bennu 3-D, Anatomy of an Asteroid, is 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.
Dante Lauretta speaks about the mission to Bennu and back.
Allyson Carter, Dante Lauretta, and Kathryn Conrad
Slide show celebrating all University of Arizona space and astronomy accomplishments.
Tucson Mayor Regina Romero congratulates the OSIRIS-REx team on a successful mission.
The rain falls on everyone’s skull with equal charity in a lapse from realism makes us subjects of something more than flesh and blood we are children of water of longing of uncertainty.
Elizabeth Torres, “The Rain” (Lotería, 2023)
In Tucson, the month of August is always exciting: school is about to resume, the students begin to trickle back into town, and new books are on their way. But this year, the natural flow of the season has been hampered by the unrelenting heat and scarcity of serious rain. Even the desert’s best-adapted plants have struggled to make it through this summer’s heat-wave.
At the University of Arizona Press, we find that it’s a little easier to exercise hydrological patience by looking back to some of our favorite water-writing. We hope you’ll enjoy this roundup of monsoon books—and who knows—maybe you’ll even be reading one on your back porch when the rain starts. We can always hope!
The vision begins with a river. From this river, you can see a village, marine life, and ancestral rituals. It is here that you recognize origins, and a poison beginning to spread through paradise. Suddenly, a premonition: a wounded animal. The certainty of war cries. What you take with you is what you become, each movement a gamble, a lottery of life that transforms you until this moment, when uncertainty becomes an ally.
Lotería: Nocturnal Sweepstakes is a collection of deeply evocative coming-of-age poems that take the reader on a voyage through the intimate experiences of displacement. Conjuring dreamlike visions of extravagant fruits and rivers animated by the power of divination, these poems follow the speaker from the lash of war’s arrival through an urgent escape and reinvention in a land that saves with maternal instinct but also smothers its children.
In this bilingual collection, Colombian American poet Elizabeth Torres threads together the stories of family dynamics and the realities of migration with the archetypes of tarot and the traditional Lotería game, used for centuries as an object of divination and entertainment. Through these themes and images, the poems in Lotería narrate intimate moments in the lives and journeys of migrants, refugees, and all who have been forced into metamorphosis in order to reach the other side of the river.
Winner of the 2022 Ambroggio Prize of the Academy of American Poets, this collection showcases masterfully crafted and translated poems.
When it was first released in 1982, When It Rains was one of the earliest published literary works in the O’odham language. Speakers from across generations shared poems that showcased the aesthetic of the written word and aimed to spread interest in reading and writing in O’odham.
The poems capture brief moments of beauty, the loving bond between family members, and a deep appreciation of Tohono O’odham culture and traditions, as well as reverent feelings about the landscape and wildlife native to the Southwest. A motif of rain and water is woven throughout the poetry in When It Rains, tying in the collection’s title to the importance of this life-giving and sustaining resource to the Tohono O’odham people. With the poems in both O’odham and English, the volume serves as an important reminder of the beauty and changeability of the O’odham language.
Please note: this book is forthcoming in October 2023
When living in a large sprawling city, one may feel disconnected and adrift. Finding ways to belong and have positive effects is challenging. In Bringing Home the Wild, botanist Juliet C. Stromberg demonstrates how ecologically guided gardening develops a sense of place, restores connections to nature, and brings joy and meaning to our lives.
This book follows a two-decade journey in ecologically guided 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 playful use of language, Bringing Home the Wild not only introduces the plants who are feeding them, buffering the climate, and elevating their moods but also acknowledges the animals and fungi who are pollinating the plants and recycling the waste. Some of the plants featured are indigenous to the American Southwest, while others are part of the biocultural heritage of the cityscape. This book makes the case for valuing inclusive biodiversity and for respectful interactions with all wild creatures, regardless of their historical origin.
As author and partner learn to cohabit with the plants who feed them, calm them, entertain them, and protect them from the increasing heat, their desire to live sustainably, ethically, and close to the land becomes even stronger, revealing the importance of observing, appreciating, and learning from the ecosystems of which we are a part.
Published more than forty years ago, The Desert Smells Like Rain remains a classic work about nature, how to respect it, and what transplants can learn from the longtime residents of the Sonoran Desert, the Tohono O’odham people.
In this work, Gary Paul Nabhan brings O’odham voices to the page at every turn. He writes elegantly of how they husband scant water supplies, grow crops, and utilize edible wild foods. Woven through his account are coyote tales, O’odham children’s impressions of the desert, and observations of the political problems that come with living on both sides of an international border. Nabhan conveys the everyday life and extraordinary perseverance of these desert people.
This edition includes a new preface written by the author, in which he reflects on his gratitude for the O’odham people who shared their knowledge with him. He writes about his own heritage and connections to the desert, climate change, and the border. He shares his awe and gratitude for O’odham writers and storytellers who have been generous enough to share stories with those of us from other cultural traditions so that we may also respect and appreciate the smell of the desert after a rain.
Life in the desert is a waiting game: waiting for rain. And in a year of drought, the stakes are especially high.
John Alcock knows the Sonoran Desert better than just about anyone else, and in this book he tracks the changes he observes in plant and animal life over the course of a drought year. Combining scientific knowledge with years of exploring the desert, he describes the variety of ways in which the wait for rain takes place—and what happens when it finally comes.
When the Rains Come is brimming with new insights into the desert, from the mating behaviors of insects to urban sprawl, and features photographs that document changes in the landscape as drought years come and go. It brings us the desert in the harshest of times—and shows that it is still teeming with life.
Signed on November 24, 1922, the Colorado River Compact is the cornerstone of a proverbial pyramid—an elaborate body of laws colloquially called the “Law of the River” that governs how human beings use water from the river system dubbed the “American Nile.”
No fewer than forty million people have come to rely on the Colorado River system in modern times—a river system immersed in an unprecedented, unrelenting megadrought for more than two decades. Attempting to navigate this “new normal,” policymakers are in the midst of negotiating new management rules for the river system, a process coinciding with the compact’s centennial that must be completed by 2026.
Animated by this remarkable confluence of events, Cornerstone at the Confluence leverages the centennial year to reflect on the compact and broader “Law of the River” to envision the future. It is a volume inviting dialogue about how the Colorado River system’s flows should be apportioned given climate change, what should be done about environmental issues such as ecosystem restoration and biodiversity protection, and how long-standing issues of water justice facing Native American communities should be addressed.
In one form or another, all these topics touch on the concept of “equity” embedded within the compact—a concept that tees up what is perhaps the foundational question confronted by Cornerstone at the Confluence: Who should have a seat at the table of Colorado River governance?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Wildfollows 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.
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