Islands in Infinty: Galaxies 3-D, by Derek Ward-Thompson, Brian May, and J-P Metsävainio was published in the United Kingdom this week by our partner press, The London Stereoscopic Company. To celebrate, we’re offering a discount code when you pre-order the North American version of the book, which will ship in late February 2026.
Order this week and get 45% off using code AZGALAXIES45, and next spring you will see galaxies in a whole new way! Act now, because this amazing discount is only available for a short time.
This groundbreaking book brings the cosmos to life like never before. Featuring more than two hundred stunning color photographs from the world’s leading observatories and eighty detailed diagrams, this large-format book offers a mesmerizing journey through the formation, nature, evolution, and classification of galaxies.
Highlights include:
A look at the universe in three dimensions with Brian May’s patented 3-D viewer,
Accessible science, offering a non-mathematical review of modern cosmology and astronomy
An exploration of the chaotic beauty of colliding and merging galaxies,
A reference section on historical galaxy catalogues, plus a comprehensive index.
About the authors:
Derek Ward-Thompson (MA, PhD, FRAS) is director of the Jeremiah Horrocks Institute of Mathematics, Physics and Astronomy, and head of the School of Physical Sciences and Computing at the University of Lancashire.
Sir Brian May (CBE, PhD, ARCS, FRAS) is a founding member of the rock group Queen, a world-renowned guitarist, songwriter, producer, performer, 3-D photographic authority, author, publisher, and passionate campaigner for animal rights.
J-P Metsävainio is a Finnish visual artist and impassioned astronomical photographer who uses scientific and computational tools and methods to reveal the nocturnal world of wonders.
In Tucson during the 1950s, nearly everyone knew, or wanted to know, the southwestern artist Mac Schweitzer. Born Mary Alice Cox in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1921, she grew up a tomboy who adored horses, cowboys, and art. After training at the Cleveland School of Art and marrying, she adopted her maiden initials (M. A. C.) as her artistic name and settled in Tucson in 1946. With a circle of influential friends that included anthropologists, designer-craftsmen, and Native American artists, she joined Tucson’s “Early Moderns,” receiving exhibits, commissions, and awards for her artwork. In Mac Schweitzer: A Southwest Maverick and Her Art, author Ann Lane Hedlund draws from the artist’s letters, photo albums, and published reviews to tell the story of Mac’s creative and adventuresome life. Today, Ann answers five questions about the book.
What first sparked your interest in Mac Schweitzer?
Mac was the mother-in-law I never knew because she died fifteen years before I met her son Kit in 1977. Kit and I married five years later, and our house filled with artworks made by Mac, Kit, his father Jack, and other artists whom we both knew. Family members and friends often focused on the tragedy that Mac died when not quite 41, leaving a toddler and teen-aged son, but few people could recall the variety of works she made, the energy she put into her career, and the awards and honors that she earned. All that was forgotten until I started researching her background through scrapbooks, photo albums, and hundreds of newspaper articles and announcements.
How did Mac fit into the ethos of modernism in Tucson?
Tucson in the 1940s and ‘50s was a lively arts colony, where galleries, festivals, and a nascent museum of art promoted local and regional artists. Arriving in 1946, Mac joined the Tucson Fine Arts Association and showed in several prominent downtown galleries, where she became known as an innovative artist. The modernist movement championed stylized geometric patterning, shifting perspectives, textured materials, and mixed media, among other things. Mac used all these, adding a Southwest twist with her rustic subject matter and distinct coloration. Collectors loved her work, which fit into the modern homes and offices that well-known Arizona architects designed and built at that time.
What was Mac’s process for creating animal paintings while she lived in the Tucson Mountains?
Since high school when she drew caricatures of her teachers and fellow students, Mac was a careful observer of people, places, wildlife, and plants. From the patios and kitchen window of her remote desert bungalow, she watched coyotes, javelina, deer, rabbits, rodents, and many birds up close. She also visited the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum where she could study the more elusive mountain lions and bobcats. She made quick pencil sketches, working mostly from memory, not from photos. Her drawings and prints capture the animals’ personalities and surroundings, not just their forms. Her paintings bring to life each critter’s character.
How was Mac (an outsider/white woman) welcomed onto northern Arizona’s Indian reservations?
When she started exploring and camping in the Four Corners area, Mac was a single mother whose grade-school-aged son Kit traveled everywhere with her. Together they visited the homes and herding grounds of Hopi and Navajo families, first introduced to them by anthropologist-friends from Tucson. Mac always shared food, art-making supplies, and other goods, while Kit played with the local children. Both mother and son regarded their new friendships as open-hearted, two-way connections. Their friends met them at least halfway, exchanging invitations to attend ceremonial dances and feasts with opportunities to visit Tucson museums, schools, and events. Mac and Kit recognized the privilege to learn about distinct cultures, the importance of privacy and boundaries, and the reciprocal nature of integrating experience into art and life.
What is your next research or writing project?
Well, continuing with that theme of “the privilege to learn about distinct cultures,” I’ve become interested in looking back at my own career as a cultural anthropologist who documented and collaborated with Navajo weavers and other artists. What paths led me to learn about their creative lives? What pitfalls and challenges did I encounter along the way? How was the “arts and crafts scene” when I started, compared with the modern art world today? So many loose ends to follow, so many adventure-filled tales to tell! I don’t yet know whether these musings might result in a single essay, a memoir-esque book, or something in between, but at this stage it’s exciting to look ahead and behind.
****
About the Author
Ann Lane Hedlund is a cultural anthropologist who collaborates with Indigenous weavers and other visual artists to understand creative processes in social contexts. From 1997 to 2013 she served as a curator at Arizona State Museum and professor at University of Arizona, Tucson, where she also directed the nonprofit Center for Tapestry Studies. She is author of Navajo Weaving in the Late Twentieth Century and Gloria F. Ross & Modern Tapestry, among other works.
The Texas State Legislature appointed Octavio Quintanilla to be Texas Poet Laureate for 2025-2026. He is the author of Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours, winner of the 2024 Ambroggio Prize from the Academy of American Poets.
Quintanilla, who writes and teaches in San Antonio, was one of several state artists appointed by the Legislature. In the press release about state artists, State Representative Will Metcalf, Chairman of the House Committee on Culture, Recreation, and Tourism said, “It’s a pleasure to recognize the 2025-2026 State Artists for their official designations. The arts in Texas are extremely important to a vibrant and thriving state.” Gary Gibbs, executive director for the Texas Commission on the Arts, said, “These Texas State Artists are the best of the best. Their work defines our character of place and reflects the distinctive qualities that make Texas unique.”
Congratulations, Octavio!
About the book:
In Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours, Octavio Quintanilla takes us on a profound journey to witness what it means to erase those boundaries devised by genre and politics intent on stifling memory, imagination, and creativity.
Presented in Spanish with English translations, this poetry collection comprises lyric and concrete poems—or frontextos—that explore intimacy and different shades of violence as a means to reconcile the speaker’s sense of belonging in the world. From the opening poem to the last in the first section, Quintanilla captures the perilous journeys that migrants undertake crossing borders as well as the paths that lovers forge to meet their endless longing. These themes are skillfully woven by Quintanilla, guiding us back and forth across the Rio Grande to encounter the apparitions of the disappeared and to witness the willingness of many to risk life and limb for a better life.
While all poets paint pictures with words, some poets also literally paint pictures: Leo Romero’s paintings are currently featured at Big Happy Gallery, on exhibition with the work of his wife, Elizabeth Cook Romero. Leo Romero also painted the image on the cover of his book, Trees Dream of Water: Selected and New Poems, seen in the header image above.
Painting by Leo RomeroPainting by Elizabeth Cook Romero
The opening reception will be on May 9, 5-7 p.m., MDT. Big Happy Gallery is located at 1300 Luisa St., Ste. 3A, Santa Fe, New Mexico. The show runs through June 14, 2025. Gallery hours are Saturday and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m., and by appointment.
About the book:
“The poems in this collection began as a search for a history of my ancestors in a small, isolated valley in northern New Mexico. But no one wrote it down, and I was left to construct a poetic history where there were no written records . . .”
Leo Romero stands as a foundational figure in Latino letters. With six books of poetry and a book of short fiction to his name, Romero’s contribution to the literary canon is profound and enduring.
Bringing together for the first time his new and selected poems, Trees Dream of Water reflects Romero’s journey from youth to maturity as a person and a poet, and his deep connection to New Mexico and its culture. Traversed by memory, myth, and observation of the natural world, these poems explore family, community belonging and conflict, life as an artist, and the cycles of life and death. This lyrical anthology includes accompanying essays to illuminate Romero’s life and work for longtime admirers and new readers alike.
Thanks to everyone who came by to say hello, browse books, and talk with our staff. If you’re an author and you have questions about working with us, please reach out to Senior Editor Allyson Carter at acarter@uapress.arizona.edu.
See you all next year in San Francisco for SAA 2026!
Writing That Matters: A Handbook for Chicanx and Latinx Studies, by L Heidenreich and Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz, received the 2025 Catrióna Rueda Esquibel Recognition Award at the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS) Annual Meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on April 3, 2025. Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz accepted the award on behalf of both authors during the Plenary Session.
Gabriella Sanchez and Veronica Sandoval, Chicana Caucus Co-chairs, said that the book “exemplifies the kind of scholarship we aspire to produce and engage with as part of Chicana Studies.”
Congratulations, L and Rita!
About the book:
Have you ever wanted a writing and research manual that centered Chicanx and Latinx scholarship? Writing that Matters does just that.
While it includes a brief history of the roots of the fields of Chicanx literature and history, Writing that Matters emphasizes practice: how to research and write a Chicanx or Latinx history paper; how to research and write a Chicanx or Latinx literature or cultural studies essay; and how to conduct interviews, frame pláticas, and conduct oral histories. It also includes a brief chapter on nomenclature and a grammar guide. Each chapter includes questions for discussion, and all examples from across the subfields are from noted Chicanx and Latinx scholars. Women’s and queer scholarship and methods are not addressed in a separate chapter but are instead integral to the work.
In the new book Birds, Bats, and Blooms author Theodore H. Fleming provides an in-depth look at the ecology and evolution of two groups of vertebrate pollinators: New World hummingbirds and nectar-feeding bats and their Old World counterparts. Today, the author gives us a behind-the-scenes look at this book and what inspired him to write it.
This book is meant to be a scientifically rigorous but engaging account of two groups of my favorite animals—nectar-feeding birds and bats—with a special emphasis on hummingbirds and bats that visit flowers in the New World. It reflects my long-term research interests from observing and studying these animals in Brazil, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico, southern Arizona, and Australia. In retirement I have also spent considerable time photographing them in many of these countries.
In a sense, this book is a modern version of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories in which he tells us how various animals acquired their most notable features (e.g., a camel’s hump, a giraffe’s long neck, etc.). Thus, the major sections of this book include “How to Build a Hummingbird,” “How to Build a Nectar Bat,” “How to Build a Vertebrate-pollinated Flower,” and “What About Their Ecological Counterparts in the Old World?” It ends with an overview of the “Conservation Status” of these animals.
Here are examples of some of the species that I discuss in this book:
My “How To …” sections review the evolutionary histories of New World nectar-feeding birds and bats as well as many of their notable adaptations to an unusual food source, i.e. sugary water produced by flowers. It compares and contrasts the evolution and adaptations of flower-visiting birds and bats and discusses the botanical consequences of their behavior. Hummingbirds and nectar-bats have been interacting with their food plants for over 20 million years, and as a result, several thousand species of plants in dozens of families currently depend on these high energy and expensive pollinators for their reproductive success. A similar situation exists in the Old World where at least four families of birds (e.g., sunbirds, honeyeaters, flower-peckers, and lorikeets) and a few nectar-bats pollinate a wide variety of flowers. I discuss evolutionary convergences and differences between these Old World nectar-feeders and their New World counterparts.
Finally, I review the conservation status of these animals. Most of them are not threatened currently with extinction, but habitat loss caused by human activities is always a major concern. Hunting and the pet trade threaten lorikeets in Australasia. In addition, in the New World human fear of vampire bats is a constant threat to its cave-dwelling nectar bats.
In the end, though, hummingbirds, sunbirds, lorikeets, and nectar-bats are among the most interesting vertebrates to have evolved on Earth. We must cherish and protect them for future generations to enjoy.
***
Theodore H. Fleming is a professor emeritus of biology at the University of Miami. He spent thirty-nine years in academia at the University of Missouri–St. Louis and the University of Miami, teaching ecology courses and conducting research on tropical rodent populations and plant-visiting bats and their food plants in Panama, Costa Rica, Australia, Mexico, and Arizona. He lives in Tucson.
The University of Arizona Press staff recently had the opportunity to visit Carina A. Bennett and Cat W.V. Wolner, two of the five authors of Bennu 3-D: Anatomy of an Asteroid, at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in the Gerard P. Kuiper Space Sciences Building! Below, you can see photos from the tour, including a map of the asteroid Bennu’s surface, a close-up look at some of the sample collected from Bennu, and the powerful microscopes used to analyze and image the sample.
A major highlight of the tour was seeing a vial of sample collected from the Bennu asteroid. Bennett and Wolner revealed that, among many surprises, researchers have discovered that the asteroid is more like a “rubble pile” held together by microgravity and loose cohesion, rather than a solid rock.
Photo credit: Sara ThaxtonPhoto Credit: Sara Thaxton
Bennu, named for the ancient Egyptian phoenix, was the chosen destination of OSIRIS-REx, NASA’s premier mission of asteroid exploration, launched in 2016. In 2020 the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully landed on the surface of Bennu and collected pristine asteroid material for delivery to Earth in September 2023.
Like a map of the planet Earth, the asteroid Bennu is depicted here in stunning high resolution. Author Carina A. Bennett explains how it took around 2,500 individual images to create this massive picture.
Bennett explains how the OSIRIS-REx team selected a location to collect a sample from the asteroid.
Below, members of the Press admire commemorative posters designed by Heather Roper, celebrating milestones of the OSIRIS-REx mission.
Our staff was also delighted to find not one, but two Guinness World Record certificates hanging in the halls of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory offices!
And finally, the tour concluded with a visit to the basement where we saw some extremely powerful microscopes. This equipment is stored below ground level to avoid vibrations, which is of utmost importance when analyzing images as small as 100 nanometers—far, far smaller than the width of a human hair.
Images of very tiny asteroid sampleOur staff in the LPL basementA very powerful microscope that cuts material with an ion beamThe microscope operator shows where the sample is mountedCan you spot the sample? It’s a tiny speck, just to the right of the prong second from the left.
Thanks for coming along with us on this virtual version of the tour! If all of these pictures have inspired you with a sense of wonder about the mysteries of the cosmos, check out our incredible list of space science books!
Your publisher has years of expertise in publicizing your book to targeted audiences, whether they are scholars or general readers. But your publisher values your expertise too! Authors are their own best publicists. You know more about your book, your research, your process, and your readers than anyone else. In our second installment of the “Author Toolbox” series, we offer a behind the scenes look at how the University of Arizona Press tells the world about your book, and the author’s role in publicity.
Author Questionnaire
Preparing for publication begins long before your book even goes to the printer. The University of Arizona Press, and most other publishers, provide an Author Questionnaire for you to fill out to help provide feedback to the Press’s marketing department. At our Press, this is part of our final manuscript submission process. We ask authors to help us identify key review outlets books for review and press releases. It is very important that authors answer these questions. If you know an editor at a specific journal or publication, let us know so we may contact that person directly. In addition, provide information so that we may notify your institution as well as your alma mater so the book can be publicized through the alumni magazine or online channels.
Author Self-Promotion
Some authors enjoy talking about themselves, their research, and writing; others do not. Maybe you fall somewhere in the middle. Fear not! There are easy ways to market your book through venues you use every day. First, include your book in your email signature, “Author of [book title here], forthcoming [publication date] from the University of Arizona Press.” As soon as your book is listed in our catalog and on our website, you can link to the book’s webpage from your email signature line. Second, update your bio online—on your personal website, on your institution’s website—to include the title of your book and publication date. Third, if you write articles for newspapers or magazines, make sure the title of your book is in your author bio and link if possible. For example, author Tom Zoellner wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times, and linked his book Rim to River in his bio at the end (see screenshot below).
Book Launch
Your colleagues, friends, and family want to celebrate with you, so plan a book launch! There are many places to hold a book launch party: your academic department, your local bookstore, your backyard, your favorite cafe or brewpub. Send invitations far and wide. If your event is open to the public, create a flyer to post around campus and around town. Post your book launch in online campus and community calendars. Choose a place that fits the tone of your book and your personality. Refreshments create a festive atmosphere, and maybe you want to add music—create your own playlist, hire musicians or a DJ. Photos below are from Alma García’s All That Rises book launch for her debut novel at Secret Garden Books in Seattle.
At the event, schedule a time to read from your book and tell people why the topic of your book is important, or what first inspired you to write it. Make sure there are books available for sale and a place for you to sign books. You may order books using your author discount, and sell directly to people at your launch. Ask your academic department for support in organizing, or ask your friends and family to help out. People want to share in your success, so bring them along for the ride.
Keep the Momentum Going
Before your book is published, ask your colleagues at other universities if they would like to host you as a campus speaker. Perhaps they can fund your travel to their university, or perhaps it is a place that is a simple train ride or car drive from where you live. The more places you speak about your book, the more it is advertised on flyers, email lists, and local newspapers. Keep your book title on the digital and traditional media airwaves by organizing events in the months after your book is published.
Social Media
Book publicity starts long before your book’s publication date. As you prepare your manuscript and as you move through the copy-editing process, you can share the process on social media. Use the social media platform where you already have a presence and where you already connect with family, friends, and colleagues. There is no need to start another social media account. Give people updates on your writing and make them feel part of your progress: “Happily writing draft of chapter 4 of my book,” “Great news! Just finished writing the conclusion of my book,” “This week, I’m excited to work with the copyeditor to fine-tune my book,” or “Summer is here and I have time to finish my book edits.” Include the title of your book, and the specific names of chapters. Be sure to include images: a view of your workspace, a view out your window, a picture of your feline or canine assistant, photos of places or people from when you researched your book, or images from your book. As soon as your cover is finalized, you can post a “cover reveal.” Check out the cover reveal example below from Diego Báez on his Instagram for his book, Yaguareté White. This format is simple and works for any other social media with image and text.
When you receive your advance copies of the book, create an “unboxing” social media post or post a picture of yourself proudly holding your book in your hands. If you want to make a video, check out tools like Canva or Adobe Express that are user friendly and have free versions. Be creative and have fun! If you remind people once a month or so that you’re writing a book, it increases the likelihood that they will purchase your book on publication day.
Links to Current Events and Special Months
The University of Arizona Press will promote your book during the special months to which it relates. For example, we will promote our new Chicano/a/x books during National Hispanic Heritage Month, September 15-October 15, 2024. We promote books during Women’s History Month, Black History Month, and other months too. Perhaps your book deals with issues along the U.S.-Mexico Border, and border issues are often in the news. You can pitch an opinion piece to your local or even a national newspaper like the New York Times or Washington Post. For example, Mehnaaz Momen, author of Listening to Laredo, wrote an opinion piece for the L.A. Times (see screenshot below). Be sure to include the title of your book in your bio.
The University of Arizona Press Website and Social Media
As you schedule events, be sure to let us know. For every event that is open to the public, we will create an event post, and share it via our social media channels. Let us know your social media handles so we can tag you in our posts. We also share some events in our monthly newsletter that reaches about 4,000 people.
We are teammates in the marathon of promoting your book. Just as you provide the names of journals or mainstream media where your book should be reviewed to the publicity team at the University of Arizona Press, we will support your promotion efforts to celebrate your book on publication day and in the months following publication.
We’re excited to be kicking off a new series called “Author Toolbox,” a collection of insider tips and tricks for both aspiring and established authors. Through this series, we hope to demystify parts of the university press world and share lessons learned from our work with the incredible authors who form the foundation of the University of Arizona Press.
First up in this series are some suggestions to help authors optimize their limited time at a professional conference. Read on, and then go pitch that book!
Why attend conferences?
Conferences are a way to stay up-to-date on academic trends, and they provide dedicated time for networking and collaboration. Conferences are also an essential moment to connect with publishers and fellow authors. That goes for both seasoned academics who have published extensively in their discipline and first-time authors promoting a new book that may be an important step toward academic advancement.
For many of our authors, conferences are also a valuable chance to promote a new or forthcoming book. Depending on a book’s publication date, authors will sometimes bring promotional fliers with a discount code so that anyone interested can pre-order the book, or they will work with their publisher to arrange book signings. In the photo below, for example, you can see University of Arizona Press authors signing books for admiring fans—and sometimes, signing books for other authors!
Authors Rita Urquijo-Ruiz and Yvette J. Saavedra signing books for each other at the 2024 National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies conference in San Francisco.
Navigating the exhibit hall
As Rebecca Knight writes, “Conferences are exhausting, and can be especially so if you’re not an extrovert.” This is true nowhere more than conference exhibit halls. But before you skip your visit, remember that some of the most important networking happens here: the exhibit hall is the “public square” of the conference, part social gathering, part workday meeting. The mood is casual and people are ready to chat, unencumbered by the usual demands of the office and classroom.
Inside the Kansas City Convention Center, attendees gather on their way up to the AWP bookfair.
Before you commit to visiting every booth, it’s worth taking a moment to find the exhibit hall map and prioritize which publishers you want to meet. You can also usually find a list of exhibitors in the conference program. Doing some reconnaissance in advance will save you precious time and energy. Which leads us to the next point…
Know your potential publisher
Being familiar with a university press’s publishing program before you talk to editors can be a big advantage. For example, we always appreciate when fiction and poetry authors who visit our booth at the annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference are already familiar with our Camino del Sol and Sun Tracks series, highlighting Latinx and Indigenous literature, respectively. An author who is familiar with some of our titles in either series will probably have a decent idea about whether their work is a good fit for our Press.
Before a conference, check prospective publishers’ websites and take a quick glance at their current catalog or recently published titles in your field. Do you recognize any of the authors’ names? Do you like the design of the covers? Do you notice any bestsellers or books people in your network are talking about on social media? If the answer to any of these is yes, it may be a sign that you’re on the right track.
Talking with exhibitors and pitching your book
Once you stop at a publisher’s booth and strike up a conversation, it’s wise to take a moment to do proper introductions before launching into a book pitch. A good exhibit interaction might follow these steps: explain your academic role and affiliation, ask what the person you’re talking to does at the press (acquiring? marketing? editing? production?), and then ask if an acquiring editor has time to hear about a book project that might be a good fit for their list.
Don’t feel weird about asking to talk with an editor—it’s a big part of the reason they’re attending! Acquiring editors typically use conferences to find (and compete for) the most compelling new books in their fields. They want to know about your project! But set reasonable expectations: editors have packed schedules and won’t have time to read a whole chapter from your manuscript (this is where having a good two-minute pitch ready comes in handy), and you’re not going to leave with a contract in hand. If an editor is truly interested, they may ask to exchange information, to meet again later during the conference, or to receive a draft of your project proposal. You might just get a link to their website or a business card. If your project isn’t a great fit, they might politely redirect you to another publisher at a booth nearby.
Find the University of Arizona Press at an upcoming conference
Keep an eye on our events page to see the most updated list of conferences we plan to attend each year!
Do you have some conference wisdom you’d like to share? Things you wish you’d known when you first started attending the conferences of your professional organizations? Whether it’s at WHA, ASA, AAA, or WLA 2024 right here in Tucson, we hope you’ll stop by our table and tell us about it. And if you have a book project in the works, we’d love to hear about it!
For Authors
The University of Arizona Press publishes the work of leading scholars from around the globe. Learn more about submitting a proposal, preparing your final manuscript, and publication.
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