The University of Arizona Press

Learn about Federico Jiménez Caballero’s remarkable life and work during this online book release celebration and discussion with author Jiménez Caballero and editor Shelby Tisdale.

When: Wednesday, April 7, 2021, 6:30 p.m. Pacific Time

This online event is part of our Spring 2021 Event Series free via Zoom, but registration is required.

From the day he was born, Federico Jiménez Caballero was predicted to be a successful man. So, how exactly did a young boy from Tututepec, Oaxaca, become a famous Indigenous jewelry artist and philanthropist in Los Angeles? Federico: One Man’s Remarkable Journey from Tututepec to L.A., tells the remarkable story of willpower, curiosity, hard work, and passion coming together to change one man’s life forever.

As a child growing up in a small rural town in southern Mexico, Federico Jiménez Caballero faced challenges that most of us cannot imagine, let alone overcome. From a young age, Federico worked tirelessly to contribute to his large family, yet his restless spirit often got him into trouble. Finding himself in the middle of a village-wide catastrophe, he was exiled to a boarding school in Oaxaca City where he was forced to become independent, resilient, and razor-sharp in order to stay afloat. Through his incredible people skills, bravery, and a few nudges from his bold mother, Federico found himself excelling in his studies and climbing the ranks in Oaxaca City. He always held a deep love and respect for his Mixtec Indigenous roots and began to collect Indigenous jewelry and textiles. Through a series of well-timed connections, Federico met his wife Ellen, and, shortly afterward, he came to the United States as a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the late 1960s.

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Gloria Muñoz will read from her new collection, Danzirly, presented by the American Academy of Poets and the University of Arizona Press.

When: Wednesday, April 14, 2021, 6:30 p.m. Mountain Time

Help us celebrate National Poetry Month, and this beautiful new collection!

This free online reading event is part of our Spring 2021 Event Series via Zoom. Registration is required.

Winner of the Ambroggio Prize of the Academy of American Poets, this collection of poems is an unforgettable reckoning of the grief and beauty that pulses through twenty-first-century America.

Danzirly is a striking bilingual poetry collection that fiercely examines the nuances of the American Dream for Latinx people in the United States. With a backdrop of stringent immigration policies, the #MeToo movement, and the increasingly tangible threat of climate change, this collection considers multigenerational Latinx identities in a rapidly changing country and world. Through the author’s Colombian American lens, the poems explore the intersections of culture, gender, history, and intergenerational grief.

To register, please visit here.
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U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo calls The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature “essential to American literature and should be required for anyone studying American, First Nations, or world literature.”

Join the celebration for this ground-breaking anthology in an online event presented by Birchbark Books and Native Arts and the University of Arizona Press with special guests Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez and First Lady Phefelia Nez. Reading in the event are editors Esther G. Belin, Jeff Berglund, Connie A. Jacobs, and Anthony Webster; and contributors Irvin Morris, Blackhorse Mitchell, Sherwin Bitsui, Luci Tapahonso, Laura Tohe, Bojan Louis, Irene Hamilton, Tina Deschenie, Jake Skeets, and Orlando White.

When: Wednesday, April 21, 2021, 6:30- 8:00 pm AZ & Pacific (7:30-9:00 pm Mountain/Navajo Nation)

This online event, part of our Spring 2021 Event Series, is free via zoom, but registration is required.

The Diné Reader developed as a way to demonstrate both the power of Diné literary artistry and the persistence of the Navajo people. The volume opens with a foreword by poet Sherwin Bitsui, who offers insight into the importance of writing to the Navajo people. The editors then introduce the volume by detailing the literary history of the Diné people, establishing the context for the tremendous diversity of the works that follow, which includes free verse, sestinas, limericks, haiku, prose poems, creative nonfiction, mixed genres, and oral traditions reshaped into the written word.

Please register here.

Join our book release celebration and discussion with Paul Minnis on his new book, Famine Foods: Plants We Eat to Survive.

When: Wednesday, May 5, 2021, 4:30 p.m. Pacific Time

This free online book release celebration and discussion is part of our Spring 2021 Event Series via Zoom. Registration is required.

Minnis will be joined by University of Victoria Emeritus Professor, Nancy Turner, an ethnobotanist whose research integrates the fields of botany and ecology with anthropology, geography and linguistics, among others. She is interested in the traditional knowledge systems and traditional land and resource management systems of Indigenous Peoples, particularly in western Canada.

In his new book, ethnobiologist Paul Minnis includes fourteen short case studies that examine the use of alternative foods in human societies throughout the world, from hunter-gatherers to major nations.

When environmental catastrophes, war, corrupt governments, annual hunger seasons, and radical agricultural policies have threatened to starve populations, cultural knowledge and memories of food shortages have been crucial to the survival of millions of people. Famine Foods dives deeply into the cultural contexts of famine food use, showing the curious, strange, and often unpleasant foods people have turned to in order to get by. There is not a single society or area of the world that is immune to severe food shortages, and gaining a deeper knowledge of famine foods will be relevant for the foreseeable future of humanity.

To register, please go here.

Celebrate the launch of The Great Ages of Discovery: How Western Civilization Learned About a Wider World with historian and MacArthur Fellow Stephen J. Pyne, moderated by Kevin J. Fernlund, author of William Henry Holmes and the Rediscovery of the American West.

When: Thursday, February 25, 6:30 p.m. Mountain Time

Join us for an online event as part of our Spring 2021 Book Series via Zoom. Event is free, but registration is required.

In Pyne’s new book, he identifies three great ages of discovery. The first age of discovery ranged from the early 15th to the early 18th century, sketched out the contours of the globe, aligned with the Renaissance, and had for its grandest expression the circumnavigation of the world ocean. The second age launched in the latter half of the 18th century, spanning into the early 20th century, carrying the Enlightenment along with it, pairing especially with settler societies, and had as its prize achievement the crossing of a continent. The third age began after World War II, and, pivoting from Antarctica, pushed into the deep oceans and interplanetary space. Its grand gesture is Voyager’s passage across the solar system. Each age had in common a galvanic rivalry: Spain and Portugal in the first age, Britain and France—followed by others—in the second, and the USSR and USA in the third.

To register, go here.