University of Nebraska Press

Friday round up

This Sunday at the 84th Academy Awards, Omaha’s very own Alexander Payne is nominated for Best Picture, Directing and Writing (adapted screenplay) for his movie, The Descendents.

On a local level, Payne is the narrator of a video about the new book Drawn to Fashion by Mary Mitchell. The video is showing at the Durham Museum in Omaha in conjunction with an exhibit of Mitchell's fashion illustrations.

And earlier this week, UNP author Matthew Gavin Frank was interviewed via email by John Warner from Inside Higher Ed about his new book Pot Farm.

Warner called Pot Farm a ”…simultaneously beautiful, dark and life-affirming story.”

Click here to read Frank’s personal views of what Pot Farm is all about.

Last Sunday, Cincinnati's NPR affiliated featured an interview with Eric Goodman about his new book, Twelfth and Race.  Listen here.

And next Thursday, the poem “Looking Back” from James Crews’ The Book of What Stays will be featured on Poetry Daily.

LJS gives rave reviews of two fall titles

Dan O’Brien's work of fiction, Stolen Horses is about pleasant McDermot, Nebraska and how the cattle town came to be a place of quiet, beautiful refuge to those looking for a place to relax. This of course was the case until a local journalist uncovers a medical scandal epitomizing the problems facing the divided community, between the local inhabitants and the new comers looking to settle in.

Francis Moul from the Lincoln Journal Star called Stolen Horses a “beautiful, complex, rich tale that draws the reader into the disparate lives of characters that grip our attention.” Read the full review

 

Enrique Martínez Celaya: Collected Writings and Interviews, 1990-2010 is a collection, spanning two decades of artistic activity, featuring selections of writings tracing the intellectual influences and development of one of the more formidable and productive minds in the contemporary art world. He writings include public lectures; essays; interviews; correspondence with artists, critics, and scholars; artist statements; blog posts; and journal entries. The book also contains seventy-nine photographs from Enrique Martínez Celaya's collection.

L. Kent Walgmott calls Enrique Martínez Celaya “the most philosophic artist I've encountered.” Read the full review

ORLAN discussion and exhibit at the Sheldon Museum

Fabulous Harlequin: ORLAN and the Patchwork Self, which was published by University of Nebraska Press earlier this year, features the life and artwork of internationally renowned French artist ORLAN who is most famous for her series of cosmetic-surgery performances in the 1990s in which she reconfigured her face and body as a critique of the standards of beauty imposed on women. The book is full of photographs from her career from her Harlequin hybrid figures who sit in chairs, displaying a collection of hybridized garments and her transforming sugeries.   
 
For those of you who are in the Lincoln area, ORLAN will be having a "round chair discussion" about her life and artwork in the Sheldon Museum. Her artwork will be displayed in the Sheldon until Jan. 30, 2011. The display is called ORLAN: The Harlequin Coat. To read more about ORLAN and her recent installement at the Sheldon Museum click here.

UNP author on panel and open house invite

For three days and nights reading, writing and books were celebrated in Missoula at the Montana Festival of the Book. The festival featured writers from across the region in a variety of readings, panels, exhibits and signings.

One of the panels had five history writers, including UNP author Sue Resnick, who dived into a plethora of Western topics including Irish in the American West to the Smith Mine disaster, which was the topic of Resnick’s book, Goodbye Wifes and Daughters. To read more about the panel discussion click here.

 

 

For those readers who are in Nebraska, UNP author Michael Forsberg is having an open house and book signing this evening from 6-9 p.m. at 100 N. 8th St. in Lincoln. Forsberg’s book, On Ancient Wings, features Sandhill cranes from across North America with 153 stunning color photographs. So come to his open house tomorrow to support a great local author!

UNP author featured and sales annoucement

Recently Rhonda Garelick, one of the authors of Fabulous Harlequin: ORLAN and the Patchwork Self published in October, was featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s arts blog. Garelick came to Nebraska in 2008 and started the Interdisciplinary Arts Symposium which is a series of programs and lectures on the theme “Race, American History, and Performance.” This year she has raised over $130,000 for events.

On November 2, the French performance and visual artist Orlan discussed her exhibit at the university’s Sheldon Museum of Art, where Garelick’s husband and co-author of Fabulous Harlequin, J. Daniel Veneciano, is director. To read more about  Garelick’s history and plans for the future click here.

 

In University of Nebraska Press Sales news, there are two book sales through November. Save 25 percent on a selection of World War I and Mexican History books including No Man’s Land: 1918, The Last Year of the Great War by John Tolandt. Toland tells the story of the final year of the war with participants on both sides, from enlisted men to generals and prime ministers to monarchs; vividly recount the battles, sensational events, and behind-the-scenes strategies that shaped the climactic, terrifying year. There are also 99 pictures and 10 maps included.

 

Also on sale is Mexico, la patria by Monica A. Rankin, which discusses propaganda and production during World War II. Rankin examines the pervasive domestic and foreign propaganda strategies in Mexico and their impact on Mexican culture, charting the evolution of these campaigns through popular culture, advertisements, art, and government publications throughout the war and beyond.

You can find these books and more on sale on UNP’s web site. Don’t forget the discount codes when you make your purchases. The codes are listed on the web page.

Off the Shelf: The Exquisite Corpse edited by Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren, Davis Schneiderman, and Tom Denlinger

Read from the Foreword of The Exquisite Corpse: Chance and Collaboration in Surrealism's Parlor Gameedited by Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren, Davis Schneiderman, and Tom Denlinger:

 

"I. Fold, crease, filter

 

Database aesthetics, collaborative filtering, musical riddles, and beat sequence philosophies don’t exactly spring to mind when you think of the concept of the Exquisite Corpse. But if there’s one thing that I want to you to think about when you read this anthology, it’s that collage-based art—whether sound, film, multimedia, or computer code—has become the basic reference frame for most of generation info. We live in a world of relentlessly expanding networks—cellular, wireless, fiber optic routed . . . you name it. This world is becoming more interconnected than ever before, and it’s going to get deeper, weirder, and a lot more interesting than even the data-stream-driven moment of this writing (NYC, at the beginning of the twenty-first century).

Judging books by their covers

As I was perusing some book blogs this morning, I stumbled across this essay on The Millions about the process (and the mystery) of designing a book jacket. First-time novelist Sonya Chung writes that when it came time to offer input on the cover of her book, she didn’t know what to say other than that she didn’t want the cover to be too literal or to be a montage of fans, cranes, cherry blossoms and other stereotypical images associated with Asian culture. She loved image the book jacket designer sent to her – a woman taking a photograph of the horizon – but her friends had mixed reactions to it. In the post, she wonders how the cover of a book draws potential readers in, and whether it matters if the tone of the cover conveys accurately to readers the tone of the story inside.

Reading this blog reminded me of a conversation I had yesterday with one of the University of Nebraska Press’s authors. Bart Paul is the author of the forthcoming Double-Edged Sword, which is a biography of the gay American matador (and, for a time, close friend of Ernest Hemingway) Sidney Franklin. The cover of the book is a portrait of Sidney Franklin (complete with cape and bull) by painter Luis Quintanilla, who was also a friend of Hemingway. The portrait no longer exists: according to a Web site maintained by Quintanilla’s son, the artist was never satisfied with it and eventually cut the portrait in half and reused the canvas. But the painting was published in Town & Country Magazine in 1940, so it was not completely lost. And the forthcoming Franklin biography (to be published by the University of Nebraska Press in December) will prominently feature the painting on its cover – perhaps shedding a little bit of light on this nearly forgotten artist, as well as on his one-time subject.

A whole lotta NYT; also a whole lotta quilts

I begin today’s blog post with Google news: You may have heard about Google Book Search, which basically provides scans of books online for free, and the full text of certain books and collections for a fee. Some authors feel this violates copyright laws, and filed a class action suit against Google in 2005. And today, the Justice Department granted those authors opposed to Google Book Search a four-month extension to decide whether to opt out of Google Books Search, which some say means the Justice Department is taking the authors’ concerns seriously. New York Times story is here, and some background information on the issue, also from the NYT is here.

In semi-related news, the Internet (including, presumably, Google), has allowed two authors to turn their vacation cottage in Ireland to their full-time home/office (oh to be so lucky). Story, again, from the New York Times, is here.

And in University of Nebraska Press news, yesterday marked the official publication date of our book Quilts in the Modern Age: 1870-1940. This book is two things: a comprehensive history and analysis of American quilts from that era, and also a very beautiful picture book of many quilts that defined the era (some of which are located right here in Lincoln, at the International Quilt Study Center & Museum, with whom we collaborated on this book). An exhibition of these quilts is coming up, so stay tuned for details. But in the meantime, you can view a few sample photos here.

The Most Beautiful Man in the World

Today’s Lincoln Journal Star features a story about Paul Swan, a dancer known for as much for his physical beauty as for his talent. Swan was also the subject of a 2006 biography, The Most Beautiful Man in the World: Paul Swan, from Wilde to Warhol, written by Janis and Richard Londraville and published by the University of Nebraska Press.

In addition to being a dancer, Swan was a gifted artist who painted portraits of Willa Cather, Charles Lindbergh and Benito Mussolini, among others. In 1922, he painted a portrait of a woman believed to have been his lover. But the painting disappeared … until now. Want to know more? Click here to read the story.

This Week in History: November 17-21, 2008

Hey readers, Thanksgiving is officially a week and a day away- hopefully your holiday plans are coming along! This week we have a plethora of topics, including communism, Mark Twain, and Vietnam… think we’re covered? Then go ahead and join me reader!

November 17, 1865: The U. S. Screen Actors Guild implements an anticommunist loyalty oath.

In Radio’s Revolution: Don Hollenbeck's CBS Views the Press edited by Loren Ghiglione, we see how much of this period was devoted to anti-communist agenda, and how even the media was not exempt from the frenzy.

November 18, 1865: Mark Twain publishes his story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” in The New York Saturday Press.

Is there anyone more classic, more American than Mark Twain? You can find out for yourself by taking a look at Tales of Wonder, by this revered author.

November 19, 1998: Vincent van Gogh’s Portrait of the Artist without Beard sells for 71.5 Million at an auction.

Ralph Blakelock was brilliant, institutionalized, and self taught. He was exactly the kind of artist Van Gogh could appreciate. You can find out more about him in Beyond Madness: The Art of Ralph Blakelock  1847-1919 by Norman A. Geske.

November 20, 1969: The Cleveland Plain Dealer publishes explicit pictures of dead villagers from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

Photography has always been a powerful medium. Whether it be Vietnamese photographs or pictures of the open prairie, as in The Wide Open: Prose, Poetry, and Photographs of the Prairie, edited by Annick Smith and Susan O’Connor.

November 21, 1976: Daniel Whiston, British Ice skater is born today.

Nothing is better than ice skating. Ok, well plenty of people think everything is better than ice skating, but I just love it. In fact, I am kind of a big fan of winter in general. If you like the cold, I mean the really, really cold, then check out The Entire Earth and Sky: Views on Antarctica by Leslie Carol Roberts.

Ok readers, I hope we kept you entertained today. Be sure to check out all these titles, and more, at the University of Nebraska Press website. You can also join us next Tuesday for a little trivia. Have a great weekend!