April 2012

Guest blog: Michigan Notable Book Award winner Sara Fitzgerald celebrates “the magic of libraries”

by Emily April 27, 2012

Tomorrow evening the Library of Michigan will host the “Night for Notables,” an event honoring the authors of this year’s Michigan Notable Books. Here, Sara Fitzgerald, author of Elly Peterson: “Mother” of the Moderates, a Michigan Notable Book of 2012, reflects on the value of libraries. This week, I’m preparing to head back to Michigan for the Library of Michigan’s Night for Notables, recognizing the authors of the 20 books that were recognized as Michigan Notable Books of 2012. Through the Library of Michigan Foundation, support is also provided for the authors to make appearances at libraries around the state. [...]

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Pascoe ponders the index in the Chronicle of Higher Education

by Shaun Manning April 26, 2012

Judith Pascoe, author of The Sarah Siddons Audio Files, dedicated a recent column in The Chronicle of Higher Education to the sometimes vexing subject of indexing, in particular the question of whether authors should index their own books or hire a professional. “I had plenty of time to ponder the unsung heroism of indexers when I was finishing my latest book,” Pascoe writes. “I was overcome with thoughts of doom that Nancy Mulvany, author of Indexing Books, attributes to two factors that plague self-indexing authors: general fatigue and too much self-involvement. ‘Intense involvement with one’s book,’ Mulvany writes, ‘can make it very difficult [...]

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Judith Pascoe awarded Guggenheim Fellowship

by Shaun Manning April 17, 2012

Judith Pascoe, author of The Sarah Siddons Audio Files: Romanticism and the Lost Voice, has been awarded a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to support her current research on “Wuthering Heights in Japan.” Guggenheim Fellows are selected in the midst of an already-exceptional career in an effort to promote further important and promising research in their fields. Dr. Pascoe was selected as a Guggenheim Fellow in the the Creative Arts – General Nonfiction category, and her research topic emerged as a result of a recent tenure as a Fulbright Lecturer in Japan. For more information on the research [...]

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‘Illuminating Childhood’ author Ellen Handler Spitz discusses Indian children’s literature in The New Republic

by Shaun Manning April 16, 2012

Ellen Handler Spitz, whose Illuminating Childhood: Portraits in Fiction, Film, and Drama is now available in paperback, dedicated her latest column in the New Republic to reflecting on some of the best authors of children’s literature in India. At a recent conference at Ravenshaw University, Cuttick, in the Odisha province, Spitz discovered Raja Mohanty’s exquisitely-produced The Enigma of Karma, a hand-crafted and lavishly illustrated volume of about 2o pages telling the story of Ramu and Shyamu , brothers whose actions inadvertently change their fates. Spitz also praised Deepa Agarwal’s latest collection, Folk Tales of Uttarakhand. Agarwal and Mohanty, she said, represent a pushing back [...]

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The Press congratulates Peter Jeffreys, winner of the 2011 State Literary Translation Award from the Greek Ministry of Culture

by Emily April 4, 2012

Peter Jeffreys has earned a major translation award from the Greek Ministry of Culture for Selected Prose Works (2010), a collection of prose pieces by acclaimed poet C. P. Cavafy published by the University of Michigan Press. While Cavafy’s poems have been widely translated, prior to the publication of Selected Prose Works very few of his prose pieces had been printed. In fact, of the forty pieces Jeffreys includes in the book, only thirteen had previously appeared in print, and only a handful of those had ever appeared in English. Comprised of essays, “prose poems,” short stories, self-assessments, and considerations [...]

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