Today’s a big news day for the University of Nebraska Press! Let’s cut right to the chase.

Sleep in Me by Jon Pineda has been selected as a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection for the holiday season. Sleep in Me, which will be published in September, is Jon’s very beautiful and very moving memoir, which is part coming-of-age story, part remembrance of his big sister, Rica, who was severely disabled in a car accident when she was a teenager.  Intrigued? Read an excerpt online. And look for displays of this book and the other Discover selections this holiday season in B&N stores.

The winners of the 2010 Prairie Schooner prizes for both fiction and poetry have been announced. Greg Hrbek is the winner in the fiction category for his manuscript, "Destroy All Monsters," and James Crews has won the poetry prize for his manuscript, "The Book of What Stays.” Hrbek and Crews will each receive a $3,000 prize, and both manuscripts will be published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2011. A big congratulations to both Hrbek and Crews on behalf of UNP.

And finally, it’s always a good day when The Washington Post refers to one of our books as a classic. The classic in question is J. Glenn Gray’s The Warriors, which was originally published in 1959, and reissued in a Bison Books edition in 1998. The Warriors is Gray’s account of his experiences in World War II (he was drafted on the same day he was informed of his doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University), as well as a philosophical meditation on what warfare does to us and an examination of the reasons soldiers act as they do. Gray explains the attractions of battle—the adrenaline rush, the esprit de corps—and analyzes the many rationalizations made by combat troops to justify their actions. Fascinating.