A few months ago my four-year-old daughter and I drove to another state to visit my dearest friend, Charlotte. I was in the middle of a busy week at a writers’ conference, and Charlotte, flying in from the South, was … Continue reading From the desk of Erin Flanagan
Domesticated Wild Things by Xhenet Aliu Reviewed in Booklist “Aliu’s debut collection, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, looks at a variety of characters living on the outskirts as they wrestle with their circumstances or impulses.” -Leah … Continue reading Review roundup
I recently had the great fortune to spend a couple of days in the company of Alan Day and Lynn Wiese, co-authors of the forthcoming UNP book The Horse Lover: A Cowboy’s Quest to Save the Wild Mustangs. We met outside of Valentine, Nebraska, a small community in the north-central part of the state, mainly because it is the closest population center to Alan’s old ranch, Mustang Meadows, which sits just across the South Dakota border from Valentine. Alan hasn’t ranched Mustang Meadows since 2003, when he closed the door on a rehabilitation program for wild mustangs. The 35,000-acre ranch at … Continue reading Doc Martyn’s Soul: The Author-Marketing Relationship
Because of the one minute ’N Sync reunion at the VMAs, new Backstreet Boys tour, and listening to NOW 5 on the way to work, I wanted to share my top ten favorite books from my childhood. This list of mine spans from Scholastic Book Fairs in elementary school (remember those!?) to the beginning of middle school. In no particular order: Clifford the Big Red Dog by Norman Bridwell – How could I not love this huge dog? Plus, I was so jealous Emily Elizabeth. Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss – A Classic. Now often found in the … Continue reading The Marketeers Club: Top 10 Books from My Childhood
This season’s Director’s “Dish” might in fact be a pie plate . . . I never thought I’d come to know as many people who grew up on farms as I now do. Until moving to Lincoln almost five years ago, I’m pretty sure I had known no more than one or two people with farming backgrounds. But Nebraska—like so many midwestern and great plains states—was built on farming. As Evelyn Funda points out so beautifully in her wonderful memoir/cultural history book Weeds, due out this month from the Press, 90 percent of Americans worked on family farms in the … Continue reading The Director’s Dish
Weeds: A Farm Daughter’s Lament by Evelyn I. Funda in Booklist “While patiently recounting the deep immigrant roots that permeate her personal history, Funda has crafted an intensely American story. She channels Willa Cather when writing of her mother, who … Continue reading Review roundup
Chiricahua and Janos by Lance R. Blyth in eScholarship “Chiricahua and Janos supplies the kind of closely presented evidence that is necessary to critique, develop, revise, emend, and amend theoretical accounts of frontier change and social evolution.” -Thomas D. Hall … Continue reading Review roundup
Last week I took a step into
modernity and issued my first personal tweet.
I’ve
used the descriptor because there is an important clarification to be made
between my relatively early-adopter use of Twitter and my newly acquired status
on the social media platform.
I jumped on the Twitter bandwagon
in early 2008 through my previous job. All tweets crafted were the opinions of
that company rather than mine alone. In other words, I acted purely as the
mouthpiece on Twitter of that company, penning tweets that promoted the good
work being done. I had never, until this week, acted on Twitter as my own
agent. So, why now? Since moving to the University of Nebraska Press I have
been toying with the idea that I should really have my own voice, albeit one
intimately tied to what I do as marketing manager for the Press, on this
fascinating platform. Now, I’ve finally taken the plunge.
The delay between first tweeting
for work and finally tweeting as an individual is an oddity in some ways. I
don’t have a good reason other than I simply didn’t do it. And yet, I believe
that Twitter is a powerful tool for learning about any subject in which you
have an interest or a stake. Twitter, perhaps more than other social media,
allows for more immediate sharing, browsing of ideas and thoughts from others
in your industry, and creation of conversations that may or may not continue in
other environments. It seems to me that businesses and organizations can use
Twitter in a very natural way. The network serves as the old town crier did,
letting the world (or those interested, at least) know what the organization is
thinking and doing. Such groups have become much more savvy about how they do
this on Twitter, moving away from selling to informing and conversing, and I
think we have all benefited as a result.
Have you ever wanted a book so much that you'll do whatever you can to get it? Spend over two hundred dollars? Call every used bookstore within a fifty-mile radius? Shop on eBay until you drop? I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t gotten overly excited when my mom gave me her first edition of the Twilight series (no judging, please) or when I received a beautiful special edition of the Brontës sisters’ collected works for Christmas. But I’ve never spent more than forty dollars on a book that I really wanted. Like most people in my position (happily … Continue reading The Marketeers Club: Quest for the first edition
In honor of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, save 25% off select books, like the JPS guide by Ronald L. Eisenberg, Jewish Traditions. See a full list of discounted book here. Offer expires August 30, 2013 Continue reading Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur book sale
