EventsLeave a comment

Two quilt exhibits and two quilt books

univnebpress

Grace Snyder grew up in a sod home in the Nebraska Sandhills, wishing she could grow up to marry a cowboy and make beautiful quilts (she got an early start on quilting, making her first while as a girl when she was keeping an eye on her family’s cattle). She did both, and became such an influential quilter that her creations were featured in exhibitions across the country. Her best-known design, “Flower Basket Petit Point,” modeled after a china pattern, was named one of the top 100 quilts of the 20th century. In 1963, Snyder, with the help of her … Continue reading Two quilt exhibits and two quilt books

EventsLeave a comment

Wine, Twitter and Nebraska

univnebpress

This Thursday brings more wine news (something there’s been a lot of on the University of Nebraska Press blog lately): Robert Camuto, author of Corkscrewed: Adventures in the New French Wine Country,  is featured in a new video on chow.com. This is the first of several chow.com videos in which Robert will discuss French wine. We’re proud of our resident French wine expert. For our Lincoln readers, the founder of Twitter will be on University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus tomorrow. Twitter, for the uninitiated, is sort of the opposite of a book – users post extremely short updates on what they’re … Continue reading Wine, Twitter and Nebraska

Guest blogsLeave a comment

Guest blogger: Kate Flaherty

univnebpress

Frequent University of Nebraska Press blog contributor Kate Flaherty recently read The Blue Tattoo by Margot Mifflin and Searching for Tamsen Donner by Gabrielle Burton. The two books — both invovling journeys west gone awry — are among her favorite UNP titles this season. Read on:

How to Have a Roadtrip Without Leaving the Couch, by Kate Flaherty

My favorite offerings from Nebraska this spring are The Blue Tattoo by Margot Mifflin and Searching for Tamsen Donner by Gabrielle Burton. While both books are different in scope—the first is a biography, the other more of a biography intertwined with memoir—the similarities between them are striking, and not just because they both look at the role of pioneer women in mid-1800s America. I was particularly captivated by how each author dispels myths and misconceptions in order to better understand the complex realities of these women’s lives in the west.

In The Blue Tattoo, Margot Mifflin deftly traces the amazing history of Olive Oatman, who at thirteen was part of an ill-fated Mormon pilgrimage to California when most of her family, including her parents, were massacred by Yavapai Indians in what is now the American southwest. Taken captive by the Yavapai, Olive was then traded to the Mohave who took her in as one of their own. She lived as a Mohave and spoke their language, ultimately assimilating into the tribe so deeply she was given a chin tattoo just like other young Mohave women and, Mifflin believes, freely underwent a sexual initiation as well. When Oatman is finally “rescued” Mifflin shows how after grieving the loss of her first family following the massacre, Oatman must deal with the loss of her second family, as she is taken from the Mohave and thrust overnight back into the white pioneer world.

Continue reading “Guest blogger: Kate Flaherty”

UncategorizedLeave a comment

Holocaust Survivor and UNP author featured in documentary, The Last Survivor

univnebpress

Hédi Fried, author of The Road to Auschwitz: Fragments of a Life will be featured in the forthcoming documentary, The Last Survivor presented by Righteous Pictures. The documentary focuses on genocide awareness, prevention, and survivor advocacy and is working in efforts with the Genocide Prevention Project to promote April as Genocide Prevention month. See a short film that focuses on Hédi and her story of survival. Learn more about Hédi and the documentary in the Huffington Post. Continue reading Holocaust Survivor and UNP author featured in documentary, The Last Survivor

ExcerptsLeave a comment

Off the Shelf: Breathing in the Fullness of Time by William Kloefkorn

univnebpress

Breathing in the Fullness of Time cover image Read from Chapter 1 of Breathing in the Fullness of Time by William Kloefkorn:

"Desire. Without it, you might as well pack up and go home. Fran Welch, Coach Welch, had said this when the season began, then repeated it at frequent but irregular intervals as the season moved along. By now, I had decided I no longer wanted to play college football. So I turned in my gear and went home, but not before Coach Welch gave me an asschewing I'll not live long enough to forget. Before the chewing began, though, he wanted to know why in the name of Christ I was quitting.

Continue reading “Off the Shelf: Breathing in the Fullness of Time by William Kloefkorn”

EventsLeave a comment

National Poetry Month, and Mayor Helen Boosalis in the Lincoln Journal Star

univnebpress

I’m a few days late getting to this, but April is National Poetry Month, and the Internet is celebrating. All sorts of publishers, newspapers and blogs are posting poems and videos of poetry readings online in observance of National Poetry Month. Poets.org, the Web site for the Academy of American Poets, however, is going all out. The Web site is sponsoring a Poem-in-Your-Pocket Day, a poetry caption contest and an email poem-of-the-day message each day of April. More info on these and other activities can be found here. Check back with the UNP blog throughout April for more poetry posts. … Continue reading National Poetry Month, and Mayor Helen Boosalis in the Lincoln Journal Star

EventsLeave a comment

Art, books and queens, all in one place

univnebpress

Good morning, blog readers. This coming Friday is the first Friday of April, which here in Lincoln means that it’s artwalk time. Lincoln’s many art galleries will be open late and will feature new art by local artists, food, drink and in at least one case … books. The Noyes Art Gallery, 119 S. 9th St., together with Indigo Bridge Books, 701 P St., are co-sponsoring the book launch of new University of Nebraska Press title, Queens and Power in Medieval and Early Modern England, edited by Carole Levin and Robert Bucholz. Levin, will read from the book and sign … Continue reading Art, books and queens, all in one place

AwardsLeave a comment

Review of Searching for Tamsen Donner, one award winner, and one nominee

univnebpress

The Buffalo News (in Buffalo NY) recently ran a fantastic review of Searching for Tamsen Donner, by Gabrielle Burton. Here’s an excerpt of what writer R.D. Pohl has to say: The portions of the book that recount the Burton family trek across the Rockies and High Sierras are written with a deft comic touch and the plucky, feminist bravado that made “Heartbreak Hotel” such a crossover hit. What may surprise readers is the author’s intuitive gifts as a researcher and narrative historian. She succeeds where other historians and biographers have failed in uncovering and publishing here all 17 of Donner’s … Continue reading Review of Searching for Tamsen Donner, one award winner, and one nominee

Events, Guest blogsLeave a comment

Christgau on Capitol Hill, and Kokomo Joe events

univnebpress

Kokomo joe A little over a week ago, John Christgau (author of Tricksters in the Madhouse, The Gambler and the Bug Boy, the upcoming Kokomo Joe and others), testified before Congress, and we here at the University of Nebraska Press asked him to write a guest blog about his experience doing so. Here’s what he had to say:

The weekend before last, I testified with others at a hearing in DC before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration.  The issue was H.R. 1425, or the “Wartime Treatment Study Act,” a proposed and long-overdue bill that would establish two fact-finding commissions. The first would study the internments and restrictions imposed by the U.S. government on certain European Americans and European Latin Americans during World War II. The second would study government policies limiting the ability of Jewish refugees to come to the United States before and during the war.  I was asked to testify because my book ENEMIES (which will be republished by Bison Books this September) was the first book on the subject of so-called “enemy aliens” during World War II.  The hearing was a gratifying yet disturbing experience. 

Continue reading “Christgau on Capitol Hill, and Kokomo Joe events”

ExcerptsLeave a comment

Off the Shelf: How to Cook a Tapir: A Memoir of Belize by Joan Fry

univnebpress

How to Cook a Tapir Read from Chapter 1, "Hurricane" from How to Cook a Tapir: A Memoir of Belize by Joan Fry:

"When I had announced my wedding plans to my parents, they were appalled. They disapproved of Aaron's politics. They disapproved of the fact that he, an older man—he was a graduate student—was taking me, a sophomore at the University of Michigan, on a "working honeymoon" for a year in the jungle. Like most people, they had no idea where British Honduras was. Africa? An island off the coast of China? Only my German-born grandfather, who had run away to sea at fourteen, knew it was a tiny Central American country the size of Massachusetts, south of Mexico and east and north of Guatemala. Its entire eastern border faced the Caribbean as though the country were sprawled on its side, facing the azure half-moon of the earth's second-largest barrier reef. Along its spine grew some of Central America's most pristine rainforest. That's where Aaron and I were going—where the Maya lived.

Continue reading “Off the Shelf: How to Cook a Tapir: A Memoir of Belize by Joan Fry”