July marked a significant transition at the Press with the retirement of former director, MaryKatherine Callaway. As we surge into a new, exciting era of scholarly publishing at LSU, we wanted to share some recent news and publicity!
Julie M. Thomas is celebrating the release of her children’s book Poncho’s Rescue with an amazing lineup of events in LSU community next week. As many of our readers know, in 2016, a devastating flood displaced tens of thousands of people and animals in and around Louisiana’s capital city. An estimated seven trillion gallons of water inundated the parishes surrounding Baton Rouge—three times more rainfall than during Hurricane Katrina—causing catastrophic damage to nearly 150,000 homes. Yet amid this unprecedented and chaotic event, volunteers banded together to help ensure the safety of countless people and animals. The inspiring true story of Poncho the baby bull’s rescue celebrates the bravery and kindness typical of these volunteers. You can hear more about this story by tuning in to The Jim Engster Show on WRKF 89.3 FM this Monday, August 6th at 9:30 a.m. or by attending one of Thomas’ events next week:
- August 9: Barnes & Noble Perkins Rowe, 6 p.m. (Baton Rouge)
- August 10: The Conundrum, 4 p.m. (St. Francisville)
- August 11: Cavalier House Books, 2 p.m. (Denham Springs)
In other news, Matthew Thorburn’s Dear Almost won the 2017 Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry; Gordon Rhea’s On to Petersburg is a finalist for the Emerging Civil War Book Award; and Nicole Cooley’s Girl After Girl After Girl won the 2018 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Established Poetry! Inman Majors spoke about his new book Penelope Lemon: Game On! on the With Good Reason Podcast episode on summer reading. And on the LSU Press Blog, Hugh Dubrulle discussed British attitudes toward the American Civil War and Elizabeth Holmes wrote about the process of crafting poetry out of historical research.
Below you’ll find a list of our August titles, additional upcoming events with our authors, and some recent publicity and reviews of our books. If you want to keep up with the press in real time, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook!
New in August
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Selected Publicity and Praise
Claude Before Time and Space by Claudia Emerson
“In this elegant, posthumously published disquisition on the relationship between speech and silence, Emerson allows all that is left unsaid to complicate her skillful renderings of grief, mortality, and transcendence.”—Publishers Weekly
Freedom’s Dance:Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs in New Orleans by Eric Waters and Karen Celestan
“After finishing the book you will have a sense that you could show up at a Second Line and recognize some of the people involved. In a couple of cases, that might even be true. . . . If you plan on attending a real Second Line this book will prepare you for a more meaningful experience.”—Syncopated Times
“Hood’s Texas Brigade, the newest addition to LSU Press’s outstanding ‘Conflicting Worlds’ series, is not a conventional unit history of battles and leaders, strategy and tactics. It is a meticulously researched analysis of the social history of communities at war, focused on the motivations of soldiers and their families and their dedication to the cause of Southern independence.”—Southwestern Historical Quarterly
“There are some hidden figures in history who have been kind of overlooked by civil rights historians, by Southern historians and by library historians. Let’s get them recognized for their contributions to their local communities before more of them die.”—Wayne Wiegand in an interview in APLSeeds, a publication of the Alabama State Library system
Reading Walker Percy’s Novels by Jessica Hooten Wilson
“In presentations of each novel, she also artfully places Percy’s novels into conversation with his many essays and lectures, as well as some of the wider influences he drew upon. She makes excellent use of interviews as well that help illuminate Percy’s intentions as a writer.”—The American Conservative