LSU Press publishes the works of a host of talented scholars and poets. Each month, we take a moment to recognize the impact these authors and their works are having on communities nearby and around the world.
Trade
Brenda Marie Osbey, author of the poetry collections All Saints and All Souls, serves as the focus of the latest issue of Furious Flower Poetry Center’s literary journal, The Fight and the Fiddle. “From the moment I sat down on a dusty stack of cardboard boxes and began to read [All Saints],” writes Deborah E. McDowell, “I knew that I had stumbled upon a jewel of a book and a jewel of a poet.” Read more about Osbey and her poetry in this special issue here.
Cape Cod Times recently recommended Brendan Galvin’s breathtaking collection Partway to Geophany as part of its Ideas for Winter Reading by Local Authors. Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll asserts that Galvin’s poetry “reflects on the implied question of ‘What is humanity’s place in the natural world?’” making it excellent reading for our time. See more here.
Need an excellent resource for sustaining your garden and exploring the past through seed saving? Horticulturist Heather Kirk-Ballard recommends John Coykendall and Christina Melton’s book Preserving Our Roots: My Journey to Save Seeds and Stories. Read Kirk-Ballard’s full article, written in honor of National Seed Swap Day, here.
Poetry editor Chard deNiord chose Elizabeth A. I. Powell’s newest poetry collection, Atomizer, for Plume’s Favorite Books of 2020. “In poem after poem,” writes deNiord, “Powell displays scintillating erudition, leaping from such subjects as cinema verité to Shulammite to the old Yankee Stadium to exotic perfumes to animal husbandry, and these are just a smattering of the topics that emanate from her atomizer.” See the full curated list of books here.
Irish website Breaking News included A Confederacy of Dunces (along with cherished classics such as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Emma) in its recent list of witty novels that will make you laugh “until your sides hurt.” Writer Prudence Wade says of John Kennedy’s Toole’s book, “There truly is nothing like it.” See the full list of hilarious titles here.
Scholarly
In a talk hosted by the United States National Archives, Benjamin R. Justesen discussed his latest book, Forgotten Legacy: William McKinley, George Henry White, and the Struggle for Black Equality, and the previously untold story of President McKinley’s relationships with African American leaders such as George Henry White. Watch his full presentation here.
Editor Niels Eichhorn interviewed Michael J. Turner, author of Stonewall Jackson, Beresford Hope, and the Meaning of the American Civil War in Britain, as part of an ongoing series featured by H-Net Reviews. Read part one of this engaging discussion, in which Turner talks craft, research, and the importance of continued scholarship on the American Civil War, here (and keep an eye out for part two).
In Belles and Poets: Intertextuality in the Civil War Diaries of White Southern Women, Julia Nitz explores the diaries of eight Civil War–era white southern women, unpacking how they used plays, novels, and even poetry to explore Confederate politics, racism, contemporary gender roles, and more. In this interview for the Southern Review of Books, journalist Amy R. Martin dives even deeper into Nitz’s central tenet: “Because literature is shared, its invocation allowed women, often at home, to join public—even transatlantic—conversations about the nature and role of women and about the morality of slavery.”
Civil War Monitor published a rousing review of Ben Wright’s new book, Bonds of Salvation: How Christianity Inspired and Limited American Abolitionism. Writer Caleb W. Southern says, “More than any other recent historian, Ben Wright has convincingly demonstrated the importance of denominations to the lives of early Americans and the nation as a whole. . . . Future historians will not be able to write about American Christianity, abolitionism, or secession without incorporating Wright’s scholarship.” Read the full review here.
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