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We have exciting new giveaways coming to Goodreads! You can win advance reading copies of some of our new fall 2016 books before they're released. From Kirk Haston's Days of Knight to Samieh Hezari's Trapped in Iran, we have a title for everyone. To win one of the 41 copies available, click the links below:
The giveaways end July 15, 2016. All you need to enter the giveaway is a Goodreads account. Don't have one? Sign up for free!
Learn more about all our upcoming fall 2016 books in our latest catalog.
Season of Infamy
A Diary of War and Occupation, 1939-1945
Charles Rist
Translated by Michele McKay Aynesworth
Foreword by Robert O. Paxton
Season of Infamy presents a distinctive, closely-observed view of life in France under the 1939 German occupation through the diary of political economist Charles Rist. The deeply learned Rist investigates the causes of the disaster and reflects on his country’s fate, placing the behavior of the "people" and the "elite" in historical perspective.
If You Need Me I’ll Be Over There
Dave Madden
"These unforgettable, beautifully crafted stories are narrated in a voice that is among the very best of this generation of young writers. Madden is a brave, canny, bold writer who walks unafraid into lives that are marginalized, damaged, ridden by grief and loss and sometimes held up by only a thread of reality. Anything is possible in a Madden story, which move effortlessly between worlds where people misstep into tragic loss and end up in a circus act, or maybe even in love." —Jonis Agee, author of The River Wife: A Novel
Join us for a Twitter chat with Dave Madden this Friday!
Congratulations on Your Martyrdom!
Zachary Tyler Vickers
"Congratulations on Your Martyrdom! is one of the most addictive collections of short fiction I've read in years. Whimsical, wild and gleefully absurd to the point of wickedness, Vickers's stories revel in the collapse of American culture. Once these stories grab, they do not let go." —Jessica Anthony, author of The Convalescent
Play as Symbol of the World
And Other Writings
Eugen Fink
Translated by Ian Alexander Moore and Christopher Turner
In Play as Symbol of the World, Eugen Fink affirms the philosophical significance of play, why it is more than idle amusement, and reflects on the movement from "child's play" to "cosmic play."
Levinas's Ethical Politics
Michael L. Morgan
"Michael L. Morgan provides an intriguing alternative to much current thinking in political philosophy. His reading of Levinas amounts to a rigorous but flexible vision of the simultaneous indispensability of political justice and its necessary vulnerability to ethical critique." —Stephen Mulhall, author of The Self and its Shadows: A Book of Essays on Individuality as Negation in Philosophy and the Arts
Guide to the Solo Horn Repertoire
Linda Dempf and Richard Seraphinoff
Representing over ten years of careful compilation and notation by an expert in horn performance and pedagogy, and by a seasoned music librarian and natural horn performer, Guide to the Solo Horn Repertoire will be an invaluable resource for performers, educators, and composers.
Taking Stock
Cultures of Enumeration in Contemporary Jewish Life
Edited by Michal Kravel-Tovi and Deborah Dash Moore
Taking Stock is a collection of lively, original essays that explore the cultures of enumeration that permeate contemporary and modern Jewish life. Speaking to the profound cultural investment in quantified forms of knowledge and representation—whether discussing the Holocaust or counting the numbers of Israeli and American Jews—these essays reveal a social life of Jewish numbers.
Ex-Centric Migrations
Europe and the Maghreb in Mediterranean Cinema, Literature, and Music
Hakim Abderrezak
"Hakim Abderrezak convincingly illustrates how politically committed artistic practices serve to humanize the challenges of human migration, and in the process dramatically improves our understanding of the complex cultural, economic, political, and social realities that shape 21st-century existence." —Dominic Thomas, author of Africa and France: Postcolonial Cultures, Migration, and Racism
The Grand Scribe's Records
Volume X: The Memoirs of Han China, Part III
Ssu-ma Ch'ien
Edited by William H. Nienhauser, Jr.
Translated by Chiu Ming Chan, Hans van Ess, William H. Nienhauser, Jr., Thomas D. Noel, Marc Nürnberger, Jakob Pöllath, Andreas Siegl, and Lianlian Wu
"The English translation has been done meticulously, with full scholarly apparatus. . . . These volumes are essential library additions." —Choice
In The Grand Scribe’s Records: Volume X, readers can follow Ssu-ma Qian’s depiction of the later years of the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han (r. 140–87 BC).
Earlier this year, the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature (SSML) announced that Michael Martone was the recipient of the 2016 Mark Twain Award, which is given to a distinguished Midwestern writer. The award will be presented to Martone this Friday at the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature's Annual Symposium in East Lansing, MI.
Martone is editor of our Break Away Books series and has published several books with us, most recently Winesburg, Indiana: A Fork River Anthology.
Brought to life by a lively group of Indiana writers, Winesburg, Indiana, is a place to discover something of what it means to be alive in our hyperactive century from stories that are deeply human, sometimes melancholy, and often damned funny.
Winesburg, Indiana, along with Martone's other works, will be featured at the SSML's symposium. In addition, several of the contributors to the book will be at the symposium to give a reading from the book.
We congratulate Michael Martone on winning this prestigious award! Learn more about him in this interview he did for our blog last year.
We are hosting our first-ever Twitter chat with author Dave Madden June 3 from 12:30-1:30 p.m. ET! We will be talking about his new short story collection If You Need Me I'll Be Over There and any other topics you'd like to discuss.
To prepare for our Twitter chat, check out this excerpt from Dave's book and read more about him on his website. Then tweet your questions to IU Press or Dave using the hashtag #IUPauthorhour next Friday.
We look forward to having a great conversation with our followers about If You Need Me I'll Be Over There!
After six years of traveling Indiana in search of amazing local experiences, blogger and TV host Jessica Nunemaker shares a treasure trove of what to expect in Hoosier small towns in her new book Little Indiana. Featuring towns of 15,000...
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Hoosiers, have you taken a photo yet for One Day in May? You have until 11:59 p.m. tonight to snap a picture for a chance to be published in our crowdsourced Indiana bicentennial book!
If you don't have time to upload your photo tonight, no worries! We will continue to accept photo uploads on the IU Press website until Sunday, May 22, at 11:59 p.m. But the photo MUST be taken on May 20, 2016, in order to be considered for publication in the book.
So if you haven't taken a picture yet, get out your camera now and send us your best Indiana shot!
Hoosiers, the time has finally come for our One Day in May photo contest! Submit a picture of what you're doing today for a chance to be published in our crowdsourced Indiana bicentennial book.
The photo submission form is now available on the IU Press website. All photo uploads are due by Sunday, May 22, at 11:59 p.m. Photos should include a caption, the time taken, the city and location, a description, and the photographer’s credit.
If your photo is selected for One Day in May, we will notify you by email, and you will receive a complimentary copy of the book upon publication.
We can't wait to see your photos!
Our shopping cart will be down for maintenance tonight, May 18, 2016, from 7 to 8 p.m. EDT. No online orders will be able to be processed during this time. We apologize for the inconvenience.
The Humans of IUP blog series focuses on the stories of our staff members, who help create all our wonderful books and journals. Follow #HumansofIUP on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ to learn more about the people behind our publishing program.
“IU Press is special because of the people who work here. We’ve had a lot of fun lately, especially now that we are all on Twitter. As a whole, I feel like the press is becoming more connected to one another." —Mandy Hussey, Trade Marketing and Publicity Manager
Originally from Northwest Indiana, Mandy once ran a marathon on a fractured leg—“it was my fastest time ever,” she said—an endurance that helps her in her busy days at IU Press.
As the Trade Marketing and Publicity Manager, she handles all the publicity for IU Press’s trade book titles, which involves sending out review copies, managing campaigns, working on ad copy, and being in contact with the media. She also partners with the trade marketing team to acquire books and works with the design team on cover concepts.
Her favorite project is Letters to Santa Claus, a book containing more than 250 actual letters and envelopes to Santa mailed to Santa Claus, Indiana, since the 1930s. It stands out to her because she came up with the concept, acquired it, and edited it. The book also received a great deal of media attention during the holiday season last year.
“It’s just really thrilling to be involved with the project, especially after all the work I put into it. I was there from the very beginning," she said.
An IU alum, Mandy chose IU Press because of her background in journalism and her love of reading. She was very interested the trade titles, especially the Break Away Books fiction list, and she enjoys being able to travel to large trade shows like BookExpo America, where she currently is this week to promote her upcoming children's book But What If There's No Chimney. (She'll be signing copies with her co-author Emily Weisner Thompson this Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. in booth 941.)
“Within the last year and a half since we got our new director, I feel like the caliber of the books we are acquiring and publishing has really increased,” she said.
In her free time, Mandy likes reading books from the YA genre. Some of her favorites are the Matched series, Harry Potter, and the Hunger Games series.
She has been a proud member of IU Press since 2005.
Tweet Mandy: @mandy_iup
This month, we continue the celebration of our state's literary heritage with a new post by Michael Martone in our Indiana Bicentennial Bookshelf blog series. This series is written by Hoosier authors about their favorite Indiana books and writers.
Michael Martone. Photo by Janine Crawley.
By Michael Martone
This was the Indianapolis of the 70s, “Nap”town. It lived “down” to its name—before all the new building, the athletic events and venues, the malls and Mass Ave makeovers. On Sundays, for excitement, I drifted downtown, to McCarty Street to Shapiro’s bathed in static-y florescent light, had a tongue sandwich and celery soda. The sky was low and lowering. The bells at Butler tolled out “Back Home Again in Indiana” ended with “...where the sun refuses to shine.” Spring brought the exhausted coughing of tire tests at the track, steeped in general sleepiness. Yet, here in the gloaming, I started writing, holed-up in my room in limestone-clad Ross Hall (students had, in their boredom, attached a “G” to the name) writing the first sad dark sentimental stories of Indiana.
Years later, things changed. I had gone away to teach and write in Iowa, Massachusetts, New York. I wrote about Indiana even as I wandered. I stayed in close touch with Susan Neville, back home, an Atlas of a writer, also writing about Indiana and her hometown of Indianapolis. There, she shouldered the labor of culture-making at Butler with a new reading series and an invigorated creative writing program. She asked me back to give a reading, and, as she drove me into the city, I could not help but notice how Indy had shrugged off its napping past, overnight it seemed, a city of big shoulders now, transformed.
“Susan,” I asked, “what the heck happened?”
Without missing a beat, keeping her eyes on the road (a new expressway!), the pristine crystalline skyline heaving up into a blue blue sky, she answered, “Prozac!”
I know, a long ironic anecdote. The world’s depression and Eli Lilly’s attempt to cure it put the step back in Naptown’s stride, put a civic smile on the face of Circle City.
Really, I recount it here to shine a little light on that wit, that writer Susan Neville. Much of Indiana, as we know is flat. For me I am taken by that telling surface. But Susan, in her work, is all about the submerged, the interior of the interior.
I think of her as the cartographer of the Hoosier sub-conscious, unconscious, a soul-searcher for sure. You can sense this sense and sensitivity just in the titles of the books—Sailing the Inland Sea, Iconography, In the House of Blue Lights, Indiana Winter. She is our fearless Odysseus, underworld spelunker, constantly in motion, a centripetal vector turned inward to the depths of our denials, our ecstatic depressions, our gloomy yet buoyant gumption. Her work is a unique site-specific concoction of specific gravity and unbearable lightness of being. She writes in the stories of The Invention of Flight about flight, yes, but mostly of the beautiful hard landings, controlled crashes, the collapsed longings for this condensed and congested home, always at a crossroads. There is a basketball book too, of course, charting the poignant trajectory of winning loss.
Let me end by saying it’s incumbent upon us all to read Susan’s masterpiece, Fabrication, the essay that takes us to the warehouse of caskets in Batesville. Endless storage of eternal storage. The beauty of empty box after box. And the sudden brilliant revelation that everyone, all those capsules, all of them, will, one day, be occupied.
Michael Martone is Professor of English at the University of Alabama–Tuscaloosa. He is author of many books including Four for a Quarter: Fictions; Double-wide: Collected Fiction of Michael Martone (IUP, 2007); and editor (with Bryan Furuness) of Winesburg, Indiana: A Fork River Anthology (IUP, 2015) and Not Normal, Illinois: Peculiar Fiction from the Flyover (IUP, 2009). Martone was the winner of the 2013 National Indiana Authors Award.
Next month, Norbert Krapf will be blogging for us in the Indiana Bicentennial Bookshelf series. Check back in June for his post!
Author Simon Cordery guest blogs for us today on what would have been National Train Day. This year, Amtrak announced it would no longer continue its Train Days program due to financial difficulties. Cordery shares his thoughts on the loss of this national celebration of trains.
By Simon Cordery
America has a lukewarm relationship with our railroads. Despite their historical significance as forgers of a national marketplace, as pioneers opening the Great Plains and beyond, and as key players in peace and war, trains are often seen as nuisances blocking roads when they are not invisible to all but the most perceptive observer. Our economy would collapse without them, but their role is significantly undervalued and they are often criticized.
That’s why National Train Day seemed like such a good idea when it was created in 2008. Held on the weekend closest to May 10, the date we celebrate completion of the first transcontinental railroad, it originated as a combination of entertainment and marketing. At first there were concerts and other ways to bring people trackside, but that proved pricey. Then came a focus on equipment displays, including freight and passenger. Private cars soon replaced the freight, but then even the varnish proved too expensive. Now, with a few exceptions, the celebrations are gone, victim of a shrinking marketing budget.
Though understandable from a short-term financial perspective, the elimination of National Train Day is a shame. Americans are generally historically illiterate, especially when it comes to railroading. National Train Day had the virtue of reminding Americans of the industry’s rich heritage and vibrant future.
It’s a shame Amtrak could not convince the freight corporations or the American Association of Railroads to save the Day. As revenues tumble and traffic declines, the railroads need all the friends, and customers, they can get. National Train Day could have been part of an outreach program designed to remind people of the importance of railroads to our daily lives and our national security. More importantly, it could have helped alert potential customers to the competitive advantages of rail.
Instead, Amtrak Train Days replaced National Train Day. In 2015, the Amtrak Exhibit Train and interactive displays sponsored by corporate partners travelled to locations across the country. A similar round of runs is planned for 2016, though oddly nothing is scheduled for May 10th. This year’s program kicked off in St. Paul, Minnesota, at the end of April, with stops in Maine, New Hampshire, Colorado, Arizona, and Texas, before concluding at October’s Seaboard Festival in North Carolina.
The death of National Train Day begs a question: how is a rapprochement between Amtrak and the freight railroads to be effected? Most of our passenger trains run on tracks owned by those corporations, which often see them as hindrances to efficient freight movement. But there is excess capacity now and a growing demand for long-distance passenger trains. Can Amtrak fill the void? Can the freight railroads be encouraged to help it do so? Despite friction, both sides are staffed by people who love trains and want what is best for the industry in the long run. National Train Day could have provided an opportunity for the passenger corporation to begin making peace with the freight carriers. And that’s another reason it is a lost opportunity.
Simon Cordery researches, writes, and rides on railroads on both sides of the Atlantic. He serves as Chair of the Inductions Committee of the National Railroad Hall of Fame and Chair of the Department of History at Western Illinois University, and he is a member of the Lexington Group of Transportation Historians. He has published two books and numerous articles and is a sought-after lecturer on the history of Illinois railroading. His most recent book, The Iron Road in the Prairie State, was published last December by IU Press.
Indiana residents: Mark your calendars for an opportunity to participate in our next crowdsourced Indiana bicentennial book! On Friday, May 20, 2016, we're asking you to help us answer the question “What is a Hoosier?” by submitting photos of what you're doing that day. Photographs taken during these 24 hours will be selected for publication in a new book, One Day in May: 24 Hours in the Life of Indiana, to be released this fall. If your photo is chosen, you'll receive a free copy of the book!
Join our email list to receive a reminder about the start of the photo contest. You can also receive updates through our Facebook event page.
More information on photo submission guidelines can be found on our website. We're looking forward to seeing your pictures on May 20!
Are you attending BookExpo America in Chicago next week? If so, we hope you'll stop by booth 942 to check out our books and visit our staff! You can also meet our authors during the show on the following days:
WEDNESDAY, MAY 11
Hopeless but Optimistic
Journeying through America's Endless War in Afghanistan
Douglas A. Wissing
Book signing
Booth 941
2:00-2:30 p.m.
Wissing’s poignant and eye-opening journey across Afghanistan casts a spotlight on greed, dysfunction, and predictable disaster while celebrating the courage and wisdom of frontline soldiers, idealistic humanitarians, and resilient Afghans.
THURSDAY, MAY 12
Dancing in Dreamtime
Scott Russell Sanders
Book signing
Booth 941
1:00-1:30 p.m.
One of the brightest science-fiction newcomers of the 1980s, Sanders returns to his roots in Dancing in Dreamtime, exploring inner and outer space in a speculative collection of short stories.
Trapped in Iran
A Mother's Desperate Journey to Freedom
Samieh Hezari
BEA Selects Presentation
Uptown Stage
2:30 p.m.
Book signing
Booth 941
3:00-3:30 p.m.
Trapped in Iran is the harrowing and emotionally gripping story of how a mother defied a man and a country to win freedom for her daughter.
FRIDAY, MAY 13
Days of Knight
How the General Changed My Life
Kirk Haston
Book signing
Booth 941
10:00-10:30 a.m.
What happens when a kid from Lobelville, Tennessee is recruited by legendary coach Bob Knight? Haston gives an inside look at the notoriously private man and his no-nonsense coaching style.
But What If There's No Chimney?
Emily Weisner Thompson and Mandy Hussey
Book signing
Booth 941
11:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
A five-year-old is shocked to find his house has no chimney! How will Santa get in? As Christmas approaches he seeks solutions, culminating in a letter to Santa Claus, Indiana.
In addition to our author events, Book TV will be at our booth on Thursday to discuss highlights of our upcoming fall season. You can download our catalog for a complete list of books we're publishing later this year. Hope to see you at BEA!
Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. To commemorate this occasion, we offer the following reading selections from our books and journals to help further your understanding of antisemitism and the Holocaust:
Available this September
Girl
My Childhood and the Second World War
Alona Frankel
"An extraordinary voice and view of a hidden-child in Poland during the Holocaust and of her daring return to life afterward." —Berel Lang, author of Primo Levi: The Matter of a Life
When Germany invaded Poland, Alona Frankel was just two years old. Isolated from her parents and living among pigs, horses, mice, and lice, Alona taught herself to read and drew on scraps of paper. Girl is the story of a young girl’s self-preservation through a horrible war and its aftermath. Frankel, now a world renowned children’s author and illustrator, reveals a little girl full of life in a terrible, evil world.
Read excerpt
Watch the author discuss her book in this video clip from the documentary Culture Hero
Now in paperback
The Case for Auschwitz
Evidence from the Irving Trial
Robert Jan van Pelt
"The bulk of the book is the methodical and chilling presentation of materials presented at the trial . . . interwoven with Irving's testimony and defense. Van Pelt has arranged an enormous amount of complex material succinctly and to great effect. Read as a whole, the book is a stunning courtroom drama and a vital document of historical evidence. This is an important addition to Holocaust literature and 20th-century history." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Read excerpt
Witnessing the Robbing of the Jews
A Photographic Album, Paris, 1940-1944
Sarah Gensburger
Translated by Jonathan Hensher with the collaboration of Elisabeth Fourmont
From 1942 onwards, ordinary Parisian Jews—mostly poor families and recent immigrants from Eastern Europe—were robbed, not of sculptures or paintings, but of toys, saucepans, furniture, and sheets. Witnessing the Robbing of the Jews tells how this vast enterprise of plunder was implemented in the streets of Paris by analyzing images from an album of photographs found in the Federal Archives of Koblenz.
See photos
Reframing Holocaust Testimony
Noah Shenker
Noah Shenker calls attention to the ways that audiovisual testimonies of the Holocaust have been mediated by the institutional histories and practices of their respective archives. He analyzes the ways in which interview questions, the framing of the camera, and curatorial and programming preferences impact how Holocaust testimony is molded, distributed, and received.
Read excerpt
Deciphering the New Antisemitism
Edited by Alvin H. Rosenfeld
"This volume, rich in information . . . is recommended as a valuable compilation of research and analysis that will help concerned readers track the evolution of anti-Semitism and determine which trends are most worrisome." —Publishers Weekly
Read excerpt
European Muslim Antisemitism
Why Young Urban Males Say They Don't Like Jews
Günther Jikeli
Antisemitism from Muslims has become a serious issue in Western Europe, although not often acknowledged as such. This study addresses those issues and is rich in qualitative data that will mark a significant step along the path toward a better understanding of contemporary antisemitism in Europe.
Read excerpt
Separate Suffering, Shared Archives: Jewish and Romani Histories of Nazi Persecution
Ari Joskowicz
History and Memory
Vol. 28, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2016), pp. 110-140
Bridging Holocaust history and memory studies, this article explores the multiple and asymmetrical entanglements of Jewish and Romani (or “Gypsy”) accounts of Nazi genocide. These entanglements exist in large part due to the fact that testimonies of the Romani Holocaust are commonly filtered through the lens of Jewish survivors or stored in archives dedicated to the Jewish Holocaust. Modern Jewish-Romani relations thus represent a rare—and arguably unique—case in which one minority controls such a significant portion of the public memories of another.
Read the article (free access until May 18, 2016)
Healing by Haunting: Jewish Ghosts in Contemporary Polish Literature
Magdalena Waligórska
Prooftexts
Vol. 34, No. 2 (Spring 2014), pp. 207-231
This article looks at how the fantasy of the Jewish return can be seen as a response to current historical debates about the Polish implication in anti-Jewish violence and the dispossession of Jews during and after the Holocaust. The new, experimental language of loss developed in this contemporary Polish writing, labeled here as traumatic surrealism, is considered both in its aesthetic and moral context as a vehicle to express the transgenerational impact that the Holocaust has had on Poles and a therapeutic medium which, by providing a fantasy of avenging or repairing the past harm, allows an imaginary rapprochement of the victims and those who inhabit the spaces of their death.
Read the article (free access until May 18, 2016)
Indiana doesn't officially turn 200 until December 11, but we've got an early birthday present for Hoosier residents: From now until May 16, you can save 30-60% off select Indiana titles during our Bicentennial Book Sale! Celebrate all our state has to offer by checking out our wide variety of Indiana titles, including photo books, Indiana history, literature, biographies of famous Hoosiers, and much more! See our sale page for a complete list of discounted Indiana books. Happy reading, Hoosiers!
Margaret Bourke-White and the Dawn of Apartheid
Alex Lichtenstein and Rick Halpern
"A beautiful book, touching and powerful." —Actuphoto
In 1949, Life sent Margaret Bourke-White to South Africa to take photographs in a country that was becoming racially polarized by white minority rule. Life published two photo-essays highlighting Bourke-White’s photographs, but much of her South African work remained unpublished until now. Here, these stunning photographs collected by Alex Lichtenstein and Rick Halpern offer an unparalleled visual record of white domination in South Africa during the early days of apartheid.
Life in the Time of Oil
A Pipeline and Poverty in Chad
Lori Leonard
"Lori Leonard's signature achievement in this book is that she offers an ethnographic analysis of a development project that is simultaneously an examination of oil companies and the practices of global capitalism and an account of the experience and consequences for ordinary people who are touted to be beneficiaries but in fact often end up victims." —Daniel Jordan Smith, author of A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria
Drawing on more than a decade of work in Chad, Leonard examines the Chad-Cameroon Petroleum Development and Pipeline Project.
From War to Peace in 1945 Germany
A GI's Experience
Malcolm L. Fleming
Foreword by James H. Madison
Afterword by Bradley D. Cook
"Malcolm Fleming's simple but devastating visual narrative of war, occupation, and homecoming in 1945 does through pictures what Ernie Pyle managed in words: tell the story of one piece of World War II as it was seen from under the brim of a GI’s helmet." —Eric Sandweiss, Indiana University
In the pouch intended to carry his first-aid kit on his belt, Army Photographer "Mac" Fleming instead carried a small personal camera, which he used to take pictures of the people and places that interested him. From these photos, Fleming has assembled this absorbing private chronicle of war and peace in 1945.
Ponderings II–VI
Black Notebooks 1931–1938
Martin Heidegger
Translated by Richard Rojcewicz
Praise for the German editions:
They will cast a dark shadow over Heidegger’s legacy.'" —New York Review of Books
Ponderings II–VI begins the much-anticipated English translation of the "Black Notebooks." These challenging and fascinating journal entries shed light on Heidegger's philosophical development regarding his central question of what it means to be, but also on his relation to National Socialism and the revolutionary atmosphere of the 1930s in Germany.
Emptiness and Omnipresence
An Essential Introduction to Tiantai Buddhism
Brook A. Ziporyn
"Those who take the journey with Ziporyn will find a rich and rewarding work, not simply due to the mind-boggling Tiantai doctrine, but also because of Ziporyn's respect for the tradition and his extraordinary finesse in presenting its demanding ideas." —Publishers Weekly
Ziporyn reveals the profound insights of Tiantai Buddhism while stimulating philosophical reflection on its unexpected effects.
A Jewish Guide in the Holy Land
How Christian Pilgrims Made Me Israeli
Jackie Feldman
"Here, the author chronicles his experiences shepherding tourists, mostly Protestants, on pilgrimages to the Holy Land. . . . A unique lens through which to view the conflicted Promised Land." —Kirkus Reviews
A New York-born Israeli citizen, scholar and licensed guide draws on his experiences leading tours, interpreting Biblical landscapes, and fielding questions about religion and current politics for Evangelical Christian tourists who visit the Holy Land.
Now in paperback
The Case for Auschwitz
Evidence from the Irving Trial
Robert Jan van Pelt
"This is an important addition to Holocaust literature and 20th-century history." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
In 2000, David Irving brought a high-profile libel case against Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt to the British High Court, charging that the 1993 book, Denying the Holocaust, falsely labeled him a Holocaust denier. In connection with their defense, Robert Jan van Pelt was asked to present evidence that Auschwitz had been an extermination camp where up to one million Jews were killed, mainly in gas chambers. This is the story of van Pelt's exhaustive forensic report and its successful defense in cross-examination in court.
A Guide to Natural Areas of Southern Indiana
119 Unique Places to Explore
Text and Photography by Steven Higgs
Foreword by James Alexander Thom
"You would need to do hours and hours of internet research to compile just a small portion of what this one book provides. This is an excellent guidebook and offers a big-picture view of southern Indiana’s diverse environments." —Cheryl Ann Munson, Indiana University
In this fully illustrated guidebook for nature lovers who want to explore the wild and natural areas of southern Indiana by trail, water, or road, Higgs highlights each site’s unique natural characteristics and history with additional facts, anecdotes, and observations.
Threads of Empire
Loyalty and Tsarist Authority in Bashkiria, 1552–1917
Charles Steinwedel
"An original and well-researched study of the incorporation of the Bashkir lands and their transformation into a Russian imperial region over the course of three and a half centuries." —Willard Sunderland, author of Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe
This book examines how Russia’s imperial officials and intellectual elites made and maintained their authority among the changing intellectual and political currents in Eurasia from the mid-16th century to the revolution of 1917.
Living in the Ottoman Realm
Empire and Identity, 13th to 20th Centuries
Edited by Christine Isom-Verhaaren and Kent F. Schull
Living in the Ottoman Realm brings the Ottoman Empire to life in all of its ethnic, religious, linguistic, and geographic diversity. The contributors explore the development and transformation of identity over the long span of the empire’s existence. They offer engaging accounts of individuals, groups, and communities by drawing on a rich array of primary sources, some available in English translation for the first time. Designed for use as a course text, each chapter includes study questions and suggestions for further reading.
Tropical Cowboys
Westerns, Violence, and Masculinity in Kinshasa
Ch. Didier Gondola
During the 1950s and 60s in the Congo city of Kinshasa, there emerged young urban male gangs known as “Bills” or "Yankees." Modeling themselves on the images of the iconic American cowboy from Hollywood film, the “Bills” sought to negotiate lives lived under oppressive economic, social, and political conditions. They developed their own style, subculture, and slang and as Ch. Didier Gondola shows, engaged in a quest for manhood through bodybuilding, marijuana, violent sexual behavior, and other transgressive acts. Gondola argues that this street culture became a backdrop for Congo-Zaire’s emergence as an independent nation and continues to exert powerful influence on the country’s urban youth culture today.
Swahili Port Cities
The Architecture of Elsewhere
Prita Meier
"Prita Meier has turned the tired question of 'who are the Swahili' on its ear by eschewing essentialist descriptions and showing how Swahili people themselves actively managed their identities locally and beyond, and throughout colonial and national administrations." —Jeffrey Fleisher, Rice University
On the Swahili coast of East Africa, monumental stone houses, tombs, and mosques mark the border zone between the interior of the African continent and the Indian Ocean. Prita Meier explores this coastal environment and shows how an African mercantile society created a place of cosmopolitan longing.
The Unseen Things
Women, Secrecy, and HIV in Northern Nigeria
Kathryn A. Rhine
What do HIV-positive women in Nigeria face as they seek meaningful lives with a deeply discrediting disease? Kathryn A. Rhine uncovers the skillful ways women defuse concerns about their wellbeing and the ability to maintain their households. Rhine shows how this ethic of concealment involves masking their diagnosis, unfaithful husbands, and unsupportive families while displaying their beauty, generosity, and vitality. As Rhine observes, collusion with counselors and support group leaders to deflect stigma, secure respectability, and find love features prominently in the lives of ordinary women who hope for a brighter future as the HIV epidemic continues to expand.
Learning in Morocco
Language Politics and the Abandoned Educational Dream
Charis Boutieri
"[A] valuable resource for other scholars and a significant book for students trying to understand political and social alienation, as well as the trajectory of development, in the region." —Shana Cohen, Woolf Institute
Learning in Morocco offers a rare look inside public education in the Middle East. Based on long-term research inside and outside classrooms, Charis Boutieri describes how students and teachers work within, or try to circumvent, the system, whose contradictory demands ultimately lead to disengagement and, on occasion, to students taking to the streets in protest.
The Politics of Suffering
Syria's Palestinian Refugee Camps
Nell Gabiam
"A deep anthropological engagement with the politics of citizenship and the practices of othering as it relates to the Palestinian refugee camps in Syria. In a time of a major refugee crisis world-wide, this book is a must read for anyone interested in understanding the shape of the needed global humanitarian response to these increasingly normalized conditions." —Nezar AlSayyad, University of California, Berkeley
Gabiam offers compelling insights into the plight of Palestinians before and during the Syrian war, which has led to devastation in the camps and massive displacement of their populations.
The Mutual Cultivation of Self and Things
A Contemporary Chinese Philosophy of the Meaning of Being
Yang Guorong
Foreword by Hans-Georg Moeller
Translated by Chad Austin Meyers
Yang Guorong is one of the most prominent Chinese philosophers working today and is best known for using the full range of Chinese philosophical resources in connection with the thought of Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Heidegger. In The Mutual Cultivation of Self and Things, Yang grapples with the philosophical problem of how the complexly interwoven nature of things and being relates to human nature, values, affairs, and facts, and ultimately creates a world of meaning.
Piano Duet Repertoire
Music Originally Written for One Piano, Four Hands
Second Edition
Cameron McGraw
Edited and expanded by Christopher Fisher and Katherine Fisher
With a Foreword by the Anderson & Roe Piano Duo
This second edition, edited and substantially expanded by Christopher and Katherine Fisher, brings the volume into the 21st century, adding over 500 new or updated composer entries and nearly 1,000 new work entries to the volume, a testament to the renewed interest in piano duet playing. The book also contains updated appendices listing collections and duet works with voice and other instruments. This new edition features a title index and a list of composers by nationality, making it a convenient and indispensable resource.
Courageous Leadership
Career Success the Kelley Way
Revised Edition
Terry Campbell, Chris Cook, John Hill, Eric Johnson, Ray Luther, and Kelly Watkins
In this essential and very readable guide to career success the Kelley Way, leaders from the top ranked business school in the country reveal the cornerstone for advancement in businesses—courageous leadership. The principles and attributes of a courageous leader are explained, depicting an effective communicator and motivator, self-learner, critical thinker in the face of complex problems, and a savvy participant in team and organizational environments with a rock solid ethical foundation. Written clearly and concisely with many examples, Courageous Leadership is indispensable reading for anyone considering a career in business.
Now back in print
Apocalypse Postponed
Essays by Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco
An erudite and witty collection of Umberto Eco's essays on mass culture from the 1960s through the 1980s, including major pieces which have not been translated into English before. Organized in four main parts, "Mass Culture: Apocalypse Postponed," "Mass Media and the Limits of Communication," "The Rise and Fall of Counter-Cultures," and "In Search of Italian Genius," Eco looks at a variety of topics and cultural productions, including the world of Charlie Brown, distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow, the future of literacy, Chinese comic strips, whether countercultures exist, Fellini's Ginger and Fred, and the Italian genius industry.
Happy Short Story Month! Are you looking for something new to read? Short stories are a great way to sample and discover a writer that appeals to you! So take just a (little) bit of time this May to celebrate short stories by reading these free previews from our Break Away Books:
Available June 2016
If You Need Me I’ll Be Over There
Dave Madden
"These unforgettable, beautifully crafted stories are narrated in a voice that is among the very best of this generation of young writers. Madden is a brave, canny, bold writer who walks unafraid into lives that are marginalized, damaged, ridden by grief and loss and sometimes held up by only a thread of reality. Anything is possible in a Madden story, which move effortlessly between worlds where people misstep into tragic loss and end up in a circus act, or maybe even in love." —Jonis Agee, author of The River Wife: A Novel
After the Plains queered him, Dave Madden decided to return the favor. This outstanding collection of short stories tells the tale of a different kind of difference—one not set in the glittering lights of New York or Los Angeles, but in the grand and wide American Midwest.
Available June 2016
Congratulations on Your Martyrdom!
Zachary Tyler Vickers
"A debut full of heart and energy, by an intense, fervent writer whose dedication shows in every line." —George Saunders, author of Tenth of December: Stories
Searing, troubling, and funny, these revolutionary, linked stories flit and dart among the shadows of small town life, and the touching and heartbreaking characters that occupy it. An extraordinary addition to the canon of gonzo fiction, this exciting new author's unflinching prose grabs you and won’t let go.
Available August 2016
Dancing in Dreamtime
Scott Russell Sanders
"Although the stories in Scott Russell Sanders's new collection, Dancing in Dreamtime, often portray futuristic worlds, they always hold a mirror to our contemporary society in a way that allows us to see ourselves and our present time more clearly. Wildly imaginative and haunting, these stories are the stuff of dreams, yes, but they also have much to show us about who we are in the here and now." —Lee Martin, author of The Bright Forever
In this speculative collection of short science fiction stories, Scott Russell Sanders returns to his roots. At a time when humankind faces unprecedented, global-scale challenges from climate change, loss of biodiversity, dwindling vital resources, and widespread wars, these planetary tales will strike a poignant chord with the reader.
Available August 2016
And Yet It Moves
Erin Stalcup
"Erin Stalcup's intelligent, provocative stories grow inside your mind and body long after you have absorbed their marvelous inward and outward views of the individual heart and the human community. These stories cast you into the darkest dreams, and they startle you awake. Like all mystical experiences, And Yet It Moves opens your heart by breaking it." —Kevin McIlvoy, author of Hyssop
In this exquisite debut short story collection, people with unusual jobs and lives embark on extraordinary journeys. A powerful combination of both absurdist and realist—these stories literally defy gravity.
Winesburg, Indiana
A Fork River Anthology
Edited by Michael Martone and Bryan Furuness
"30 writers create the characters in what Martone calls 'a sad town populated by people who have desperate, writeable lives.' Some of them are terse. Some, like Roxane Gay’s 'Tara Jenkins,' are beautiful." —Indianapolis Monthly
In the mythical town of Winesburg, Indiana, there lives a cleaning lady who can conjure up the ghost of Billy Sunday, a lascivious holy man with an unusual fetish and a burgeoning flock, a park custodian who collects the scat left by aliens, and a night janitor learning to live with life’s mysteries, including the zombies in the cafeteria...
Read a Q&A with Michael Martone
Sightings
Stories
B. J. Hollars
"All of these stories represent a talented tightrope walk between genres and a gentle lesson in craftsmanship for aspiring storytellers . . . An imaginatively sculpted collection of absurdist concepts applied liberally to the equally preposterous notion of growing up." —Kirkus Reviews
Ten thematically linked tales push the limits of realism while featuring an assemblage of Bigfoot believers, Civil War reenactors, misidentified Eskimos, and grief-stricken clowns, among other outcasts incapable of finding a place in their worlds.
Watch the book trailer
Reply All
Stories
Robin Hemley
"In an exciting return to fiction, Hemley, touching and funny, creates sympathetic characters who are deeply flawed but just as deeply human." —Booklist
This collection of award-winning and widely anthologized short stories by Robin Hemley takes a humorous, edgy, and frank look at the human art of deception and self-deception.
Listen to a podcast with the author
Five years ago today, a devastating EF-4 tornado ripped through Tuscaloosa, Alabama, killing as many as 65 people and injuring 1,500. Author B. J. Hollars, his wife, and their future son endured the onslaught this tornado. There, while huddled in a bathtub in their Alabama home, mortality flashed before their eyes. With the last of his computer battery, Hollars began recounting the experience, and would continue to do so in the following years, writing his way out of one disaster only to find himself caught up in another. He collected these writings on disaster into his new book This Is Only a Test. You can read more about his experience during the tornado in this excerpt from the book.
Check out this video of the Tuscaloosa tornado to see what Hollars and other residents witnessed during the storm:
This post is part of a series from IU Press Journals that takes a closer look at the scholarship in the articles and issues of IU Press journals. Posts may respond to articles, provide background, document the development process, or explain why scholars are excited about the journal, theme, or article and will primarily be written by journal editors and contributors.
By Leonard Tan, author of “Reimer through Confucian Lenses” in issue 23.2 of Philosophy of Music Education Review
A couple of years ago, I attended a lecture on music education in China by a rather senior Chinese professor of music. During the lecture, the professor categorically declared, “Music education in China is praxial, not aesthetic.” That jolted me. Having read about the aesthetic-praxial debate in the West during my doctoral studies in the United States, and studied classical Chinese philosophy, an inner voice within me started probing: Why was this professor of this view? Is there a similar aesthetic-praxial debate in China? Is Bennett Reimer’s notion of music education as aesthetic education fundamentally at odds with Chinese philosophical thinking?
After the lecture, I approached the professor to clarify what he had meant. As it turns out, an American scholar in music education had visited his university, and had impressed upon him that the notion of music education as aesthetic education is a strictly Western construct. Unfortunately, time did not permit a longer discussion. I left the lecture hall feeling really disturbed, yet inspired at the same time to do something about it. True, music education cannot be just about aesthetic education. Still, surely the human reaction to aesthetic beauty in music ought to be able to transcend cultural boundaries.
What followed were months of re-reading all three editions of Reimer’s A Philosophy of Music Education (1970, 1988, 2003), dipping into the writings of leading scholars on Confucian aesthetics, and re-examining the classical Confucian texts themselves for how Reimer’s ideas may resonate with Confucian aesthetics. Although I had read Reimer’s texts and studied Confucian philosophy, this was a whole new project altogether. After six months of reading and thinking, I ended up with 80 pages of notes! I then took two additional months to organize the paper and pare it down to a journal article.
With the benefit of hindsight, this paper could very well have been titled “Confucius through Reimer’s Lenses” as much as the other way round. By reading Reimer through the lenses of Confucius and vice versa, I found myself understanding more of both the Western and the Chinese aesthetic traditions. Each illuminates the other. Picture for a moment, a French Impressionist artist and a Chinese painter looking at and drawing the same mountain. Each painter will capture something different; yet, they are both awed by the beauty and majesty of the same mountain. This is precisely what I hope to have captured in this piece. Despite differences in the ways of doing philosophy, whether in the West as construed by Reimer or in Asia as evidenced in the Confucian texts, music education can certainly be understood in terms of an aesthetic education.
Read Leonard Tan’s essay “Reimer through Confucian Lenses” in issue 23.2 of Philosophy of Music Education Review, which is available now on JSTOR and Project MUSE.
Once More unto the Breach
By Forest Hansen, author of “Once More unto the Breach” in issue 23.2 of Philosophy of Music Education Review
Markand Thakar’s book, Looking for the “Harp” Quartet: An Investigation into Musical Beauty, explores philosophical issues related to musical composition, performance (including the conductor’s role), and listener appreciation. It and my review are provocative: Our positions would be denounced by followers of David Elliott for being elitist and outdated but found relevant and intriguing to lovers of classical music in the Western tradition. I think Bennett Reimer would appreciate our views even while finding them too narrow.
Read Forest Hansen's review “Once More unto the Breach” in issue 23.2 of Philosophy of Music Education Review, which is available now on JSTOR and Project MUSE.
New appointments to the PMER Board of Editorial Consultants!
The Editors are delighted to announce the appointment of Professor Jenefer Robinson, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, and President of the American Society for Aesthetics, and Professor Alexandra Kertz Welzel, Professor of Music Education, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany, as members of the Board of Editorial Consultants of the Philosophy of Music Education Review.
We also acknowledge with thanks the long service of Peter Kivy, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, who is retiring from the editorial board having served since the journal’s inception in 1993.
Professor Kertz Welzel will also serve as Book Review Editor and will replace Mary Reichling, Professor of Music Education, University of Louisiana, Lafayette, Louisiana, USA who has served in that role since the journal’s founding. We appreciate Professor Reichling's devoted service to the Philosophy of Music Education Review and look forward to her continued presence as a member of the Board of Editorial Consultants. Professor Kertz Welzel will be joined by Leonard Tan, Assistant Professor of Music Education, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Happy Earth Day, Indiana! As many Hoosiers know, our state has a wealth of natural beauty. Author Steven Higgs has personally explored 119 wild and natural areas in southern Indiana, and shares his expertise on these places in his new book A Guide to Natural Areas of Southern Indiana. Featuring 95 beautiful color photos and 5 maps, this comprehensive guidebook provides ideas for a lifetime of fun and exploration, and makes planning easy by including directions to the areas, offering suggestions on what to do when you arrive, and what you will find when you get there.
We'd like to encourage you to get out this weekend and visit the places Higgs writes about in his book. As an incentive, we're hosting an Earth Day photo contest for a chance to win a copy of A Guide to Natural Areas of Southern Indiana! Here are the details on how to enter:
- Check out the list of places featured in the book.
- Visit one of the sites and take a picture!
- Share your photo with us on Twitter or Facebook and use the hashtag #earthdayiupress
- Submit your entry (one per person) by April 24, 2016 at 11:59 p.m. EDT.
Have fun getting out into nature this weekend! See more of the places Higgs describes in his book in this trailer:
Earlier this month, Independent Publisher named the medal winners in its 20th annual IPPY Awards. These awards were established to bring more attention to the important work published by independent authors and publishers. We're pleased to announce that four IU Press books won IPPY Awards, including:
John Bartlow Martin: A Voice for the Underdog
Ray E. Boomhower
Silver, Biography category
The Snowden Reader
Edited by David P. Fidler
Silver, Current Events category
Letters to Santa Claus
The Elves
Foreword by Pat Koch
Afterword by Emily Weisner Thompson
Silver, Holiday category
Other Pasts, Different Presents, Alternative Futures
Jeremy Black
Bronze, History (World) category
The medal-winning books will be celebrated May 10 during the annual BookExpo America publishing convention in Chicago.
Independent Publisher prides itself on "Recognizing Excellence in Independent Publishing," and we think these titles are excellent as well! Congratulations to our authors and their great books!
Happy 85th birthday today to former Indiana congressman and Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Lee Hamilton! We're celebrating his birthday and the upcoming Indiana bicentennial by giving away a copy of his new book Congress, Presidents, and American Politics.
Kirkus Reviews calls Hamilton's book "a solid look at the thinking, actions, and failures from the Lyndon Johnson years to the present. . . . Hamilton's views on politicians might just renew some readers' faith in our elected officials. At once encouraging and enlightening, his writings stir hope, and what he says is still important all these years later. . . . The book—essentially an encapsulation of the author's philosophy of politics and politicians—is a good choice for those who want to believe in government again."
You can learn more about the book in a podcast with Hamilton that will air April 24 on Through the Gates: IU This Week.
Fill out the form below by April 26 for your chance to win!
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“Find your one true love and live happily ever after.” The trials of love and desire provide perennial story material, from the Biblical Song of Songs to Disney’s princesses, but perhaps most provocatively in the romance novel, a genre known for tales of fantasy and desire, sex and pleasure. Hailed on the one hand for its women-centered stories that can be sexually liberating, and criticized on the other for its emphasis on male/female coupling and mythical happy endings, romance fiction is a multi-million dollar publishing phenomenon, creating national and international societies of enthusiasts, practitioners, and scholars. Catherine M. Roach, alongside her romance-writer alter-ego, Catherine LaRoche, guides the reader deep into Romancelandia where the smart and the witty combine with the sexy and seductive to explore why this genre has such a grip on readers and what we can learn from the romance novel about the nature of happiness, love, sex, and desire in American popular culture.
Fill out the form below by April 21 for your chance to win a copy of Happily Ever After. And while you're waiting to see if you're the winner, check out this podcast with author Catherine Roach about her book.
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The Humans of IUP blog series focuses on the stories of our staff members, who help create all our wonderful books and journals. Follow #HumansofIUP on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ to learn more about the people behind our publishing program.
“I grew up in Fort Wayne, so I was a little bit jaded about living in Indiana. My whole goal when I was in college was to leave the state and, you know, life just didn’t work out that way, and I ended up staying. I really love Bloomington. It grew on me when I was in college and then when I started working here. And because IU Press has such a strong regional list, I've learned really cool things about Indiana from our books that gave me an appreciation of my home state that I never had before. So now I can’t really imagine living anywhere else. I guess you could say I have embraced my Hoosier roots, and I’m a proud Hoosier now.” —Laura Baich, Electronic Marketing Manager
Though her current job is a far cry from the medical career she had originally planned on, Laura is thrilled she chose to follow a publishing career path instead. She likes that every day is different as IUP’s electronic marketing manager, where she spends her time planning and executing social media, blogging, and email campaigns. She has also acquired some books for IUP—her favorite is Undeniably Indiana, an entirely crowdsourced book that combines her social media background and her native Hoosier background into a story of the people of Indiana in their own words.
She says IU Press is special because “we take chances on books here that other trade houses wouldn’t because it’s too risky of an investment. We really want to give a voice to areas that are underserved, and a perfect example of that is our Break Away Books series. It includes fiction and nonfiction from Midwestern writers or people that have written about the Midwest. We are trying to show that the Midwest transcends its place and is more than just flyover country. We relate to the entire country, yet there’s something really unique about being Midwestern too.”
Does Laura love Lucy?
In her free time she loves reading fiction and biographies of classic Hollywood stars, especially Lucille Ball. “That’ll come as no surprise to anyone who has seen my cubicle,” she says, because her workspace here at IU Press is covered in I Love Lucy paraphernalia.
She's been a proud member of IU Press twice: first from 1999-2000, and then again in 2002.
Tweet Laura: @laura_baich and @iupress
This month, we continue the celebration of our state's literary heritage with a new post by B.J. Hollars in our Indiana Bicentennial Bookshelf blog series. This series is written by Hoosier authors about their favorite Indiana books and writers.
B.J. Hollars and Michael Martone. Photo by Patricia Murphy.
By B.J. Hollars
I first met Michael Martone in the Davenport Municipal Airport in May of 2006. I was a junior in college, and after stumbling upon his collection, Fort Wayne is Seventh on Hitler’s List, I made it my goal to bring him to my college to read.
The book moved me. What other book could drift so deftly between James Dean and Alfred Kinsey, and—most importantly to me—the myth/legend/truth concerning our shared hometown, Fort Wayne, Indiana, which had allegedly found itself squarely in the crosshairs of Hitler’s bombing list.
What had our city done to earn the ire of the Fuhrer?
It was our manufacturing, of course. Legend has it our city produced enough magnet wiring to win the war twice, thereby placing us seventh on Hitler’s list.
For a young writer who was, perhaps, a little homesick, a little demoralized, and a little uncertain on what the future held, learning of our hometown’s perseverance was likely just what I needed to hear: proof that a random place on the map had the power to overcome great challenges. Proof for me, as well, that a random person might overcome great challenges, too. I wanted desperately to hear that message, and preferably from the man who wrote it first.
Which is how I found myself in the Davenport airport that day, peering out as the passengers de-planed and spotting the flowing-maned Martone and his high school-aged son slowly headed my way.
Introductions were made, conversations had, and so enthusiastic/star struck/nervous was I, that after beginning our hour long journey to the college, I proceeded to tack on an additional hour as a result of my poor sense of direction. We were somewhere in the cornfields of Iowa when Michael—no stranger to Iowa himself—humbly asked, “B.J., are you sure we’re headed in the right direction?”
I was not sure, though the next exit confirmed that we were not.
It’s bad enough to be a bumbling student, but far worse to be one who appears to be holding the visiting writer hostage. Years later, after I was admitted into the University of Alabama’s M.F.A. program, where Michael taught, I joked that it was probably my hostage-taking that ultimately nudged me from the waitlist. Perhaps they let me in, I reasoned, to ensure I didn’t take any other visiting writers hostage.
Looking back on that moment, it’s clear to me now that I would’ve driven onto the coast (any coast!) had Michael not mentioned the possibility that perhaps I’d gotten us lost. Indeed, it was a circuitous route, but Michael played it cool—put up with that bumbling student—and then put up with him for four additional years while serving as my thesis advisor.
This essay’s not about me, it’s about Michael. And yet I can’t get to the heart of Michael Martone without telling you all that he’s done for me. Yet I can’t tell you all that he’s done for me because while the Internet is endless, this blog post is not, and as my word count fast approaches, I’m left feverish for all I didn’t tell.
Like how Michael shepherded me through my first book proposal, which would become my first edited anthology. And how the next year he helped me complete my first nonfiction project, which would become my first book.
My story is not unique. It is the story that all of his students tell.
Which is why for me, the reason Michael Martone’s a great Hoosier writer—a great writer, period—is because his writing is only the half of it. Take your pick—Fort Wayne is Seventh on Hitler’s List, The Flatness and Other Landscapes, Michael Martone, Four For a Quarter, The Blue Guide to Indiana, etc., etc.—all those books will leave you breathless. But keep in mind that he’s a teacher, too, and a mentor, and an inspiration, and a man, frankly, whose work far transcends the page. For as long as I’ve known him, he’s always doing his part to ensure that other writers find their own pages. He guides us when we’re lost, helps us right the course.
“B.J., are you sure we’re headed in the right direction?” he asked while I was stuck in the throes of my thesis.
I was not, again, though soon we found our path.
B.J. Hollars is author of two award-winning nonfiction books, Thirteen Loops: Race, Violence and the Last Lynching in America and Opening the Doors: The Desegregation of the University of Alabama and the Fight for Civil Rights in Tuscaloosa, as well as Dispatches from the Drownings: Reporting the Fiction of Nonfiction. He has published two books with IU Press: Sightings and This Is Only a Test. He is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
Next month, Michael Martone will be blogging for us in the Indiana Bicentennial Bookshelf series. Check back in May for his post!
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