Book of the Year Award Winner

Earlier this week at the Conference of College Composition and Communication in San Franciso, Mary Sheridan-Rabideau's book Girls, Feminism, and Grassroots Literacies won the Book of the Year Award from Steve Park's Reflections: A Journal of Writing, Service-Learning, and Community Literacy. The book won acclaim for its work on civic engagement.

Congratulations, Mary!

2008 ForeWord Book of the Year Finalists

Two SUNY Press books are finalists for the 2008 ForeWord Book of the Year Awards.

William Cullen Bryant, by Gilbert H. Muller, is a finalist in the biography category, while Twenty West, by Mac Nelson, made the cut in the travel category.

The winners will be announced at Book Expo in New York City on May 29. Congratulations to our authors on this exciting news!

Interview with Eve Pell

We Used to Own the Bronx was reviewed again, this time on the blog Ghost Word. Author Eve Pell was also interviewed for the piece, and you can read it all here.

Eve will be reading from the book tomorrow, March 11, from 7–9 pm at Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA. She'll also be at Books Inc. in San Francisco on Friday, March 20, from 7–9 pm.

Calendar of Events

We've added a link over on the side bar called Calendar of Events. It takes you to—you guessed it—a calendar of events on the SUNY Press website. Now you can keep up with what our authors are doing, whether they are being interviewed on radio or TV, or giving a reading at your local bookstore.

A small note on a big upcoming event: for those in the Albany area, stop by The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza next Friday the 13th at 7pm for a book signing and reception with Barbara Seals Nevergold and Peggy Brooks-Bertram, the coeditors of Go, Tell Michelle.

Twenty West

SUNY Press author Mac Nelson was recently interviewed for a story in the Daily Chronicle. Nelson wrote Twenty West: The Great Road Across America, which follows the route, history, and geography of US 20, America’s longest road.

The book has garnered some fantastic reviews elsewhere as well:

"Nelson manages to pull off the not-so-easy feat of being quirky, erudite and entertaining.” — Chicago Tribune

“Armchair travelers and devotees of American history are in for a treat.” — Ann La Farge, The Independent

“A wonderful read for armchair travelers, and the next best thing to touring the length of US Route 20 in person.” — Midwest Book Review

“From New York state to Yellowstone National Park, Nelson visits the ridiculous and the sublime … Twenty West shows plenty and according to Nelson, ‘There is room for all of us.’” — ForeWord Magazine

Remembering the Revolution

Eve Pell's We Used to Own the Bronx has been reviewed in the Wall Street Journal. Here's an excerpt:

"... a literary treat. ... Pell gives us a kind of cultural anthropology of the closest thing in America to a landed gentry." — Sol Stern

Read the full review here.

Black Soldiers of New York State

Anthony Gero, author of the new SUNY Press book Black Soldiers of New York State: A Proud Legacy, spoke about his work and signed copies of the book on Sunday, February 22 at the Cayuga Museum in Auburn, New York. Gero, a Fellow of the Company of Military Historians, worked more than ten years on the research for the book, trying to answer the basic question of why these African-Americans would serve a country that denied them the full rights of citizenship. “It is essentially a book about dreams,” said Gero. He also includes this quote from Martin Luther King Jr. in the book, which provides further insight: “If a man hasn’t discovered something he would die for, he isn’t fit to live.”

It was fitting to hold the event at the museum, as Cayuga County, with documented African-American veterans from the Civil War on, is mentioned frequently in the book. Black Soldiers of New York State is now available at our website, and if you're in Auburn, you can pick up a copy at the Cayuga Museum.