Illinois Press Book Blog

Five hour flight delay on Wednesday. All materials arrived safely by Thursday. Setup. Lunch. Setup a little more. Los Angeles print publicity panel. Use freakish height to hang lights for a fellow university press. Walk back to the hotel past the Staples Center. Bookforum’s Reading the World Initiative reception. Buy smoothie but decline “free boost.” Watch the Lakers on TV win the Western Conference Finals at the Staples Center. Iron clothes. Skim directory. Logoff.

Mormon-Chronicles reports that W. Paul Reeve’s Making Space on the Western Frontier: Mormons, Minors, and Southern Paiutes won a Best First Book award from the Mormon History Association.

Lisa Thompson, author of the forthcoming UIP book, Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class, celebrates the opening of her play, Single Black Female, off-Broadway in June.

Playing at the Duke on 42nd Street, the comedy stars Soara-Joye Ross and Riddick Marie, and is directed by Tony Award-winning director Colman Domingo.

Both the book and play focus on black middle-class women negotiating issues of sexuality.

On The New York Times online Technology page, David Pogue relays his experience releasing books in electronic form. Many reader comments follow.

“Twice in my career, ‘blind’ people e-mailed me, requesting a PDF of one of my books. Both times, I sent one over–and both times, it was all over the piracy sites within 48 hours, free for anyone to download.”

Stephane Dunn, author of the forthcoming University of Illinois Press book “Baad Bitches” and Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films, contributed a commentary to NewsOne.com about Morehouse College’s white valedictorian in the class of 2008.

“Since I teach at Morehouse, folks I know have made it a point to offer their opinions on the ‘historic’ event. I must confess, I was a bit surprised by it myself since one can indeed go for weeks at a time and not encounter a young white man on campus. I wasn’t shocked, however. No one familiar with Packwood’s outstanding social and scholastic achievements and his heartfelt speech on Sunday would find his valedictorian status surprising at any institution.”

Jack Forbes, author of The American Discovery of Europe, spoke recently to a crowd of fifty patrons at the UC Davis Bookstore.  Tradebooks buyer Paul Takushi captured the event.

PW Daily reports that Microsoft is ending its Live Search Books program.

“Microsoft will be providing publishers with digital copies of their scanned books, and is working with Ingram Digital, which was doing much of the scanning, to provide publishers with sales and marketing opportunities for titles already in Live Search Books.”

Inside Higher Ed reported this morning that a web-based company has stopped selling the content of faculty papers that had been sold online without the authors’ knowing consent.

“It might have been possible for users to have missed the fine print. The agreement is part of a long list of terms of use, and some visitors to the site may have hit the ‘agree’ button in rapid fire without carefully reading.”

OV Books has a week of literary events lined up in Chicago to celebrate the publication of Stacy Bierlein’s new anthology A Stranger Among Us: Stories of Cross Cultural Collision and Connection.

UTNE READER
“This anthology of international fiction explodes with unexpected combinations of place, ethnicity, and nationality.”

LIBRARY JOURNAL
“Engaging, moving, and well-written.”

BOOKLIST
“With an eye to short stories stemming from diverse cultures and exploring the state of outsiderness, editor Bierlein has selected 30 vibrant, unpredictable, and magnetic works that together span the spectrum from funny to tragic, earthy to rarefied.”

Thursday, June 5, 7:30 pm: Women & Children First Bookstore, 5233 N.
Clark Street hosts “A Stranger Among Us kick-off reading,” featuring
Stacy Bierlein, Gina Frangello and Carolyn Alessio. Two contributors
will read from the anthology and the Editor will discuss pulling
together this international compilation.

Friday, June 6, 7pm: FLATFILEgalleries hosts a release party for
A Stranger Among Us. Wine, food, conversation, and some stunning art,
including photography by gallery owner Susan Aurinko, who designed the
cover for A Stranger Among Us.

Saturday, June 7: All morning/afternoon: Visit OV Books at
Printers Row Book Fair in Chicago.

Monday, June 9, 6pm: The Writers Workspace, 5443 N. Broadway, hosts an
author/editor’s coffee with Stacy Bierlein, Executive Editor of OV
Books’ Los Angeles office and Editor of A Stranger Among Us. Stacy will discuss how to compile an anthology, or how to build your resume by gathering publications in themed anthologies.

And, Las Vegas City Life jumps in with another positive review.

Poshek Fu, editor of the forthcoming University of Illinois Press book China Forever: The Shaw Brothers and Diasporic Cinema, spent A Minute With the News Bureau discussing the government of China’s response to the recent earthquake.