Book Business’ first annual “50 Top Women in Book Publishing” feature recognizes and honors some of these industry leaders who affect and transform how publishing companies do business, and what—and how—consumers read.

The women who were selected this year represent various segments of the industry, from educational publishers and university presses to the world’s largest trade publishers.

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And beyond the duties and responsibilities of the positions they hold, they have impacted the business of book publishing with service to industry organizations and by speaking and contributing at industry events. Whatever individual ways each woman has contributed, they are all, in a word—inspiring.

The directors of three university presses are among those named, including our very own Kate Torrey, director of UNC Press. The article includes a professional tip from each of the honorees. Here’s the entry on Kate:

Torrey has been director of the University of North Carolina Press since 1992. She currently represents university presses on the Board of Directors of the Association of American Publishers and is a past president of the Association of American University Presses.

• Tip: “Be prepared, be clear, be generous.”

We congratulate Kate on being recognized as one of the best in the industry. We benefit every day from having her at the helm here at UNCP.

–ellen

Each year, hundreds of booksellers across the South vote on their favorite hand-sell books of the year. These are the Southern books they have most enjoyed selling to customers; the ones that they couldn’t stop talking about; the ones most often pushed into a customer’s hands with the words “You have got to read this!” The SIBA Book Award was created to recognize great books of Southern origin, as determined by people whose business it is to know great books—the independent booksellers of the South.

Books are nominated in six categories, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, cooking, young adult and children’s. For a book to be eligible, it must be set in the South, and it must have been originally published within the 2008 calendar year. Only SIBA-member booksellers can submit nominations and vote on the selection of finalists. Winners will be chosen from the list of finalists by a jury of SIBA booksellers.

UNC Press titles made an impression in two categories this year, cooking and nonfiction:

In the cooking category, Holy Smoke is one of 12 finalists. Says one bookseller, it’s “part cookbook, part elegy for a passing way of life, part treasure trove of secret recipes. This is the best barbecue book for anyone east of the Appalachians.”

In the nonfiction category, Without Precedent is one of 20 finalists. Syndicated columnist D. G. Martin said, “Glowing praise may not sufficiently describe the merit of this book and the high standard it sets as an example of how to tell the story of an important person.”

You can see lists of finalists in all six categories, as well as previous years’ winners, at SIBA’s awards page.

Our congratulations and good luck to authors John and Dale Reed, Will McKinney, and Anna Hayes!

I’m in charge of the blog for a while and I’m going to write about things that I think should be brought to the public’s attention.  And Anoop Desai is certainly one of those things.

Back in a former life I was a Children’s Librarian in two Wake County, North Carolina Public Schools.  Both Hunter and Fuller Elementary schools were Academically Gifted Magnets meaning both had more than their share of bright, interesting kids with lots of personality.

One of those (Fuller) kids was Anoop Desai.  He was a bit small for his age, had a round face and was, in the best sense of the word, precocious.  He was smart, knew he was smart, but didn’t make a big deal out of it.  He was funny in a way that made both his peers and his teachers laugh.

I found him on Facebook a few years back and was happy to see that he was a student at UNC – Chapel Hill and was doing well.  He was one of those kids who could go far and it looked like he was doing just that.

And now he’s one of the final 36 on American Idol.

So in a blatant attempt at swaying the vote I’m asking all of you to join in with all of the 3,000+ people on Facebook who have committed to calling in for Anoop tonight and make those call.

Vote early, vote often! Let’s have a UNC student (and barbecue lover!) staying on American Idol!

– tom

By the end of last week, however, things started turning around. The skies turned blue again, the temperatures started climbing and by the weekend it was time to relieve that cabin fever and get outside.

All of which makes the crowd of close to 120 people that showed up to listen to author Leslie Brown give her presentation on the history of Durham’s communities all that more impressive.

As we blogged last week before the event, Brown was speaking in association with her book “Upbuilding Black Durham” which had just won the 2009 Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians.

Brown spoke to an enthusiastic crowd, striking the overall tone of her book by reminding the audience that, “History is not just names and dates, but what people did and how they did it.”

– tom

The grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation teams the UNC Press with the University of Arizona Press, the University of Minnesota Press, and Oregon State University Press.

Mark Simpson-Vos, an acquisitions editor at UNC Press who has worked closely with the project, describes the synergistic goals of the project thusly:

There’s a real push now among scholars, indigenous people, policy makers, and others to create a discourse that crosses national and disciplinary boundaries. This grant from the Mellon Foundation comes in recognition of these developments and is meant to support our work as publishers to follow the field as it continues to evolve, publishing the best work and ensuring that it reaches its intended audience–an audience that… is increasingly international and multidisciplinary.”

All four university presses will work together to bring new light to the growing field of indigenous studies, reflecting a growing interest among U.S. and international scholars in “Native American” histories, cultures, political sovereignty, and experiences with colonization and decolonization are understood and shared as well as the value of traditional knowledge, and ethnic identity.

The presses will use the grant money to attract scholars in this field and assist them with research and travel. As well, the presses will assist with crafting manuscripts that will reach the broadest audience through new marketing and promotion.

Our official press release can be viewed here.

– Tom

A surprise party at the home of Lou’s University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill colleague Lars Schoultz featured a sheet cake decorated (amazingly accurately) in the image of one of Lou’s most famous books: On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture.

On Becoming Cuban won the 2000 Bolton-Johnson Prize from the Conference on Latin American History and was a 2000 Choice Outstanding Academic Title. Lou’s other UNC Press books include To Die in Cuba: Suicide and Society (winner of the 2007 Elsa Goveia Prize from the Association of Caribbean Historians), Winds of Change: Hurricanes and the Transformation of Nineteenth-Century Cuba (winner of the 2001 George Perkins Marsh Prize from the American Society for Environmental History), and The War of 1898: The United States and Cuba in History and Historiography (a 1999 Choice Outstanding Academic Title). Lou’s authoritative one-volume history of Cuba, Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution, will soon appear in a fourth edition.

All of us at UNC Press salute and congratulate Lou Pérez for his well-deserved recognition by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and, more fundamentally, for his lifelong leadership as a superb historian of Cuba and U.S.-Cuban relations. Lou’s work has been profiled in The New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, to highlight just a few venues. His commitment to developing the field of Cuban studies is legendary — he presently serves as the editor of the UNC Press book series Envisioning Cuba and as the editor of the journal Cuban Studies. As well as being the J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he serves as director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas at UNC’s Global Education Center. Learn more about Lou’s new book: Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos.

–Elaine Maisner
Senior Editor

(author photo by Deborah M. Weissman)

update: Cake made by Two Cupcakes Bakery in Durham! Bravo! – ellen

Rob Christensen, author of The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics, has been awarded the 2008 Ragan Old North State Award for Nonfiction by the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association. The successor to the organization’s Mayflower Cup, the Ragan Old North State Award honors Sam Ragan: poet, critic, publisher, and the first Secretary of what is now the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources.

Anne Shelby, author of The Adventures of Molly Whuppie and Other Appalachian Folktales, has received an Aesop Accolade from the Children’s Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society. This book of fourteen stories for readers age 10 and up is like a series of Jack Tales — but with a girl hero (who ends up saving Jack more than once)! Traditional folktale plots meet contemporary sensibility.

Wesley C. Hogan, author of Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC’s Dream for a New America, has earned the 2008 Library of Virginia Literary Award for Nonfiction. This is the third award for Hogan; Many Minds has also been awarded the 2008 Lillian Smith Book Award by the Southern Regional Council as well as the 2009 Scott Bills Memorial Prize by the Peace History Society.

Congratulations to all three authors for your good work!

–ellen

The Michael Harrington Book Award, given annually by the New Political Science Section of the American Political Science Association, recognizes “a recent outstanding book that demonstrates how scholarship can be used in the struggle for a better world.” This year’s prize has been awarded to Geoff Mann for his book Our Daily Bread: Wages, Workers, and the Political Economy of the American West.

In Our Daily Bread, Geoff Mann examines struggles over wages to reveal ways in which the wage becomes a critical component in the making of social hierarchies of race, gender, and citizenship. Taking three wage disputes in the natural resources industry as his case studies, Mann demonstrates that wage negotiation is not just about income — it’s also about personal identity in a capitalist society.

Praise from the Award Committee:

“Compelling, provocative, and creative. . . . [Mann's] case studies show us the role of wage struggles in the creation of nationalistic, gender, and racial identities as the cultural politics of wages unfold over time and in different contexts.”

Congratulations to Geoff Mann! The award will be presented at APSA’s annual meeting in August.