A New Series from UNC Press – Great Circle Books
![Great Circle Books Logo](https://i0.wp.com/uncpressblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Great-Circle_logo_color-1-150x150-1.jpg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1)
Great Circle Books publishes literary nonfiction—including memoir, literary journalism, personal and lyric essays, and work that defies easy classification—by emerging writers. The Great Circle is the intersection of lines on the celestial sphere—lines overlapping and creating new entryways of understanding. In that spirit, Great Circle Books seeks, through innovative work, to merge the human experience with our relationship to place. Its books are intended for general readers, as well as students and teachers of writing, particularly those interested in urgent and previously unvoiced cultural conversations that offer new ways to see and understand a world in a constant state of flux.
As much as the series emphasizes groundbreaking, place-based literary nonfiction, Great Circle aims to provide a welcoming space for writers broadly defined as emerging—emphasizing those who have not yet published a book-length work of literary nonfiction. The series is particularly invested in writers who lack access to publishing networks like agents and editors, and who have been overlooked by large commercial presses.
UNC Press Sponsoring Editors: Lucas Church & Cate Hodorowicz
Meet Series Editors Kiese Laymon & Marie Mutsuki Mockett
![Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon is the author of the NAACP Image Award winning novel, Long Division and the essay collection, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. Laymon’s bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir, won the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the 2018 Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times. Laymon is the Libby Shearn Moody Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University and founder of the Catherine Coleman Arts and Justice Initiative.](https://i0.wp.com/uncpressblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Laymon.jpg?resize=680%2C383&ssl=1)
![Marie Mutsuki Mockett was born to an American father and Japanese mother. American Harvest: God, Country and Farming in the Heartland (Graywolf) won the 2021 Northern California Book Award for General Nonfiction and is a tribute to the complicated and nuanced history of the United States and its people. Her memoir, “Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye,” was a finalist for the 2016 PEN Open Book Award. She lives in San Francisco, and teaches at the Bennington Writing Seminars.](https://i0.wp.com/uncpressblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Mockett.jpg?resize=680%2C383&ssl=1)
Meet the Editorial Board & Advisory Members
More information on the series can be found here.
UNC Press editors Lucas Church & Cate Hodorowicz would love to connect with those interested in this new series! You can contact them via email at greatcircle@uncpress.org or if you’ll be attending AWP later this week, stop by T522 to talk with them in-person!
You must be logged in to post a comment.