Call For Papers Ghana Studies – Special Issue Ghana’s Long 1970s: Reconsidering the Lost Decade (1966–1981)

There has been a surge of scholarly interest in the Ghana of the 1950s and 1960s, under its charismatic independence era leader Kwame Nkrumah. These works tell a new story of that era, focusing on the possibilities of independence by looking anew at Pan-Africanism, socialism, new histories of the Cold War and Black internationalism (Alhman 2017; Getachew 2019; Iandolo 2022; Osei-Opare 2023).


In contrast, Ghana’s 1970s are often reduced to an afterthought. Military coups dominate the narrative. Indeed, the 1970s are a decade characterized by military rule, economic decline, emigration, and hardship (Hutchful 1979; Pellow & Chazan 1986). This hardship is reflected in the relative lack of scholarship on the period. The body of work that does exist tends to reinforce a top-down narrative, with a strong focus on the state. It is only after 1981, when J.J. Rawlings comes to power and stays, that Ghana again attracts significant scholarly interest (Herbst 1993; Nugent 1995; Brydon & Legge 1996).


Forty years on, it is high time to return to the 1970s. Inspired by the interest in the Nkrumah years, and motivated by the availability of new archives in Ghana and elsewhere, we invite historians to reconsider the 1970s with us. Building on recent scholarship that begins to probe the 1970s anew (Hart 2016; Murillo 2017; Wiemers 2021), we seek contributions that engage with the following questions:
● How might our understanding of this decade change if instead of focusing on disjuncture, we looked for continuity?
● How did this period of transition between two defining political regimes (between Nkrumah and Rawlings) shape contemporary Ghana?
● How did ordinary Ghanaians navigate this tumultuous decade? What does a focus on everyday lives, rather than a state-centric approach, reveal about these years?
● What new methods and sources might we turn to, to recover histories of a decade when state institutions supposedly collapsed?
● To what extent can the framing of “Ghana’s long 1970s” (1966–1981) help us reconsider the history of postcolonial Ghana?

We are particularly interested in contributions that de-center political narratives, but are open to a wide array of approaches. We welcome expressions of interest and further conversations regarding potential submissions (write to: claire.nicolas@unil.ch).

Submission Guidelines

Abstracts (200 words) should be submitted to Claire Nicolas (claire.nicolas@unil.ch) and Elisa Prosperetti (elisa.prosperetti@nie.edu.sg) by 1 April 2023.

Contributors will be notified by 15 April 2023.

Full papers (8000 words) are to be received by 15 September 2023.

All articles will undergo peer review. Those accepted for publication will appear in a special issue of Ghana Studies, scheduled for publication in 2024.

About Ghana Studies
Ghana Studies is the peer-reviewed journal of the Ghana Studies Association, an international affiliate of the African Studies Association (U.S). Its current editors are Victoria Ellen Smith (University of Bristol) and Nana Yaw Boampong Sapong (University of Ghana). Since its first issue in 1998, the journal has published significant work by leading scholars based in Ghana, the United States, Canada, and Europe. It is published annually by the University of Wisconsin Press.

About the editors of the special issue
Claire Nicolas is a Research Fellow from the Swiss National Science Foundation, at SOAS (University of London). She specializes in the history of sport, citizenship, and gender.
Elisa Prosperetti is an Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Education at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. She specializes in the history of education, development, and nation-building.

Bibliography
J. Alhman, Living with Nkrumahism: Nation, State, and Pan-Africanism in Ghana (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2017).
L. Brydon and K. Legge, Adjusting Society: The World Bank, the IMF, and Ghana (London: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 1996).
A. Getachew, Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).
J. Hart, “‘NIFA NIFA’: Technopolitics, Mobile Workers, and the Ambivalence of Decline in Acheampong’s Ghana,” African Economic History, 44 (2016): 181–201.
J. Herbst, The Politics of Reform in Ghana, 1982-1991 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
E. Hutchful, “A Tale of Two Regimes: Imperialism, the Military and Class in Ghana,” Review of African Political Economy 14 (1979): 36–55.
A. Iandolo, Arrested Development: The Soviet Union in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali, 1955–1968 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022).
B. Murillo, Market Encounters: Consumer Cultures in Twentieth-Century Ghana (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2017).
P. Nugent, Big Men, Small Boys, and Politics in Ghana: Power, Ideology, and the Burden of History, 1982-1994 (London: Pinter, 1995).
N. Osei-Opare, “Ghana and Nkrumah Revisited: Lenin, State Capitalism, and Black Marxist Orbits,” Comparative Studies in Society and History (2023): 1-23.
D. Pellow and N. Chazan, Ghana: Coping with Uncertainty (Boulder: Westview Press, 1986).
A. Wiemers, Development and Rural Statecraft in Twentieth-Century Ghana (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2021).

ANNOUNCING THE RESULTS OF THE WISCONSIN POETRY SERIES’ INAUGURAL TRANSLATION COMPETITION

Out of 65 entrants, Katherine M. Hedeen and Olivia Lott have been selected as the winners of the Wisconsin Poetry Series’ inaugural translation competition, for their translation of three volumes of Venezuelan poet Juan Calzadilla’s work, Dictated by the Pack, Bad Manners, and The Supernatural Contradictions. They will receive $1,500, and the collection will be published this fall by the University of Wisconsin Press. In addition, Bill Johnston has been named a finalist, and his translation of Polish poet Julia Fiedorczuk’s Psalms will also be published this fall.

Forrest Gander, a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer and the translator of more than twenty books, served as the judge of this year’s contest. Gander’s latest book is Twice Alive: An Ecology of Intimacies. Among his recent translations are It Must Be a Misunderstanding by Coral Bracho, Names and Rivers by Shuri Kido (with Tomoyuki Endo), Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems, and Spectacle & Pigsty by Kiwao Nomura, winner of the Best Translated Book Award. Gander’s essays have appeared in The Nation, the Boston Review, and the New York Times Book Review. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Library of Congress; the National Endowment for the Arts; and the Guggenheim, Howard, United States Artists, and Whiting Foundations.

Katherine M. Hedeen is a translator and essayist. A specialist in Latin American poetry, she has translated some of the most respected voices from the region into English. Her latest book-length translations include prepoems in postspanish by Jorgenrique Adoum, Book of the Cold by Antonio Gamoneda, Every Beat Is Secret by Fina García Marruz, Almost Obscene by Raúl Gómez Jattin, and rebel matter by Víctor Rodríguez Núñez. Her work has been a finalist for both the Best Translated Book Award and the National Translation Award. She is a recipient of two NEA Translation Grants in the US and a PEN Translates award in the UK. A managing editor for Action Books, Hedeen is a professor of Spanish at Kenyon College. More information can be found at www.katherinemhedeen.com.

Olivia Lott is a translator and literary scholar. She is the translator or co-translator of Raúl Gómez Jattin’s Almost Obscene, Lucía Estrada’s Katabasis, and Soleida Ríos’s The Dirty Text. Her translations have received recognitions from the Academy of American Poets, PEN America, and Words Without Borders. She holds a PhD in Hispanic studies and is a specialist in 1960s Latin America, neo-avant-garde poetry and poetics, and translation studies; her scholarly writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from PMLA, Revista Hispánica Moderna, and Translation Studies. Lott is a visiting assistant professor of Spanish at Washington and Lee University. More information can be found at www.oliviamlott.com.

Juan Calzadilla is one of Venezuela’s most celebrated poets, painters, and art critics. He is the author of more than twenty books of poetry and, in 1996, was awarded Venezuela’s National Prize for the Visual Arts. His work, across both mediums, is characterized by political consciousness and formal innovation; prominent images include the surrealist chaos of urban space, the violent dehumanization of uneven modernity, and the abject probing of social and aesthetic status quos. In 1961, he cofounded the radical neo-avant-garde collective El Techo de la Ballena (The Roof of the Whale). This omnibus volume brings together the three poetry collections he published with the group between 1962 and 1967, and it marks the first U.S. edition of Calzadilla’s work available in English-language translation.

About the winning collection, Gander says, “Venezuelan poet Juan Calzadilla, cofounder of The Roof of the Whale—one of those sthenic artistic collectives bent on waking up the staid cultures of various Latin American countries during the sixties and seventies—addressed his poems to a specific audience during a momentous time; and yet his poems feel as though they were written last week precisely for us. Unvarnished, unimproved, shamanistic, his poems exude a raw, tumultuous energy that legendary translator Katherine Hedeen and her savvy co-translator Olivia Lott catch every drop of. But be careful, reader. Don’t start this book at night; you not only won’t sleep a wink, but you may find yourself far from home—as far as the Caracas of your imagination—rushing through ill-lit streets in a frenzy.”

Bill Johnston received the 2019 National Translation Award in Poetry for his rendering of Adam Mickiewicz’s epic narrative poem in rhyming couplets, Pan Tadeusz. He has translated more than forty books from Polish and French, including work by Tadeusz Różewicz, Wiesław Myśliwski, Tomasz Różycki, Jean Giono, and Jeanne Benameur. His other awards include the Best Translated Book Award, the PEN Translation Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He teaches literary translation at Indiana University.

Julia Fiedorczuk is one of Poland’s leading poets. She was awarded the 2018 Szymborska Prize, Poland’s most prestigious poetry award, for Psalmy (Psalms), and has received many other honors, including the Hubert Burda Prize and the Polish Association of Book Publishers award for best debut. The author of six volumes of poetry, two novels, a collection of short stories, and three critical books, Fiedorczuk is a professor of American studies and a cofounder of the Environmental Humanities Center at Warsaw University. Her work, both creative and academic, focuses on the relationship between humans and their more-than-human environments. Her poems have been translated into many languages, including books in Swedish, Spanish, Ukrainian, Serbian, and English. Her poetry collection Oxygen, also translated by Bill Johnston, was published by Zephyr Books in 2017. Fiedorczuk has also translated the poetry of numerous American poets, including Wallace Stevens, Laura Riding, and Forrest Gander.

“Winner of the Szymborska Prize, Poland’s most prestigious poetry award, Julia Fiedorczuk is, deservingly, an international literary star who writes distinctively across genres,” Gander says. “In this innovative, formally restless collection, the divine and bacterial, children and rivers, war and eros mix—kaleidoscopically—in unsettling poems that serve as hymns to the sacrality of life—all life, even the life of rocks. Somehow, I don’t know how, Johnston’s translation catches the music, the vowel rhyme, the staggered, restless phrasings of the originals, and Fiedorczuk’s poignant, broken tones of supplication and gratitude.”

Winners of this year’s Felix Pollak, Brittingham, and Four Lakes Prizes—as well as the runners-up—will be announced later this winter. Submissions for the next Wisconsin Poetry Series competition open on July 15, 2023. 

About the University of Wisconsin Press

The University of Wisconsin Press is a not-for-profit publisher of books and journals. With nearly 1,500 titles and over 8,000 peer-reviewed articles in print, its mission embodies the Wisconsin Idea by publishing work of distinction that serves the people of Wisconsin and the world. 

The Wisconsin Poetry Series was founded in 1985 by series editor Ron Wallace. Current series editors are Sean Bishop and Jesse Lee Kercheval. For more information on the series and the Wisconsin Poetry Prizes, please visit https://uwpress.wisc.edu/series/wi-poetry.html. 

CALL FOR PAPERS

The journal Arctic Anthropology, founded in 1962 by Chester S. Chard, announces a call for papers for our upcoming volume 59. We seek papers that report on research pertaining to the peoples and cultures of the arctic, subarctic, and contiguous regions of the world. Papers addressing new directions in interdisciplinary northern research, contemporary issues among northern peoples, collaborative research with northern residents, and northern voices are particularly welcome.

The style guide for the journal is available here.  Please send inquiries to Pete Collings, editor of Arctic Anthropology, at pcollings@ufl.edu

Please send manuscripts by February 24

The Most Read Articles of 2022

Explore the most read article of the year for each of our journals, available for free until the end of January.

Samanta Schweblin’s Fever Dream: Watery Toxicity, Percolating Disquietude by Olivia Vázquez–Medina, Contemporary Literature volume 62, issue 1

The Rise of Non-Native Invasive Plants in Wooded Natural Areas in Southwestern Ohio by Denis G. Conover and Robert D. Bergstein, Ecological Restoration volume 40, issue 2

Labor Market Concentration by José Azar, Ioana Marinescu and Marshall Steinbaum, Journal of Human Resources volume 57, supplement

Property Values, Water Quality, and Benefit Transfer: A Nationwide Meta-analysis by Dennis Guignet, Matthew T. Heberling, Michael Papenfus and Olivia Griot, Land Economics volume 92, issue 2

Invisible Labor: Precarity, Ethnic Division, and Transformative Representation in Landscape Architecture Work by Michelle Arevalos Franco, Landscape Journal volume 41, issue 1

An Early Encounter in the Global South by Ali Kulez, Luso-Brazilian Review volume 58, issue 2

Jean Paul’s Acoustic Romanticism and Aeolian Soundscapes in Vorschule der Ästhetik and Titan by Meryem Deniz, Monatshefte volume 114, issue 2

Seed collection, storage, and germination practices may affect Viola reintroduction outcomes by Sam Kilgore, Kayri Havens, Andrea Kramer, Ashlyn Lythgoe, Linda MacKechnie and Marcello De Vitis, Native Plants Journal volume 23, issue 1

Remembering former Associate Director Ezra (Sam) Diman, upon his passing

We recently learned of the passing of former UW Press Associate Director Ezra (“Sam”) Diman IV. Sam retired in 1995, after roughly thirty-five years on staff. Following time in the U.S. Armed Services and a brief stint working in publishing in Louisiana, Sam was hired into an entry-level job by then director Thompson Webb. He spent the next several decades working in progressively senior positions at the Press, serving as production manager and eventually associate director. 

Sam was particularly fond of the outdoors, and his broad knowledge of natural history served him (and UW Press) well; he was particularly proud of his work on such books as Mammals of Wisconsin (1961), Trout Stream Therapy (1993), and Crunching Gravel (1993), as well as Stanley Temple’s Bird Conservation series (1980s). He even appeared in the book Gone Fishin’. Former colleagues remember that he handled contracts and business and financial decisions; was a great advocate for the Press, on campus and off; and provided generous mentorship and friendship to his colleagues. He was also very involved in the AUPresses (then AAUP) community. Fluent in German and Spanish and literate in French, he is remembered as a broad-minded thinker. 

“He was from another age in all the best ways and very forward thinking in other ways,” said John Motoviloff, a UW Press author, employee from 1992 to 2000, and R3 Coordinator for the National Wild Turkey Federation. “Sam was a gentleman of the old school. As comfortable in the company of deans and regents as he was on a duck marsh or trout stream, he knew both a life of the mind and how to work with his hands. He served the Press with dignity for more than three decades. Dry wit, an affable nature, and a firm handshake were just a few of his trademarks. He will be missed by all those who knew him, and would be missed by those who did not have that good fortune.”

Following his retirement, Sam fulfilled his long-held dream of building a house in the Driftless region, married Perry L. Nesbitt, and spent countless hours outdoors. His full obituary can be found here. 

UW Press announces personnel changes and the creation of a combined EDP department 

After thirty-four years at the University of Wisconsin Press, most of them spent in the role of production manager, Terry Emmrich retired this summer. His steady hand in that position was instrumental in helping us navigate some challenging transitions over the decades, both internally and endemic to the industry. It would be impossible to replace him, so we’re not going to try. Instead, we have merged the production and editorial departments, and Adam Mehring has been named the first editorial, design, and production (EDP) manager in the history of UW Press. 

Adam started at UW Press in the 1990s as an undergraduate intern responsible for a number of tasks, including writing catalog and jacket copy. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin with a bachelor’s degree in English, he worked part-time in our marketing department for a few years before transitioning to the editorial department. He was named editor in 2001 and managing editor in 2006.

Joining Adam in the new EDP department is Sheila McMahon, who has been at UW Press since 1999, most recently serving as senior project editor and now taking on the managing editor position. Sheila began her career as a marketing student intern before moving over to the acquisitions department and finally into the editorial department in 2005. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English–creative writing and Latin American studies from UW–Madison. Sheila is also a freelance copyeditor and proofreader for several university presses. 

We are also happy to announce that we hired Jessica Smith (she/they) as a project editor in May. Jessica comes to us after five years in trade book publishing at Sourcebooks, where she most recently worked as lead production editor for the Sourcebooks Casablanca imprint, shepherding multiple New York Times and USA Today best sellers to print. She was most proud to work on diverse and LGBTQIA+ titles and is an advocate for sensitivity, accessibility, and inclusion in publishing. She graduated summa cum laude from Illinois State University with a degree in English–publishing studies and a political science minor. Jessica currently works remotely from Illinois with two lap cats, Kya and Samwise.

Jennifer Conn joined the UW Press production department as art director in 2017, and is now with us full time. She’s been designing for a couple of decades, for a publisher of special ed curriculum, as a cofounder of a start-up, and for various freelance clients over the years. She enjoys combining her love of books and art and collaborating with designers, authors, and the press team. Her favorite spot is art journaling in a hammock in Door County and she’s ambivalently looking forward to her imminent empty nest.

From left: Sheila McMahon, Jessica Smith, Terry Emmrich, Jennifer Conn, Adam Mehring

We also want to take this opportunity to belatedly announce some other recent hires at UW Press.

Last fall, we hired Alison (Allie) Shay as our new publicity manager. Allie comes to UW Press following stints at UNC Press and Syracuse University Press, where she served as publicist and acquisitions editor, respectively. Before starting her publishing career in 2011, Allie spent five years as a bookseller and earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism from UNC. She works remotely from North Carolina with her two dogs, Mason and Daisy, who have been known to pop up on our social media from time to time. 

In our journals division, Dan Bennett joined us last fall as our new customer service and business development associate, coming from the International Dairy Deli Bakery Association, where he was a member services specialist.

Our journals production manager, Erica Teal, joined us last fall from the California Pharmacists Association, where she was managing editor of their journal. She began her publishing career at the Mathematical Association of America, working on two of their journals.

Finally, we recently welcomed our new journals marketing manager, David Bulgerin. David is completing his MBA from Colorado State University and has varied marketing experience, working in the provost’s communications office at Texas A&M, at Bryan Research & Engineering, and at Texas A&M Transportation Services.

With the restructuring of our EDP department and these new hires in journals and marketing, we are back up to full staffing for the first time since just before the pandemic began.

Submissions now open for Wisconsin Poetry Prizes!

The Wisconsin Prize for Poetry in Translation

Submissions are now open for the first annual Wisconsin Prize for Poetry in Translation! Our inaugural judge will be Forrest Gander, a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer and the translator of more than twenty books. Gander is also a winner of the Best Translated Book Award and grants from the PEN Translation Fund.

Translators or original authors are invited to submit a book-length manuscript, including all poems in both their original language and their English translation. The translations submitted must be previously unpublished in book form. Simultaneous submissions are permitted as long as the applicant withdraws the manuscript if it is accepted elsewhere. The winning manuscript will be awarded $1,500 and will be published by the University of Wisconsin Press in the spring of 2024, alongside the winners of our annual Brittingham & Felix Pollak Prizes in Poetry. Submissions will remain open until September 15, 2022, through Submittable (click here).

Applicants are asked to confirm they hold the rights to their translations before preparing a manuscript in pdf format, including the following:

  • A simple title page, which should include the names of the original author(s) and translator(s).
  • A table of contents, with accurate page numbers indicated.
  • 75 to 150 pages of poetry, including all poems in both their original language and translated into English, with numbered pages.
  • A biography page, including 50- to 250-word bios for each author and translator.
  • A project description that addresses the book’s historical, cultural, and/or artistic significance.
  • An acknowledgments page (optional, if any translations are previously published).

Submit to the Brittingham & Felix Pollak Prizes

The Brittingham & Felix Pollak Prizes in Poetry are now open for submission as well! This year’s $1,500 prizes will be judged by National Book Award long-lister and Yale Series of Younger Poets prizewinner Eduardo C. Corral. Any poet with an original, full-length, yet-to-be-published collection is eligible, and each submitted manuscript will be considered for both prizes. The winners and up to four other finalists will have their books published as part of the University of Wisconsin Press’s Wisconsin Poetry Series. This year’s submission deadline is Thursday, September 15.

Before visiting our Submittable page, please assemble a single pdf including a title page, a table of contents, your poems, and (optionally) an acknowledgments page listing any magazines or journals where the submitted poems may have first appeared. Your name and contact info should not appear anywhere in the document, or in the pdf file name. Manuscripts should be fifty to ninety pages in length on 8.5″ x 11″ pdf pages.

Simultaneous submissions are permitted as long as the author agrees to withdraw the manuscript via the submissions manager if it is accepted elsewhere. If you have any questions, please first consult our FAQ. If you don’t find your answer, query series editors Sean Bishop and Jesse Lee Kercheval at poetryseries@english.wisc.edu.

About This Year’s Judges

Forrest Gander, a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer and translator with degrees in geology and literature, was born in the Mojave Desert and lives in northern California. His most recent book is Twice Alive: An Ecology of Intimacies. Among his recent translations are It Must Be a Misunderstanding by Coral Bracho, Names and Rivers by Shuri Kido (with Tomoyuki Endo), Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems, and Spectacle & Pigsty by Kiwao Nomura, winner of the Best Translated Book Award. Gander’s essays have appeared in The Nation, the Boston Review, and the New York Times Book Review. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Library of Congress, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim, Howard, United States Artists, and Whiting Foundations.

Eduardo C. Corral is the author of Guillotine, longlisted for the National Book Award, and Slow Lightning, which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition. He’s the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, a Whiting Writer’s Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University. He teaches in the MFA program at North Carolina State University.

About the University of Wisconsin Press

The University of Wisconsin Press is a not-for-profit publisher of books and journals. With nearly 1,500 titles and over 8,000 peer-reviewed articles in print, its mission embodies the Wisconsin Idea by publishing work of distinction that serves the people of Wisconsin and the world. 

For more information on the Wisconsin Poetry Prizes, please visit https://uwpress.wisc.edu/series/wi-poetry.html.

Submission period now open for George L. Mosse First Book Prize

The University of Wisconsin Press and the George L. Mosse Program in History are pleased to announce that the submission period is now open for this year’s Mosse First Book Prize.

The prize was established in 2020 to honor Mosse’s commitment to scholarship and to mentoring new generations of historians. Winning books are published as part of the George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas, and the winning author receives a $5,000 prize, payable in two installments. An honorable mention winner may also be selected to receive a $1,000 prize and publication.

“George L. Mosse was a prolific and innovative scholar who significantly enriched our understanding of multiple aspects of European history: cultural symbolism and intellectual history, fascism and gender, Jewish and LGBTQ+ history. He was also a legendary mentor to aspiring scholars,” says series advisor David Sorkin. “This prize perpetuates George’s dual legacy of scholarship and mentorship by rewarding the next generation of historians with the opportunity to publish an outstanding monograph with the University of Wisconsin Press.”

The prize is open to original, previously unpublished monographs of historical scholarship in English (whether written in English or translated), and aims to support and engage early-career scholars writing on topics related to the history of European culture, sexuality, or ideas.

“We are excited to continue the Mosse prize for the second year,” says UW Press editor in chief Nathan MacBrien. “This is an opportunity for UW Press to acknowledge the innovative work of an early career scholar and for the selected author to publish a book that will reach a broad audience of scholars and students.”

Proposals will be accepted between March 22 and June 15, 2022; all submissions will be reviewed by the Press and series advisors. A short list of finalists will be chosen in July 2022, and those manuscripts will be read by a jury of expert readers, who will select the winning project. The winner will be announced after successful peer review of the manuscript.

Entrants should begin by sending a proposal to UW Press editor in chief Nathan MacBrien, at macbrien@wisc.edu. The subject line should contain “Mosse First Book Prize” as well as the author’s last name and a keyword. Please do not send the complete manuscript until requested to do so. Proposals should follow the guidelines detailed at https://uwpress.wisc.edu/proposal.html and should include the following elements:

  • the scope and rationale for the book and its main contributions, 
  • how the work fits with the Mosse Series, 
  • the audience and market for the book, 
  • the manuscript’s word count, 
  • an annotated table of contents, 
  • two sample chapters (ideally an introductory chapter and one interior chapter), and 
  • a curriculum vitae. 

Please note whether the book is under consideration elsewhere at the time of prize submission; work submitted for consideration must not be under contract elsewhere and should be complete at the time of submission.

About the University of Wisconsin Press

The University of Wisconsin Press is a not-for-profit publisher of books and journals. With nearly 1,500 titles and over 8,000 peer-reviewed articles in print, its mission embodies the Wisconsin Idea by publishing work of distinction that serves the people of Wisconsin and the world.

About the George L. Mosse Series in the History of European Culture, Sexuality, and Ideas

The Mosse series promotes the vibrant international collaboration and community that historian George L. Mosse created during his lifetime by publishing major innovative works by outstanding scholars in European cultural and intellectual history.

About George L. Mosse

A legendary scholar, teacher, and mentor, Mosse (1918–1999) joined the Department of History at UW–Madison in 1955. He was an early leader in the study of modern European culture, fascism, and the history of sexuality and masculinity. In 1965 Mosse was honored for his exceptional teaching by being named UW’s first John C. Bascom Professor. He remained famous among students and colleagues for his popular and engaging lectures, which were often standing-room only. A Jewish refugee from prewar Germany, Mosse was appointed a visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1969 and spent the final decades of his career traveling frequently between Madison and Jerusalem.

ANNOUNCING CHANGES TO THE WISCONSIN POETRY SERIES: NEW EDITORSHIP, NEW TRANSLATION PRIZE

The University of Wisconsin Press and the Creative Writing Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison today announced that Ron Wallace, founding editor of the Wisconsin Poetry Series, has stepped down as editor of the series. Jesse Lee Kercheval has joined Sean Bishop as series coeditor, effective early 2022.

Founder and former director of UW’s Program in Creative Writing, Ron Wallace is Felix Pollak Professor Emeritus of Poetry and Halls-Bascom Professor of English at UW–Madison. In 1985, Professor Wallace proposed the idea of a poetry prize to then UW Press director Allen Fitchen, and the Brittingham Prize was established. Creation of the Felix Pollak and Four Lakes Prizes followed. Sean Bishop began working on the series a number of years ago; in recognition of his efforts and contributions, he was named coeditor in 2019. The series receives nearly 1,000 submissions annually. 

Series founder Ron Wallace, who retires from his editorship after thirty-seven years, is the author of several scholarly books and a book of short stories as well as nine full-length books of poetry and eight chapbooks of poetry and fiction. His most recent poetry collections are The Uses of Adversity, Long for This World: New & Selected Poems, For a Limited Time Only, and For Dear Life, and he is the author of a major anthology, Vital Signs: Contemporary Poetry from the University Presses. Hailed for his wit, good humor, and observational powers, Professor Wallace has been the recipient of such awards as the Banta Book Prize, the Posner Book-Length Poetry Award, and the Wisconsin Library Association Outstanding Achievement Award. His numerous accolades include three UW distinguished teaching awards and the George Garrett Award from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. 

Sean Bishop says, “Ron Wallace has been the heart of the Wisconsin Poetry Series for almost forty years, expanding the series from just one slim volume per year to six annual titles. Ron prided himself on reading at least a portion of every book submitted to our annual competition—roughly twenty-five thousand manuscripts in the lifetime of the series—and his personal notes to applicants were legendary for their insight and generosity. Incoming editor Jesse Lee Kercheval and I are excited to carry Ron’s legacy forward for many years to come, and we hope we can live up to his stunning precedent.”

Incoming series coeditor Jesse Lee Kercheval, Zona Gale Emeritus Professor of English at UW–Madison, is the author of six collections of poetry as well as a translator. Her latest poetry collections are America that island off the coast of France (Tupelo Press, 2019), winner of the Dorset Prize; and La crisis es el cuerpo, translated by Ezequiel Zaidenwerg (Editorial Bajo la luna, Argentina, 2021). Her collection I Want to Tell You is forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press. As a translator, she specializes in Uruguayan and South American poetry; her translations include Love Poems by Idea Vilariño (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020), which was long-listed for the PEN Translation Award. She is also the editor of several anthologies, including América invertida: An Anthology of Emerging Uruguayan Poets (University of New Mexico Press, 2016). She has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts in both fiction and translation.

Along with the editorial changes, the University of Wisconsin Press also announced the establishment of a new prize for a collection of poetry in translation. The winning collection will be published in the series, alongside the winners of the Brittingham, Felix Pollak, and Four Lakes Prizes and three finalist collections. Manuscripts submitted for the translation prize will be judged during the same period as those submitted for the other prizes, and the winner will receive a $1,500 prize in addition to publication in the series.

“Over the years, I’ve watched with great admiration as Ron Wallace built the Wisconsin Poetry Series,” says Jesse Lee Kercheval. “As he steps down, I am honored to become coeditor of the series with Sean Bishop and, as a translator and poet, truly excited for the launch of the new translation prize.”

“It is with mixed emotions that I face this transition in the leadership of the Wisconsin Poetry Series. Joy over having the opportunity to work with Ron for several years, and sadness that those days are coming to an end. I have learned so much from him as an editor, watching the way he celebrates strong work and encourages authors to improve to find their greatest potential,” says UW Press director Dennis Lloyd. “At the same time, I’m very enthusiastic about working with Sean and Jesse Lee in the years to come, especially as we launch the new poetry in translation prize. With this announcement, we’ve managed to complete a long-planned goal of increasing the annual output of the series from three titles to seven.”

The winners of this year’s competition were announced earlier this month. Submissions for the next competition, including the first translation prize, will be accepted between July 15 and September 15, 2022. 

About the University of Wisconsin Press

The University of Wisconsin Press is a not-for-profit publisher of books and journals. With nearly 1,500 titles and over 8,000 peer-reviewed articles in print, its mission embodies the Wisconsin Idea by publishing work of distinction that serves the people of Wisconsin and the world. 

For more information on the Wisconsin Poetry Prizes, please visit https://uwpress.wisc.edu/series/wi-poetry.html.

ANNOUNCING THE RESULTS OF THE WISCONSIN POETRY PRIZE COMPETITION

Out of more than 900 entrants, Jameka Williams has been selected as the winner of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and Emily Bludworth de Barrios has been named the winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. Each will receive $1,500, and their collections will be published this fall by the University of Wisconsin Press. In addition, Betsy Sholl has been named winner of the Four Lakes Poetry Prize, and her collection also will be published this fall. Next spring, the University of Wisconsin Press will publish finalist collections by Joshua Burton, Dante di Stefano, and Celeste Lipkes.

Brian Teare, editor of Albion Books, served as this year’s contest judge. He is the author of six poetry collections, including Doomstead Days (2019), which was longlisted for the National Book Award and named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven (2015); and Companion Grasses (2013).

Jameka Williams holds an MFA in poetry from Northwestern University. Her poetry has been published in Prelude Magazine, Gigantic Sequins, Muzzle Magazine, Yemassee Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, Jet Fuel Review, and Oyez Review, among others. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has performed her poetry at AWP in 2016 and POETRY Magazine’s Open Door Reading Series in 2021. She is a Best New Poets 2020 finalist, published annually by the University of Virginia, and is featured in New American Press’s New Poetry of the Midwest 2019. She resides in Chicago, Illinois. 

About the Brittingham-winning volume, Brian Teare says, “Split between the love of watching and the fear created by it, American Sex Tape guides us through celebrity’s media empire, where ‘men / are cameras’ and the objectified self reproduces the dominant culture one selfie at a time. ‘I think a lot about empires,’ Jameka Williams writes, ‘& how I am supposed / to finish erecting this one,’ before she demolishes misogynist, racist logic with weaponized line breaks and wrecking-ball wit. And then does something stranger, braver: she looks into the camera. Because this is a book about taking back power, it’s also about the thin line between pleasure and collusion. ‘I love to see it,’ she admits, ‘I love to live inside that camera’s eye orgasm.’ Complex and messy and necessary in all the ways sex is, American Sex Tape is brilliant Black feminist truth.”

Emily Bludworth de Barrios, winner of the Felix Pollak Prize, is a poet whose books and chapbooks include Women, Money, Children, Ghosts (Sixth Finch, 2016), Splendor (H_NGM_N, 2015), and Extraordinary Power (Factory Hollow Press, 2014). Her poems have recently appeared in publications such as the Poetry Review, Harvard Review, and the Cincinnati Review. She was raised in Houston, Cairo, and Caracas, and now lives in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, with her husband and three children. 

“Marrying novelistic breadth and autobiographical intimacy, Shopping or The End of Time invents a new poetic genre: the sociolyric,” says Brian Teare. “Impersonal and personal at once, these poems shift from collective to individual experience with dizzying rapidity. Their deft lines jump-cut across social experiences connected inequitably by a consumer culture thriving on violence against women and the Earth’s accelerating destruction. And yet buying power is ‘such an intricate trick that we felt that we were finally entering ourselves,’ Emily Bludworth de Barrios writes, ‘our human inheritance.’ Refusing to remain fooled about the ways our psyches are manipulated by capitalism and complicit with its destructive power, her speakers insist on documenting the pleasures and collateral damage of such inheritance, each ‘jagged poem’ fashioned ‘to put the remnants in.’ This is an innovative collection with impressive critical and emotional range.”

Betsy Sholl’s As if a Song Could Save You, winner of the Four Lakes Poetry Prize, will also be published this fall. Sholl is the author of nine previous poetry collections, including House of Sparrows: New and Selected Poems (winner of the 2019 Four Lakes Prize), Otherwise Unseeable (winner of the 2014 Four Lakes Prize), Rough Cradle, Late Psalm, Don’t Explain (winner of the 1997 Felix Pollak Prize), and The Red Line. A former poet laureate of Maine, Sholl teaches at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

“Attuned as she is to harmony—musical, spiritual, earthly—Sholl weaves seemingly miscellaneous notes into vibrant wholes. She references Dante more than once and it’s apt, for she is very much a pilgrim, someone who conveys the feeling of being in it—the tangle that is a moment, a street scene, a biblical incident. It could be anything—and is—and that is a key to her achievement, her openness to the ways of being, the here and now, the terribly lost and barely found.  Great compassion marks these poems, that inestimable talent for tracing the ways of kinship, how one occasion graces another,” says Baron Wormser.

Joshua Burton is a poet and educator from Houston, Texas, and received his MFA in poetry at Syracuse University. He is a 2019 Tin House Winter Workshop Scholar, 2019 Juniper Summer Writing Institute scholarship winner, and 2019 Center for African American Poetry and Poetics fellowship finalist. He received the Honorable Mention for the 2018 Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize and was a 2020 Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing finalist. His work can be found in Mississippi Review, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, Conduit, and TriQuarterly, and is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Grist, and Indiana Review. He has a chapbook forthcoming in the fall of 2022. Mary Karr says, “No poet I’ve worked with in forty years’ teaching has wowed me more with his talent & smarts & heart than young Joshua Burton. His first collection, Grace Engine, is destined to be this year’s star debut.”

Brian Teare adds, “Grace Engine documents the ravages of internalized antiblackness in restless lines whose ‘Language is like a month ending / with a fire.’ To aid in reclaiming himself from Black social and literal death, Joshua Burton assembles an archive of Black men whose minds were troubled by antiblackness and Black folks whose lives were ended by it. In confronting textual and visual evidence of white supremacy, in placing family history alongside it, his speakers confront the decision of whether to stay in a world inseparable from racist violence. Ultimately coming to understand ‘how much my indecision is decision,’ he enters into a tentative, complex relation with Black aliveness. Burton might write ‘in the language of breakdown,’ but his speakers ‘choose to fill my hands with stay here.’ The way to bless once meant to mark with blood, this book is both balm and wound.”

Dante Di Stefano is the author of three previous poetry collections: Love Is a Stone Endlessly in Flight, Ill Angels, and Lullaby with Incendiary Device, which was published in a three-in-one volume titled Generations, also featuring work by William Heyen and H. L. Hix.  

Along with María Isabel Álvarez, he coedited the anthology Misrepresented People: Poetic Responses to Trump’s America.  The poetry editor for the DIALOGIST, Di Stefano holds a PhD in English Literature from Binghamton University. He teaches high school English in Upstate New York and lives in Endwell, New York, with his wife, Christina; their daughter, Luciana; their son, Dante; and their dog, Sunny. Di Stefano’s book-length poem, Midwhistle, is a sprawling digressive love note to an unborn son, a map of the anxieties and ecstasies of poetic influence, and an exploration of selfhood and memory in an era of pandemic, social upheaval, and political uncertainty, written in stepped septasyllabic cinquains, a form he invented. 

H. L. Hix says, “Midwhistle proves Dante Di Stefano ‘a child / of cello, air, & mint spears.’  In this refulgent homage, Di Stefano honors ‘what loves / have been thrummed forth & nurtured / into shining’ by poet William Heyen’s august work and person. Surely any reader will leave this book, as I did, more alert and alive, more ‘in love / with the gray undersides of / mulberry leaves & the way / the grass ekes toward twilight.’”

Celeste Lipkes is a writer and psychiatrist residing in Asheville, North Carolina. Prior to medical school, she received an MFA in poetry from the University of Virginia. Radium Girl is her first book. 

Lisa Spaar says, “In the breathtaking ‘escape room’ of Celeste Lipkes’s Radium Girl, our ardent guide dons, by turns, the snow-flaked robe of patient, the white coat of physician, the lustrous cape of magician.  The word ‘magic’ is rooted in the PIE ‘magh’—‘to be able, to have power’—and in this radiant debut,  body and mystery exchange their secrets about what can and cannot be controlled—in illness, in love, and in the salvific art of poetry itself.”

Submissions for the next competition will be accepted between July 15 and September 15, 2022. 

About the University of Wisconsin Press

The University of Wisconsin Press is a not-for-profit publisher of books and journals. With nearly 1,500 titles and over 8,000 peer-reviewed articles in print, its mission embodies the Wisconsin Idea by publishing work of distinction that serves the people of Wisconsin and the world. 

For more information on the Wisconsin Poetry Prizes, please visit https://uwpress.wisc.edu/series/wi-poetry.html.