Since last October, faculty and alumni of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences have published dozens of highly anticipated books. Here is a sampling:
The Cigarette
Milov offers a fresh interpretation of tobacco’s critical role in the political economy of the 20th century in this 2019 book that made this assistant professor of history a sought-after guest on public radio’s nationally syndicated “Marketplace” program and other news shows.
Oblivion Banjo
This critically acclaimed volume of poems by Wright, a professor emeritus of English, represents a sampling of nearly 50 years of this award-winning poet’s work.
The New American
Marcom is a creative writing professor and founder of The New American Story Project. In her new novel, she recounts the journey of an undocumented college student and "dreamer" who gets deported to Guatemala before trying to find his way back to the only home he's ever known.
Cool Town
An award-winning historian, Hale offers a deeply researched account of how Athens, Georgia, blossomed in the late 1970s and 1980s as an unexpected mecca of music and experimental art that produced groundbreaking bands such as the B-52s, R.E.M. and Pylon while transforming American culture.
Tweet Cute
This debut novel by alumna Emma Lord has been praised as “a witty rom-com reinvention” with “a buzzy twist” about the chances we take, the paths where life can lead us, and how love can be found in the opposite place you expected.
1. The Cigarette [Harvard University Press], by Sarah Milov (Assistant Professor of History). 2. Oblivion Banjo: The Poetry of Charles Wright [Farrar, Straus and Giroux], by Charles Wright (Professor Emeritus, English). 3. Murder in Roanoke County: Race and Justice in the 1891 Susan Watkins Case [The History Press], by John D. Long (M.A. History, ‘91). 4. The New American: A Novel [Simon & Schuster], by Micheline Aharonian Marcom (Professor of English). 5. The Dark Thread: From Tragical Histories to Gothic Tales [University of Virginia Press], edited by John D. Lyons (Professor of French). 6. Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture [University of North Carolina Press], by Grace Elizabeth Hale (Commonwealth Professor of American Studies and History). 7. Tweet Cute [Wednesday Books, St. Martin’s Publishing Group], by Emma Lord (Psychology, ’12). 8. More Truly and More Strange: 100 Contemporary American Self-Portrait Poems [Persea Books], edited by Lisa Russ Spaar (Professor of English, Director of Creative Writing). 9. White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia [Sarabande Books], by Kiki Petrosino (Professor of English). 10. Little Legends: Exceptional Men in Black History [Little, Brown Books for Young Readers], by Vashti Harrison (Studio Art, ’10) and Kwesi Johnson.
