Early fall roundup: Reviews, media attention, and author events

inside higher ed.jpgOur series Teaching and Learning in Higher Education is well represented in the back-to-school reading roundup from Inside Higher Ed, with two of five recommended books—The Spark of Learning by Sarah Rose Cavanagh and How Humans Learn by Joshua Eyler—published by WVU. “One thing all these books have in common,” according to IHE, “is their capacity to spur and direct reflection about one’s own teaching practice.”

Natalie Sypolt’s The Sound of Holding Your Breath receives two national pre-publication reviews, with Kirkus praising the story collection’s “powerful images” and Foreword saying it is “full of inevitability and resignation and haunted by themes of class, family, and place.” Sypolt will launch her book at an event with Laura Leigh Morris, author of Jaws of Life, at Pittsburgh’s White Whale Books on October 20. See her full tour schedule on our calendar.

Jesse Donaldson’s On Homesickness has been named Appalachian Book of the Year in the nonfiction category by the Appalachian Writers Association and the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival.

In other award news, Clay Carey’s The News Untold, previously reported to be a finalist, received the Tankard Book Award at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. The award recognizes the most outstanding book in the field.

WVU Magazine interviews Catherine Venable Moore, author of the essay introducing our edition of Muriel Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead, about the tragedy at Hawk’s Nest Tunnel.

Ginny Savage Ayers and her book Never Justice, Never Peace are featured in the Wheeling Intelligencer and Weelunk in conjunction with the title’s launch during Wheeling’s first Labor Heritage Week celebration. Ayers will read at the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education in Shepherdstown on September 19.

Nancy Abrams talks with Morgantown Magazine (on newsstands) about The Climb from Salt Lick, “an outsider’s inside look” at rural West Virginia in the 1970s and ’80s.

Southern Literary Review profiles Snakehunter and Last Mountain Dancer by Chuck Kinder, “one of West Virginia’s most talented authors.” Both titles are newly available from WVU Press.

Don’t miss:

Travis Stimeling, author of Songwriting in Contemporary West Virginia, with musicians Todd Burge, Dan Cunningham, Maria Allison, and Chris Haddox in Morgantown on September 11.

Meredith Sue Willis, author of Their Houses, in Huntington, Fairmont, and other West Virginia cities throughout the fall.

Tom Hansell, author of After Coal, at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 12.

Michael Adamson, author of Oil and Urbanization on the Pacific Coast, at the Architectural Heritage Center in Portland, Oregon, on November 10.

And find us at the Brooklyn Book Festival on September 16, where we’ll be exhibiting books with Vesto PR.

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