Deesha Philyaw’s The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is named to Library Journal‘s list “Black Voices Matter 2020” and called one of “12 Must-Read Books by Black Authors” in Amazon Book Review, which says: “The stories of these women and their friendships come alive, beating with tenderness and imperfection, and build upon one another to create a beautiful melody of female determination.”
Philyaw is profiled in a cover story in Pittsburgh Current, where her book is called “full of lived-in humanity, warmth, and compassion.” She’ll launch The Secret Lives of Church Ladies as part of the Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures series, cohosted with the Carnegie Library and White Whale Books, on September 3.
Foreword Reviews praises Joanna Eleftheriou’s “heartfelt and heartrending” This Way Back, saying “the essays entice every sense.”
The collection Storytelling in Queer Appalachia appears in 100 Days in Appalachia and on West Virginia Morning from West Virginia Public Broadcasting. A launch event hosted by Union Avenue Books in Knoxville is previewed by WTAP in Parkersburg.
Also on West Virginia Morning, William Jolliff, author of Heeding the Call, joins a conversation with Denise Giardina, the subject of his book.
The Journal of Appalachian Studies reviews three WVU Press books—Matthew Ferrence’s Appalachia North (a “keen look at the impact of place on identity”), Jessica Cory’s Mountains Piled upon Mountains (“should find itself embraced”), and Cameron Lippard and Bruce Stewart’s Modern Moonshine (“an excellent addition to the library of a broad array of scholars”).
Wesley Browne, author of Hillbilly Hustle, talks with novelist Silas House in Still: The Journal.
A feature in the Chronicle of Higher Education on “How to Engage Students in a Hybrid Classroom” includes perspectives from Derek Bruff and Jenae Cohn, two authors in our series Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Thomas Tobin’s work in Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone is cited in the Chronicle as well.
In other higher ed news, Cyndi Kernahan and Kevin Gannon, also authors in our series, talk about issues around equity and inclusion on the podcast Tea for Teaching, and series author Susan Blum is a guest on a separate episode devoted to ungrading. Gannon also appears on the podcast Nothing Ever Happens from Radical Pedagogy. And Jessamyn Neuhaus, author of Geeky Pedagogy, is interviewed on the South Phoenix Oral History Project podcast.
James Tyner’s The Politics of Lists is called “an existential deep dive into the corrupting biopolitical power of bureaucracy unfettered” in the AAG (American Association of Geographers) Review of Books.
And in an illustration of the global impact of university press publishing, Joe Anderson’s Capitalist Pigs is reviewed in Croatian in Slobodni Filozofski.