The Secret Lives of Church Ladies receives two glowing endorsements from major newspapers. “These are stories about Black women that haven’t been told with this level of depth, wit, or insight before,” says Tony Norman in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “so it will not shock me if Oprah gets around to selecting it before the end of the year.” And in an equally enthusiastic review, Marion Winik writes for the Minneapolis Star Tribune: “In this year of constriction and pain, juicy goodness bursts from every page of Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection. . . . This collection marks the emergence of a bona fide literary treasure.”

Previously the recipient of a starred review in Kirkus, Philyaw’s book makes another appearance in the magazine as one of four “must-read” story collections highlighted in its fall preview issue. It is also recommended on the Kirkus podcast, and called “cheeky, insightful, and irresistible” in Ms. Magazine. The free weekly Pittsburgh City Paper has two pieces on Philyaw’s “incredibly moving” book, which is excerpted in Electric Lit.

Library Journal‘s list of “35 Standout Summer/Fall 2020 Debut Novels” includes Lana Austin’s Like Light, Like Music.

Radical Hope is lauded in AEJMC: “Startlingly succinct, yet resonant with raw emotion,” it is “required reading for those of us struggling to figure out how to adjust and balance our work this fall.” Author Kevin Gannon is featured in an Inside Higher Ed piece about faculty responses to the Jacob Blake shooting.

In other attention for our higher ed series:

• Jessamyn Neuhaus, author of Geeky Pedagogy, writes about embodied identity in the pandemic era for Inside Higher Ed.
• The podcast from EdSurge talks with Susan Blum, editor of Ungrading.
• Derek Bruff, author of Intentional Tech, appears on the podcast Tea for Teaching.
• Series authors Susan Hrach and Martin Springborg are guests on another Tea for Teaching episode.
• And Joshua Eyler’s How Humans Learn is reviewed on Penn State’s public radio station.

Monkeybicycle features Gwen Goodkin writing about her book A Place Remote. Goodkin also appears in Necessary Fiction.

The Journal of Southern History predicts Cameron Lippard and Bruce Stewart’s Modern Moonshine is “destined to become a minor classic in the field.”

Two of WVU Press’s books are reviewed in the journal West Virginia History—Jeff Mann and Julia Watts’s LGBTQ Fiction and Poetry from Appalachia (“timely and long-overdue recognition of a previously overlooked group”) and Appalachia North by Matthew Ferrence (“exceptional”).

Appalachian Journal reviews four more of our titles: The Book of the Dead (“searing”), The Industrialist and the Mountaineer (“engaging”), Hillbilly Hustle (“hopeful”), and Never Justice, Never Peace (“vivid”).

Rosemary Hathaway’s Mountaineers Are Always Free is featured in Morgantown Magazine.

In global attention for our publishing program, Marcus Wood’s The Black Butterfly is reviewed in Portuguese in Revista Iberoamericana.

Missed Deesha Philyaw’s Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures launch? It’s available to watch here, and her virtual tour has added forthcoming dates with bookstores in New York, Massachusetts, Atlanta, Asheville, and Washington, DC. See all of WVU Press’s latest author events on our calendar.