Spring has finally arrived, bringing cherry blossoms, peaking tulips, and the warming sun. While Morgantown defrosts and returns to its vibrant nature, our authors have been busy bees!

Megan Howell has had a blooming spring! Softie: Stories made the long- and short-lists for the PEN Robert W. Bingham Prize. Howell was also named a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree.

Howell also spoke at the 2025 Barrelhouse Conference at American University earlier this month and recently presented at her alma mater, Vassar College.

Kathryn Kirkpatrick celebrated her recent release of Enraptured Space: Gender, Class, and Ecology in the Work of Paula Meehan. Jefferson Holdrige, Director of Wake Forest University Press, helped launch the book at the national meeting of the American Conference on Irish Studies in Savannah, Georgia in February. Among his comments:

“Enraptured Space lives up to its title. The spaces between poet and poem, reader and poem, critic and poet are all enraptured in this very accessible, intelligent, adroitly plighted, theoretical, smart reading of the work to date of this poet of major significance. . . . Kirkpatrick makes connections between her own poetics (and she is a poet of considerable achievement in her own right), as well as her working class origins, origins which clearly match Meehan’s own. This framework allows their respective backgrounds to speak to and inform one another. This is done mainly through important conversations between the two poet critics.”

Cutover Capitalism by Jason Newton was the 2024 George Perkins Marsh Book Prize Runner-Up! Newton also recently published an op-ed about immigration and the logging industry in the Times Union.

This Book Is Free and Yours to Keep edited by Connie Banta, Kristin DeVault-Juelfs, Destinee Harper, Katy Ryan, Ellen Skirvin was the 2025 Weatherford Award Winner for Nonfiction! The book also has an upcoming launch party at the Aull Center in Morgantown on April 30th.

Terese Svoboda has a few great interviews forthcoming that feature Roxy and Coco! The first interview will be published in the online magazine Hypertext, and the other as part of a collection of interviews titled “Women of Fantasy in Their Own Words,” to be published by Bloomsbury next year. Her second memoir, Hitler and My Mother-in-Law, will be published with OR Books in October!

Sejal Shah, and How to Make Your Mother Cry, continues to receive well-earned recognition. How to Make Your Mother Cry was recently named a finalist for the 2024 Foreword Indies Award in Multicultural Adult Fiction, and was also included in the The Story Prize 2025 Longlist for short story collections published in 2024.

Issac Yuen, author of Utter, Earth, recently did a long-form interview to celebrate one year since the book’s release. In the interview, Yuen writes, “So despite Utter, Earth seeming like a work that is centered around the non-human world, it’s really more a mirror into the human one. Look at all the amazing things we have found out and how much still remains.”

Robert Eaton has been busy with presentations related to Improving Learning and Mental Health in the College Classroom. He presented “Improving Student Wellness by Becoming a Natural Mentor” at 9th Annual Intermountain Teaching for Learning Conference at Utah Valley University and at a webinar with OneHE. Eaton also presented at the faculty webinar at Northern Oklahoma College.

Matthew Ferrence, author of I Hate It Here: Please Vote for Me, presented the keynote presentation, titled “One of the Last Places Where Your Life Matters: Poetics, Politics, and the Power of Literary Practice,” at the 2025 Western Pennsylvania Undergraduate Literatures Conference, held at the University of Pittsburgh-Johnston on March 22.

Our Maine man, Douglas Milliken, author of Enclosure Architect, received a wonderful anonymous review at Scud Editions. The author shares, “Part of the pleasure of this deeply felt book is its unfolding, and the way it deals with the complicated nature of memory. At its core, Enclosure Architect could be understood as an argument against forgetting; that memory provides a basis for art and thus for humanity…our own, and a shared humanity, if we’re lucky.”

Milliken also recently published a short memoir about his family and upbringing in rural northern Maine called Any Less You with Fomite Press.

Neema Avashia has been a busy bee so far this spring! She recently visited classes at Dartmouth College, Springfield College, Furman University, and Mass Maritime College to work with students who are reading Another Appalachia. The book was also recommended for further reading in Maggie Smith’s new book, DEAR WRITER, and was given a shout-out in the most recent issue of Poets and Writers as an example of how university press books complicate understanding of place.

In late February, Rachel King spoke about her award-winning linked short story collection Bratwurst Haven as part of the Northwest Author Series at the Cannon Beach Library.

King will be in conversation with another WVU Press author, Chris Campanioni, about his essay collection north by north/west at Annie Bloom’s Books in Southwest Portland on Thursday, June 26 at 7 p.m.

Chris Campanioni has had many joys of spring! Campanioni delivers the keynote for Fairleigh Dickinson University’s inaugural Alison Storipan Undergraduate Research Conference on Friday, April 4. My talk, titled “The Rough Trade Between Holes and Surface: Moving Bodies and Their Resistance,” provided a preview of north by north/west.

Campanioni’s novel VHS, published with CLASH Books in 2025, was featured in “34 Books We Can’t Wait to Read” in Write or Die Magazine. His essay on the makings of the novel—“First-Person Secondhand: Nine Books on Migration That Experiment with Point of View” was published in LitHub shortly after. And Electric Literature celebrated the book for its “11 Small Press Books You Should Be Reading This Spring.” Campanioni also received another glowing review of his recent poetry collection Windows 85 (Roof Books, 2024), this time in RHINO, the journal of The Poetry Forum.

Kelley Shinn, author of The Wounds That Bind Us, was a featured author last month at the Lexington Book Festival in North Carolina, and will be sharing the stage with Appalachian author Karen Salyer McElmurray in Morgantown, WV this September at the 2025 Writer’s Conference of Northern Appalachia.

The In-Betweens by Devon Loeb was the February book club pick at the Jewish Book Council and was featured at a Moorestown Jewish Association Book Club event.

Scott A. MacKenzie received yet another excellent review of his book, The Fifth Border State.  In The Journal of the Civil War Era, Aaron Astor praised The Fifth Border State for “forcefully reject[ing] the traditional interpretation of how West Virginia formed.  He called the book “an essential contribution to the understanding of West Virginia’s creation and to the broader study of the Civil war in the Border and Appalachian South,”  and concluded that the book “will surely be the new standard interpretation of West Virginia statehood.”  High praise indeed from one of the field’s leading scholars.

In more wonderful spring news, God of River Mud by Vic Szemore was named to the longlist for 2025 Tennessee Book Award!

In the spirit of Independent Bookstore Day being on April 26th, Almanac for the Anthropocene by Phoebe Wagner and Brontë Christopher was featured as a staff pick on the Climate Optimism shelf at Powell’s Books: The World’s Largest Independent Bookstore. A staff member wrote: “If you read one book from here, have it be this one. Provides thoughts on the why of climate optimism [and] DIY movement.”

Check out Monkey Wrench Books and Taylor Books in West Virginia! They have dedicated West Virginia University Press displays!

Deesha Philyaw, author of  The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, was unbe-leaf-ably buzy at AWP! She was a part of two panels: “Holy F**k: Women, Faith & Sex in Fiction” and “Goin’ B(l)ack Home: Exploring Notions of Home, Migration & Return.” Secret Lives of Church Ladies was also named to Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the 21st Century (So Far).

Speaking of conferences, we had a wonderful time at AWP, ASA, and ASEH this season! We had a great crowd for book signings for Terese Svoboda, Deesha Philyaw, Vic Szemore, Renée Nicholson, and the This Book and Yours To Keep crew. It was also wonderful to celebrate Jason Newton at ASEH!