Contemporary Literature

2000 Blacks by Ajibola Tolase is on the shortlist for the 2025 Walcott Prize! Honoring the work of St. Lucian Nobel Prize poet Derek Walcott, the prize is offered annually for a book of poetry by a non-US citizen published anywhere in the world.

Congrats, Ajibola!

www.arrowsmithpress.com/walcott

YouTube video by CUNY Graduate Center Writing in Impossible Times: Thinking With and Beyond the First Book.

If you missed our last talk of the 2024-25 academic year, you can find it on our YouTube channel: Ken Wissoker and Macarena Gómez-Barris discussing the vital need for academic writing and publishing in impossible times!
youtu.be/52PR11MgTn0

Thank you @cl-journal.bsky.social, & Congratulations Jessica Swoboda! 'Rachel Cusk's Attention Ecology' is a brilliant article

To read Georgina Colby and Michael Dowdy's stunning essays in 64.1 and 64.4:

"Housing the Stranger: Feminist Sheltering in the Work of Bhanu Kapil" (cl.uwpress.org/content/64/1...)

"'Mexican or Something': Reading the Novels of Mexicanesque Appalachia (cl.uwpress.org/content/64/4...)

Rachel Cusk’s Attention Ecology Rachel Cusk’s trilogy, Outline, Transit , and Kudos , tracks the peregrinations of Faye, a British writer, throughout Athens, London, and an unspecified town in Germany. The novels contain very few pl...

to read Swoboda's narratological treatment of attention economies/ecologies, click here: cl.uwpress.org/content/64/3...

In "Rachel Cusk's Attention Ecology," Swoboda suggests that we might respond to the demands of an attention economy by modeling and attending to "attention ecologies," environments "that heighten alertness to the networks...among which humans exist, perceive, and interrelate."

We are thrilled to announce that Jessica Swoboda has been awarded the 2025 L.S. Dembo prize for her wonderful article, "Rachel Cusk's Attention Ecology."

Honorable mention also goes to @georginacolby.bsky.social and Michael Dowdy. Details to follow... 🧵

New work on waste in @cl-journal.bsky.social

Don’t miss new work by @corinnanorue.bsky.social and @astarre.bsky.social on “Genre, Diversity, and Metanarrative” in Reese Witherspoon’s book club. Now available completely open access.

I went clubbing - book clubbing that is - with @corinnanorue.bsky.social and you can read about it in the new issue of @cl-journal.bsky.social. open access!
cl.uwpress.org/content/65/3...
More in Corinna's🧵

A new wave of Chinese science fiction "depict[s] waste, not ordered progress, as the substance of China’s contemporary reality and the genre’s primary concern." In issue 65.3, Martha Swift examines the underside of science fiction's high-tech futures. cl.uwpress.org/content/curr...

Contemporary Literature: 65 (3)

Contemporary Literature issue 65.3 is out now, featuring new work by Charlie Ericson, Sam Ladkin, Corinna Norrick-Rühl, Alexander Starre, Matt Prout, and Martha Swift! Read it here: cl.uwpress.org/content/current

CL 65.3 is shaping up to be an exciting issue...stay tuned for its release later this week 📚🔜

How does autofiction contend with technologically mediated ways of seeing and projecting the self? In our read of the week, Marek Makowski produces “A New Exercise in Looking”: Experiments in Autofiction and the Novels of Olga Tokarczuk. Read it here: cl.uwpress.org/content/curr...

Cover of Typophoto: New Typography and the Reinvention of Photography by Jessica D. Brier. Title in large blue and red lettering stacked at an angle beside a vintage Kodak camera. A halftone filter evokes advertising throughout.

Cover of Shelter and Storm: At Home in the Driftless by Tamara Dean. Marbled pattern in greens and blue resembles aerial landscape. White text in large serif font.

Cover of Hermes II: Interference by Michel Serres, translated by Randolph Burks. At top, against a white background, are a collection of curved lines graphing different wave functions. Title shows below against a gold background.

Cover of Chaos and Automaton by Franco Berardi. Blue background with white title text above a series of triangles layered unevenly atop one another.

Great new titles out today!

-Typophoto by Jessica D. Brier
-Shelter and Storm by Tamara Dean
-Hermes II: Interference by Michel Serres
-Chaos and the Automaton by Franco Berardi w/ @eflux.bsky.social

#NewBooks #NewBooks2025 #PubDay

How do modern managerialism, short-termism, and the information economy shape narrative resistance to work and capital?

Huw Marsh offers a salient analysis in our read of the week: "'Bullshit' Jobs and Ticklish Comedy: Humor and Sadness in the Contemporary Novel." cl.uwpress.org/content/current

Top left and bottom right have partial teal circles with text in them: "SCMS 2025" and the University of Wisconsin Press logo. In between, eight thumbnail images of book covers on our film studies list: Chai Noon (publishing in June), Somerset Maugham and the Cinema, Hollywood's Unofficial Film Corps, Jean-Luc Godard, Visions and Victims, Colonial Tactics and Everyday Life, Peerless, and Continental Films

We're exhibiting at @scmstudies.bsky.social #SCMS25, and look forward to seeing friends old and new! Please stop by to visit @dlbookman.bsky.social & check out our recent titles!

If you're not here in person, you can still browse our virtual exhibit and use the 30% discount: tinyurl.com/yfeybvzp

The graphic created by Big Blue Marble Bookstore to promote the 4/3 event, 7 pm, at 551 Carpenter Ln in Philadelphia: a reading and conversation with Caroline Mar, Adrienne Perry, Somayeh Shams, and Eleanor Wilner, in support of Caroline Mar's new book, Water Guest. The graphic includes photos of all four writers, plus the cover of WATER GUEST.

Philadelphia: reminder! Tomorrow, April 3, Big Blue Marble Bookstore will host a reading and conversation with Caroline Mar, Adrienne Perry, Somayeh Shams, and Eleanor Wilner, in celebration of Caroline Mar's new poetry collection, WATER GUEST!

Details: tinyurl.com/479t22uy

Association of University Presses logo

We join @humanitiesall to condemn actions taken by the federal govt against the National Endowment for the Humanities. https://bit.ly/4i69BkJ

Cuts to the NEH will ripple through the entire scholarly ecosystem, harm communities in every state & contribute to destroying our shared cultural heritage.

The DOGE Axe Comes for Libraries and Museums The Institute of Museum and Library Services has long received bipartisan support. But after years of trying, President Donald Trump has delivered it a crushing blow.

“What we are consistently hearing is that there is no data or evidence suggesting that federal funds allocated through the IMLS are being misused. In fact, these funds are essential for delivering vital services, often to the most underserved & vulnerable populations.”
www.wired.com/story/instit...

Art, Liberty, Diverse Voices: Six Poets on Why University Presses Are Critical for Poetry For anyone who pays attention to major literary awards, it will come as no surprise that university presses figure prominently among celebrated and vigorous publishers of contemporary poetry. In th…

More than 40 AUPresses members around the globe publish poetry, including @ualbertapress.bsky.social, @aucpress.bsky.social @livunipress.bsky.social @pavilionpoetry.bsky.social & many more.https://bit.ly/42oN1OH

Find them all in our Subject Area Grid https://bit.ly/3C7ASUc and #ReadUP!

Exploring History Through Women’s Lives: A Conversation with Lori Ginzberg and Jenny Shaw  - UNC Press Blog In this Q&A, historians Lori Ginzberg and Jenny Shaw discuss their latest books, Tangled Journeys: One Family’s Story and the Making of American History and The Women of Rendezvous: A Transatlantic Story of Family and Slavery, with W. Hodding Carter III Executive Editor, Debbie Gershenowitz. Their work uncovers the lives of women—both enslaved and free—across time, place, and social status,… Continue Reading Exploring History Through Women’s Lives: A Conversation with Lori Ginzberg and Jenny Shaw

For Women's History Month Lori Ginzberg and @profjennyshaw.bsky.social talk about exploring history through women's lives and discuss their latest books with @dgershenowitz.bsky.social 📖

Read a Q&A adapted from the full conversation 👇
uncpressblog.com/2025/03/25/e...

At top, a red banner with the UW seal and text reading "Wisconsin Poetry Series reading & AWP." Then the University of Wisconsin Press logo with a collage of pictures: covers for RICH WIFE, WATER GUEST, and WHAT SEX IS DEATH?, as well as author Emily Bludworth de Barrios, author Caroline Mar, and translator Peter Covino. Then a beige box off to the right with the event info: the Boston in Downton LA, 1060 S Broadway, 6:30 PM, Thursday, 3/27

AWP attendees: reminder! The annual Wisconsin Poetry Series reading at #AWP25 will be held Thursday, March 27, at 6:30 PM, at The Hoxton Downtown LA Bar & Lounge, 1060 S Broadway.

We hope you’ll join us for readings by Emily Bludworth de Barrios, Peter Covino, and Caroline M. Mar!

Library Advocates Rally as Trump Targets Federal Funding (Gift Article) An executive order has demanded that the Institute for Museum and Library Services be eliminated to the maximum extent allowed by law.

Museums and libraries are the main places where members of the public engage in lifelong learning outside of any formal school.
Call your legislators. Tell them to protect library funding. bit.ly/CallCongressForLibraries

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/a...

Issue 65.2 highlight: Siobhan Phillips takes on culinary labor and the cookbook in Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor's "Vibration Cooking." 🍳Read it here: cl.uwpress.org/content/curr...

Contemporary Literature: 65 (2)

Contemporary Literature issue 65.2 is now available, featuring exciting new work on autofiction, workplace novels, food writing, and more! Contributors include Marek Makowski, Huw Marsh, Kristi Maxwell, Siobhan Phillips, and Daniel Weston. 🗞️

Read it here: cl.uwpress.org/content/current

Contemporary Literature: 65 (1)

Issue 65.1 highlight 🤖 Michael Gavin collaborates with ChatGPT to write "Literary Theory in the Age of Artificial Intelligence," a review of Dennis Yi Tenen's *Literary Theory for Robots: How Computers Learned to Write* (2024).

Click here for more: cl.uwpress.org/content/current

Contemporary Literature: 65 (1)

CFP:

Contemporary Literature seeks scholarly essays on post–World War II literature written in English which offer scope, supply a new dimension to conventional approaches, or transform customary ways of reading writers.

Recent articles: cl.uwpress.org/content/current