Crux: The Georgia Series in Literary Nonfiction

Named for intersections, and for the heart of the matter, this series will publish literary nonfiction by diverse writers working in a variety of modes, including personal and lyric essay, memoir, cultural meditation, and literary journalism. Books are intended for general readers, including writers, teachers of writing, and students, and will be both intelligent and accessible. Engagement with the world, dedication to craft, precision, and playfulness with form and language are valued. As the series develops, it will include non-American writers and experiences.

Edited by John Griswold, the series aims to publish two to four new titles annually. Griswold is an assistant professor in the MFA program at McNeese State University, Lake Charles, Louisiana. He is the author of A Democracy of Ghosts; Herrin: The Brief History of an Infamous American City; and Pirates You Don’t Know, and Other Adventures in the Examined Life: Collected Essays (Georgia). He has written extensively (as Oronte Churm) at Inside Higher Ed and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

Our online submissions manager and submission guidelines are available here.

Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction

More than fifty short-story collections have appeared in the Flannery O’Connor Award series, which was established to encourage gifted emerging writers by bringing their work to a national readership. The first prize-winning book was published in 1983; the award has since become an important proving ground for writers and a showcase for the talent and promise that have brought about a resurgence in the short story as a genre. Winners are selected through an annual competition that attracts as many as three hundred manuscripts.

Winners of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction include such widely read authors as Ha Jin, Antonya Nelson, Rita Ciresi, and Mary Hood.

Association of Writers and Writing Programs Award for Creative Nonfiction

Creative nonfiction: compelling, groundbreaking memoirs and essay collections that embrace real subjects and true events through literary techniques more commonly associated with fiction or poetry. The Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) is a nonprofit organization of writers, teachers, colleges, and universities. The creative nonfiction competition is open to all authors writing in English regardless of nationality or residence. Winners receive a $2,000 cash honorarium from AWP and publication by the University of Georgia Press.

Politics and Culture in the Twentieth-Century South

The South that could be reasonably termed the nation’s number one economic problem in 1938 is no more. Today, the South with its runaway economic and demographic growth, political clout, and influential cultural exports is arguablythe most dynamic region in the United States.

With an eye toward understanding the struggles that have shaped the newest New South, Politics and Culture in the Twentieth-Century South offers interdisciplinary historical studies of the region’s social, political, and economic transformation. This series presents the best new research on a range of topics in recent southern history, including the long battle for equal civil rights for all citizens, partisan political realignment, suburbanization and the rise of car culture, changes in gender and sexual cultures, the rise of theocratic politics, industrialization and deindustrialization, immigration, and integration into the global economy of the twenty-first century: fresh scholarship that investigates new areas and reinterprets the familiar.

Early American Places

The University of Georgia Press, New York University Press, and Northern Illinois University Press announce a collaborative book series supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Early American Places focuses on the history of North America from contact to the Mexican War, locating historical developments in the specific places where they occurred and were contested. Though these developments often involved far-flung parts of the world, they were experienced in particular communities—the local places where people lived, worked, and made sense of their changing worlds.

By restricting its focus to smaller geographic scales, but stressing that towns, colonies, and regions were part of much larger networks, Early American Places will combine up-to-date scholarly sophistication with an emphasis on local particularities and trajectories. Books in the series will be exclusively revised dissertations.

The collaborating presses’ responsibilities are divided geographically. Georgia will focus on the southeastern colonies, the plantation economies of the Caribbean, and the Spanish borderlands. NYU will cover the northeastern and middle Atlantic colonies, and French and British Canada. Northern Illinois will cover the Great Lakes, the Upper Mississippi Valley, and the Great Plains.

Race in the Atlantic World, 1700-1900

Published in cooperation with the Library Company of Philadelphia’s Program in African American History.

Emphasizing comparative and transnational approaches, Race in the Atlantic World, 1700–1900 focuses on the development of, and challenges to, racialized inequality in Atlantic culture, with a particular focus on the Americas. Books in the series explore the evolving meanings of race, slavery, and nation; African identity formation across the Atlantic world; and struggles over emancipation and its aftermath.

Studies in Security and International Affairs

The University of Georgia Press in collaboration with the University of Georgia’s Center for International Trade and Security and Department of International Affairs created this series to publish outstanding scholarship on some of the most pressing challenges of the twenty-first century. This series grows out of the dramatic internationalization of the University of Georgia: the creation of a new School of Public and International Affairs, the establishment of a new Department of International Affairs, and the continued growth of the Center for International Trade and Security and related programs.

We are particularly interested in work that presents important new perspectives on the crises in American foreign policy and global governance; democratization, civil society, and the rule of law; rising powers and regional hotspots such as the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America; new security threats, including terrorism and responses to it; defense policy; postconflict reconstruction; multilateralism and international institutions; and the U.S. role in the world. Books in this series draw from the fields of comparative politics, foreign policy, international relations, and security policy. The series crosses disciplines and attempts to bridge gaps, including those between the academy and government and between nations and “civilizations.”

The South on Screen

Though the American film business initially took root and flourished in the industrialized northeast and the west coast, filmmakers in this new medium soon became preoccupied with cultural questions and themes that resonated with the South. The South was then promoting itself as “new” and underwent, on a smaller scale than the North, the urbanization that made for a marketplace suited to the exhibition of the “picture shows” whose popularity and profitability were continually expanding in America’s cities. From its earliest moments onward, the movie industry catered to southern audiences and on southern themes. Indeed, the South has inspired a number of cinema’s landmarks, ranging from historical epics (The Birth of a Nation, Gone with the Wind) and big-budget Hollywood adventures (Cold Mountain, Deliverance) to intimate dramas (Sounder, The Color Purple) and small-scale independent tales (Matewan, Nightjohn), from sober documentaries (Harlan County U.S.A.) to hilarious comedies (The General, O Brother, Where Art Thou). In the 1960s, as television became increasingly prominent, CBS created a series of popular sitcoms (The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction among them) with distinctly southern orientation. Whether produced for theatrical production or as television series, then, the moving image has shaped and been shaped by the South and its inhabitants.

A Wormsloe Foundation Nature Book

The Wormsloe Foundation Nature Book imprint is dedicated to informing and educating general readers about the unique natural environments of the Southeast and the pressing need to preserve them. Started in 2004, the imprint is generously supported by the Wormsloe Foundation.