The second annual Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books takes place on Saturday, May 13 at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary! The Festival is free to attend, and books will be available for purchase at the University of Pittsburgh Press table. Schedule of Events: 10–11 am: Ross Gay (Chapel Auditorium) 10 am: Lynn Emanuel (Poetry Tent) 12:45 pm: Nancy Krygowski (Poetry Tent) 1–2 pm: Marylynne Pitz (Long Hall, Room 204) 1:45 pm: Jan Beatty (Poetry Tent) 2:45–3:45 pm: Kathleen George (Long Hall, Room 210) The full schedule of events can be found on the Festival website.

Today’s blog prompt for University Press Weeks asks who’s #NextUP in the world of bookselling. We love our local book stores, so we’re featuring an interview Anna Weber, who is the events director at White Whale Bookstore, an indie bookstore in Pittsburgh. Q: Tell us a little about White Whale Bookstore and why you enjoy working there.  A: White Whale Books is a family-owned, general interest, independent bookstore that focuses in particular on literary fiction and local writers. It’s a space that, since day one, has always had a warm vibe, and has always encouraged curiosity, conversation, and connection. The…

The University of Pittsburgh Press is proud to be taking part in the first ever Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books on Saturday, May 14! The first ever GPFB is an all day, free event, spread across six venues in East Liberty, paying tribute to Pittsburgh’s rich literary community and love of reading. Featuring over thirty nationally renowned authors with ties to Pittsburgh, dozens of amazing poets, kids story times and activities, entertainment, books and comic stores, publishers, and more—it will be a true celebration. A number of Press authors will be giving readings and signing books, and we will also…

Ilja Nieuwland is the author of American Dinosaur Abroad: A Cultural History of Carnegie’s Plaster Diplodocus. He is a historian of science–in particular paleontology–attached to the Huygens Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam. American Dinosaur Abroad covers the discovery in 1899 of the Diplodocus carnegii—or Dippy, as it’s known today—by a team of paleontologists sponsored by Andrew Carnegie. Then the longest and largest dinosaur on record, the Diplodocus skeleton was replicated into plaster casts that were gifted to different nations by Carnegie in the years leading up to World War I. In this largely untold history, Nieuwland…

Ethel Spencer, the third daughter of the seven Spencer children born between 1884 and 1895, was a curious and observant child. She wrote her childhood memoir in 1959 while she was professor at Carnegie Tech (today’s Carnegie Mellon University). It served as a memento of the joy-filled years she shared with her brothers and sisters in Pittsburgh’s affluent Shadyside neighborhood. The Spencers of Amberson Avenue, later published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1983, explores the family of Charles Hart Spencer, an employee of Henry Clay Frick, and his wife Mary Acheson from the viewpoint of young Ethel. Through the eyes of Ethel, the reader is…