Florida poet Barbara Hamby, who has published three books with the Pitt Poetry series, is known for cooking up delicious verse. Poet Laureate Billy Collins described one of her collections as offering “a generous helping of poems so crackling with references and busy with verbal energy you might feel them buzzing in your hands.” It turns out that one of Hamby’s other passions is soup! “I love soup. It is the ultimate comfort food,” she said. Hamby usually has a freezer full of several different kinds, and enjoys trying new recipes.” Most of my soups are easy, and many are…

(geographically arranged from Cumberland to Pittsburgh) 1 Mile 5 – Helmstetter’s Curve For the first 13 miles the GAP is a rail-with-trail. You share the route with a classic steam train. Time your ride to catch the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad’s Mt. Thunder pounding through the sweeping 1/2 mile Helmstetter’s Curve on its way up the east side of Big Savage Mountain to Frostburg, MD.   2 Mile 22 – Big Savage Tunnel & Overlook Stop and relax at the Big Savage Overlook. From the edge of the trail you look southeast to waves of folded mountains and 3 states,…

Sports Culture in Latin American History Edited by David M. K. Sheinin LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES “This book expanded my sense of Latinidad by exposing under-analyzed, vastly hybrid histories and sporting practices. Extending key works in sport studies, it offers a broad geopolitical lens on the role of sport in nation building, settlement, community activism, and social hierarchies. A much-needed corrective to a U.S. practice of over-reliance on a European-centered historical and cultural landscape for theorizing sport.” —Katherine Jamieson, University of North Carolina–Greensboro As this edited volume shows, the function of sport as a historical and cultural marker is particularly relevant…

UPP welcomes Nicholas A. Brown and Sarah E. Kanouse, authors of the forthcoming Re-Collecting Black Hawk: Landscape, Memory, and Power in the American Midwest as the first of our authors to be featured in a Q&A. UPP: What was your inspiration for Re-Collecting Black Hawk? NB: There’s no one moment that inspired the project; rather it was an organic outgrowth of our artistic and scholarly interests and quirks of personal history that all came together at the right time. I actually grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, surrounded by references to Black Hawk. As a kid I walked to Blackhawk Country…

Pitt poet Charles Harper Webb, author of Brain Camp, has some rather controversial advice for today’s poets, and claims he can help them become better at their craft and sell more books! So, Publishers Weekly gave him a soapbox. A Cure for What Ails Poetry A poet argues that more accessible poems will lead to broader interest in poetry—and more sales By Charles Webb | Apr 03, 2015 Featured on Publishers Weekly Soapbox It’s no secret that the main audience for poetry is other poets. If you want to slow or even stop a party conversation, ask, “What new poets are you…