Following a long, distinguished career as a poet, teacher, and editor, Ed Ochester, series editor and creative force behind the Pitt Poetry Series of the University of Pittsburgh Press, has retired. Ochester took over the Pitt Poetry Series in 1978 and has published hundreds of collections by established and rising poets. When Ochester inherited the series, he sought to broaden the scope of what American poetry looked like, publishing women poets, queer poets, and poets of color at a time when there was little diversity to be found in the poetry publishing realm. Ochester became a driving force of American…

The University of Pittsburgh Press is thrilled to announce Be Holding, the fourth book of poetry from Bloomington, Indiana-based poet and writer Ross Gay, is the winner of the 2021 PEN America Jean Stein Book Award. Published in UPP’s Pitt Poetry Series, Be Holding is the first book published by a university press to win the prestigious Jean Stein Prize. “I think this book is so much not only this desire, but this practice. The practice being understanding that we are made of each other. . . . I want to honor the mycelial way poems are made. But not…

Joanna Pearson of Carrboro, North Carolina is the 2021 winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, one of the nation’s most prestigious awards for a collection of short stories. Pearson’s Now You Know It All was selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward P. Jones. The University of Pittsburgh Press will publish Pearson’s collection in October 2021. “Joanna Pearson’s Now You Know It All offers a splendid array of stories that reminded me page after page of old-fashioned stories when writers built their pieces brick by brick and built them to last.” said Jones. “Pearson is not after the quick two-page,…

Laura Kolbe of Brooklyn, NY is the 2020 winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize for her collection Little Pharma. Kolbe, a physician, medical ethicist, and poet, will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press/Pitt Poetry Series next fall. “The earliest of these poems were written in my first year of medical school in 2012, with the bulk of them written during my medical residency, a grueling and surreal time in my life,” said Kolbe, a native of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. “Writing the poems felt like growing a subsistence garden—what do I need to make to survive? Or…

The winner of this year’s Drue Heinz Literature Prize, The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories by Caroline Kim, is a captivating debut. Exploring what it means to be human through the Korean diaspora, Kim’s stories feature many voices. From a teenage girl in 1980’s America, to a boy growing up in the middle of the Korean War, to an immigrant father struggling to be closer to his adult daughter, or to a suburban housewife whose equilibrium depends upon a therapy robot, each character must face their less-than-ideal circumstances and find a way to overcome them without losing themselves. Language…