Pittsburgh, PA – The Pitt Poetry Series at the University of Pittsburgh Press is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2025 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, selected by Nate Marshall: Asa Drake, Maybe the Body Bobby Elliott, The Same Man Luke Patterson, Medic Alafia Sessions, Nine Drops of Turpentine Rob Shapiro, Human Nature The winner will be announced on December 11, 2024. Established in 1981, the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize is administered by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Named in honor of Agnes Lynch Starrett, the Press’s first director, the prize is awarded for a first full-length book…

Elisa Gabbert’s “On Poetry” column features a wonderful look at cloud imagery in poetry and the poems of Reginald Shepherd are featured, along with the cover of The Selected Shepherd. “Reginald Shepherd is also a cloud-spotter. Almost every poem in THE SELECTED SHEPHERD (University of Pittsburgh Press, $30) mentions clouds, the way almost every painting in a landscape gallery mentions clouds. (There are paintings of clouds, and those that only mention them in passing.) Shepherd isn’t quite writing “nature poems,” as we might say of Wright. But no poem about the world escapes nature, and clouds often enter as pure image:…

The University of Pittsburgh Press is pleased to announce that we have selected Longleaf Services for fulfillment and publishing services. University of Pittsburgh Press titles will be officially available from Longleaf beginning July 1, 2024. Peter Kracht, director of the University of Pittsburgh Press, commented: “We are very pleased to join the Longleaf family of academic presses. From the outset, the appeal of a cooperative distribution service targeted specifically to university presses, was undeniable. Longleaf’s core mission to keep costs at a minimum through shared services is perfectly suited to our needs. They also offer an intimate, hands-on approach to…

The University of Pittsburgh Press is pleased to announce the launch of Afrasia: Contours, Crossings, Connections (ACCC), a new scholarly book series that will examine how African and Asian peoples have encountered each other across diverse geographical and cultural contexts, in the past and present, with a focus on the frictions and solidarities of these encounters as catalyzed by contemporary trends in global migration, movement, and interrelation. ACCC takes Afrasia as the conceptual and contingent space—historical and contemporary; sociocultural, political economic, and ideological; interpersonal, collective, and mass-mediated, among others—through which African and Asian peoples, as well as peoples of African…

The Pitt Poetry Series at the University of Pittsburgh Press upholds a tradition of publishing distinguished contemporary poetry. The series is honored to continue that tradition in the Fall 2024 with the following collections:   Dragstripping by Jan Beatty (on sale September 3, 2024)  Still City by Oksana Maksmychuk (on sale November 5, 2024)  Querida by Nathan Xavier Osorio, winner of the 2024 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize (on sale September 10, 2024)  Absent Here by Bret Shepard, winner of the 2023 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry (on sale October 8, 2024)  Purchase by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (on sale October…