Joy Priest is the author of Horsepower, winner of the 2019 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. Her work has appeared in ESPN, Gulf Coast, Mississippi Review, The Rumpus, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Best New Poets 2014, 2016, and 2019, among others. She is the recipient of support from the Fine Arts Work Center, The Frost Place, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Hurston/Wright Foundation. Priest has facilitated poetry workshops with incarcerated juvenile and adult women, and has taught writing, comedy, and African American Arts & Culture at the university level. She received her MFA in poetry with a certificate…

Read Smarter is a reading challenge designed by University of Pittsburgh Press, Manchester University Press, MIT Press, Northwestern University Press, Syracuse University Press, University of Virginia Press, and Princeton University Press. Each month we will highlight one of the challenge prompts and provide suggested titles to help fulfill the prompts. The fourth prompt for Read Smarter is “Read a collection of poems.” This can be a collection by a single author or an anthology, a book of haiku or a book of complex free verse, as long as it’s published by a university press! You can download the full checklist here: Read…

Read Smarter is a reading challenge designed by University of Pittsburgh Press, Manchester University Press, MIT Press, Northwestern University Press, Syracuse University Press, University of Virginia Press, and Princeton University Press. Each month we will highlight one of the challenge prompts and provide suggested titles to help fulfill the prompts. Our third prompt for Read Smarter is “Read a book by a woman scholar.” For this prompt, the subject of the book is up to you, as long as the author is a female scholar. This prompt was originally meant to coincide with Women’s History Month in March, but unfortunately due to…

We “sat down” virtually with Joseph Stanhope Cialdella to talk about his new book, Motor City Green, which explores the history of urban gardens and green spaces in Detroit. Q: What drew you to this topic/subject area? A: I was born and raised in Kalamazoo, MI, which is on the west side of the state, and we didn’t spend much time in Detroit, which is on the east side of the state. That changed when I went to college [at the University of Michigan’s Residential College], and was fortunate to participate in several engaged learning courses where we had the…

Read Smarter is a reading challenge designed by University of Pittsburgh Press, Manchester University Press, MIT Press, Northwestern University Press, Syracuse University Press, University of Virginia Press, and Princeton University Press. Each month we will highlight one of the challenge prompts and provide suggested titles to help fulfill the prompts. Our second prompt for Read Smarter is “Read a book by an African American or Black scholar.” For this prompt, the subject of the book is up to you! While this prompt coincides with Black History Month here in the United States, we hope you’ll use this list as a resource all…