Second Writer Selected for New Writer Spotlight

Small Press News is proud to announce the second writer named to the New Writer Spotlight, our ongoing feature that celebrates writers who have published their first book-length creative work with small independent presses. Kevin K. Casey and his novel Four-Peace (Lamar University Press) made the list for May 2015. Kevin has recently been interviewed by The Mimeograph.

Busy Little Press: Dozens In Print and More On the Way

Beaumont, TX–Lamar University Press calls itself a small university press, but a check of the books in print and those listed on the coming soon page reveals a more accurate description: busy university press. With the release of its next book, scheduled to be Kevin K. Casey’s novel Four-Peace, Lamar University Press will have published three novels, twenty-four books of poetry, and seven nonfiction books. From January through the end of April 2015, the press released ten books. In addition to the forty-plus books already published, the small press lists six books on its Coming Soon page. And according to press staff, there are another dozen books that have passed the selection process and in various stages of production. With this kind of impressive output for a small press, quality has not been compromised. Among the authors are many prize winners, including multiple past Texas poet laureates and one Canadian poet laureate.

For a look at many fine books crossing several genres, visit Lamar University Press.

Prolific Oklahoma Publisher Returns to Writing

Norman, Oklahoma–The Sooner State’s leading voice for high quality, non-mainstream literature has returned to writing and allowed a Texas press to showcase her latest work.  Jeanetta Calhoun Mish, editor of Mongrel Empire Press, has agreed to allow Lamar University Press to publish her collection of essays, Oklahomeland.

According to the publisher:
A new book by Jeanetta Calhoun Mish, Oklahomeland, is a wonderful collection of essays that will hold your attention. She found her title in some graffiti on an Oklahoma wall. The essays in this book explore numerous topics: a photographer’s sense of aesthetics, the suicide of a sharecropper , Oklahoma literature and culture. For her collection of poetry Work is Love Made Visible, Jeanetta Calhoun Mish won an Oklahoma Book Award, a Wrangler Award, and a WILLA Award from Women Writing the West. Her writing appears in numerous journals and anthologies, and she contributes much to Southwestern and American letters with her editorial work. She is founding editor of the active and successful Mongrel Empire Press. She serves as Director of The Red Earth Creative Writing MFA program at Oklahoma City University where she is also a faculty mentor in writing pedagogy and the craft of poetry.