Publishing and Copyright

The University of Georgia Press is pleased to announce a new endowment to support the publication and promotion of the winners of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction.

The Debbie and John Edwards Endowment has been established to cover all costs for the award-winning short story collections that are published every fall, including editorial, design, and marketing costs. The $100,000 gift from UGA Press Advisory Council Chair Debbie Edwards and her husband John will also support author travel to Georgia for book launch events, advertising, and help expand overall visibility for the distinguished award that has been sponsored by UGA Press for over four decades.

The University of Georgia Press is pleased to announce a new endowment to support its undergraduate internship program in book publishing. The Candler Family Experiential Learning Scholarship Fund will provide funding for the university press’s paid experiential learning opportunities for UGA students.

The UGA Press has enjoyed a long relationship with the Candler family. Peter Candler Sr. and Shannon Ilges Candler are founding members of the Press’s Advisory Council. Following their retirement, son Pete Candler joined the council in 2018.

The $100,000 gift from the Ilges Foundation was matched by $50,000 from the UGA Foundation as part of a university-wide scholarship campaign.

“It is truly an honor to be able to support the Press in this way. We are so grateful for all of you and the heroic work you do,” said Pete Candler on behalf of the Candler family.

Books chronicling the suppression of Black literacy in the American South and highlighting the leadership of Black women in battling for human rights around the globe are the 2026 Lillian Smith Book Awards, recognizing the best writing on social justice in the United States.

The 2026 awards, administered by the University of Georgia Libraries, recognize:

• Dangerous Learning: The South’s Long War on Black Literacy (Yale University Press), by Derek W. Black

• Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights (W.W. Norton & Company), by Keisha N. Blain

Clarke Central High School in Athens, GA, has announced a Summer Book Club for student athletes featuring The Crimson and Gold: Football and Integration in Athens, Georgia (UGA Press, 2024) by local author Mark Clegg (Economics A.B., University of Georgia). What started as a conversation in August 2025 with Assistant Head Football Coach Damien Gray and Clarke Central High librarians Angela Pendley and Naomi Craver evolved into a desire to educate students and the community about the history of integration at Clarke Central.

After saving researchers more than $2 million in 2025, UGA Libraries’ open access publishing agreements are expanding even further this year.

A newly signed read-and-publish agreement with publisher Taylor & Francis brings the list of open access publishing opportunities at UGA to more than 9,000 journal titles across 14 scholarly publishers. 

Emily Gore, deputy university librarian at the University of Georgia, has been elected to serve as the new chair of the steering committee for SPARC, an international coalition of research libraries and institutions that supports open systems for research and education.

Former Los Angeles Times Publisher and CNN President Tom Johnson will discuss his new book Driven: A Life in Public Service and Journalism from LBJ to CNN as part of the University of Georgia’s Fall 2025 Signature Lecture series on Wednesday, October 29. The public conversation with Red and Black Executive Director Charlotte Varnum will begin at 4 p.m. at the UGA Special Collections Libraries Building, with a light reception and a book signing to follow.

For UGA Libraries, Thomas May’s job centers around film and audiovisual work, but the archivist also enjoys the printed word. In fact, he was named one of the best authors in the state, as a recipient of a 2025 Georgia Author of the Year Award in the science fiction/fantasy category.

May serves as the audiovisual systems archivist and access coordinator with the Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection, one of three special collections units at the University of Georgia Libraries. He’s also a novelist, who self-published his debut fantasy novel Alan Dreams of Giants in November.

University of Georgia faculty and graduate students have more than double the opportunities for open access publishing, thanks to new UGA Libraries read and publish agreements with Elsevier and Springer Nature, two of the largest academic journal publishers.