Staff Reads

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 about past and present racial injustices in the Southern cities of Tulsa, Oklahoma and Charleston, South Carolina are the winners of the 2024 Lillian Smith Book Awards, a University of Georgia Libraries-based award recognizing the best writing on social justice topics in the United States.

The Mary Frances Early College of Education and the University of Georgia Libraries invite the community to celebrate the launch of Mary Frances Early’s autobiography, “The Quiet Trailblazer: My Journey as the First Black Graduate of the University of Georgia.”

Listening to a classic rock radio station, University of Georgia librarian Tim Smolko became inspired to go on a musical and historical exploration with his wife and writing partner Joanna, a musicologist and adjunct professor in the Hugh Hodgson School of Music.

After a seven-year project delving into the ways songwriters from Bob Dylan to Bono reflected on the issues of the Cold War, the pair are celebrating the publication of their book Atomic Tunes: The Cold War in American and British Popular Music by Indiana University Press this May.

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of desegregation at the University of Georgia, the University of Georgia Press, the New Georgia Encyclopedia, the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, and the Mary Frances Early College of Education announce a Campus Read of An Education in Georgia: Charlayne Hun

Terry Kay has had a lot of ideas in his life, and most of those developed into page-turning novels. But in the summer of 1999, one of his ideas wasn’t about creating books — it was about honoring the authors that came before him.

“I thought Georgia needed to be doing more to honor its writers, to honor its rich literary heritage,” said Kay, whose seventh novel was published that year. “Around the same time, I began to be aware that Georgia literature wasn’t being taught in the schools anymore and I thought that establishing an award that focused not just a particular work by a writer but their whole lifetime of work was a good way to honor the remarkable writers who hail from Georgia or who have made Georgia their home and might encourage teachers of English to see what incredible writers we have right here in Georgia.”