By Whitney Hale
The University
Press of Kentucky (UPK) and Centre College have announced the inaugural
writers to appear in a new book series — the University Press of Kentucky New Poetry and Prose Series.
The first two authors to have their books selected for inclusion are fiction
writer Rion Amilcar Scott and poet Brianna Noll. Their books will be published
in the next academic year. These works were selected from more than 120
submissions and represent some of the most innovative and powerful work in new
American writing.
The University Press of
Kentucky New Poetry and Prose Series seeks to publish creative works that
exhibit a profound attention to language, strong imagination, formal inventiveness,
and awareness of one’s literary roots.
Scott’s short story
collection will be published in the fall of 2016. His work centers on the
fictional town of Cross River, Maryland, an African-American community that was
founded in 1807 by rebellious slaves after a successful insurrection. Grappling
with the experiences of adolescence, brotherhood, mistaken identity, child
raising, abuse, but particularly hope, each story showcases Scott’s unique
ability to flesh out intricately imagined characters and to narrate from a
variety of perspectives, often revolving around children who display more
wisdom, compassion, and tact than their adult counterparts.
A member of the English
faculty at Bowie State University, Scott was awarded a Kimbilio Fellowship. He
has published work in The Kenyon Review, Crab Orchard Review, among others and
is the author of "Wolf Tickets." Series editor Lisa Williams calls it
"a wildly impressive and ambitious collection of stories, which affirms
that it can be the smallest human choices — of tenderness, kindness and cruelty
— that make our people, and our world, what it is."
Noll’s collection of
poetry, due out in the spring of 2017, explores the intersection of the
scientific and the fantastical. Her subjects range from woolly mammoths and
star-nosed moles to Japanese origami and Greek myth. In poems that are taut and
lyrical, short-lined, enjambed and always enticing on a sentence level, Noll
sometimes speaks in the voice of other creatures as she explores what it might
mean to be an "other."
Noll is a founder and
current poetry editor of the literary magazine The Account:
A Journal of Poetry, Prose, and Thought. Her work has appeared in
many publications, including The New York Quarterly, American Poetry Journal,
Kenyon Review Online and The Georgia Review. "Never simply
descriptive," Williams describes Noll’s poems as "alchemic, composed
of sharp observation and philosophic questioning, weaving together human
perception, received knowledge, intellectual and emotional exploration, and
profound watchfulness."
Two books will be
published each academic year as part of the University Press of Kentucky New
Poetry and Prose Series. Submissions of poetry and fiction are accepted for the
series between April 15 and June 1. Submissions postmarked no later than June 1
should be mailed to University Press of Kentucky, Attn: New Poetry and Fiction,
663 S. Limestone Street, Lexington, KY 40508.
The series is edited by
Lisa Williams, Paul L. Cantrell Associate Professor of English and director of
the creative writing program at Centre College. Williams is the author
of three collections of poetry, "Gazelle in the House," "Woman
Reading to the Sea" and "The Hammered Dulcimer," and a recipient
of the Rome Prize, the Barnard Women Poets Prize, the May Swenson Poetry Award,
and an Al Smith Individual Artist Grant from the Kentucky Arts Council. The
series advisor board includes Camille Dungy, Rebecca Morgan Frank, Silas House,
Davis McCombs and Roger Reeves.
University Press of
Kentucky is the scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth of Kentucky,
representing a consortium that now includes all of the state universities, five
private colleges and two historical societies. The editorial program of the press
focuses on the humanities and the social sciences. Offices for the
administrative, editorial, production and marketing departments of the press
are found at UK, which provides financial support toward the operating expenses
of the publishing operation.
Reprinted with permission from UKNow.
