University of Georgia Press

The University of Georgia Press or UGA Press is a publishing house and is a member of the Association of American University Presses.

Founded in 1938, the UGA Press is a division of the University of Georgia and is located on the campus in Athens, Georgia, USA. It is the oldest and largest publishing house in the state and one of the largest in the South.

The UGA Press publishes 70-80 titles each year of scholarly and academic, regional, and literary works with a focus on American and Southern studies. It is also a leading publisher of African-American studies, civil rights history and environmental studies.

The Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction was established by Charles East, then the editor-in-chief of the UGA Press, in 1983 to recognize gifted young writers.

In conjunction with the Georgia Humanities Council and GALILEO, the UGA Press created the New Georgia Encyclopedia, an on-line resource of Georgia history.

The UGA Press has successfully published original novels and works by writers such as Rick Bass, Erskine Caldwell, Terry Kay, Jim Kilgo, Barry Lopez, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Mary Hood, Harry Crews, Tom Wicker, Calvin Trillin, Roy Blount, Jr., Eugene Genovese, Rebecca Solnit, and Catherine Clinton.

The Press has been the subject of several scandals. Documents uncovered by the website Foetry.com revealed that the 1999 University of Georgia Contemporary Poetry series prize to Peter M. Sacks had been judged by Jorie Graham, a colleague of Sacks at Harvard who subsequently married himTomas Alex Tizon, "In Search of Poetic Justice," "Los Angeles Times", June 17, 2005. Available at the [http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-foetry17jun17,0,4322348,full.story LA Times] (subscription needed). Text is available at [http://www.newpoetryreview.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=346&sid=7579d596987e6e68e16f022fd314ce22 New Poetry Review] or [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/07/10/BAGGJDJQJI1.DTL&type=printable SFgate] (accessed 16 March 2007)] Thomas Bartlett, "Rhyme and Unreason," "Chronicle of Higher Education," May 20, 2005, [http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i37/37a01201.htm available here] (accessed March 16 2005)] [Kevin Larimer, "The Contester: Who's Doing What to Keep Them Clean", "Poets & Writers Magazine," July/August 2005. Formerly available at [http://www.pw.org/mag/0511/newslarimer.htm Poets and Writers] (page currently offline)] . Throughout the course of the controversy, series editor Bin Ramke had insisted that judges of the contest be kept secret, and until Foetry.com obtained the names of judges via The Open Records Act, the conflict of interest had been undisclosed. As a result of the critical coverage from Foetry.com and elsewhere, Ramke resigned from the editorship of the series. The University of Georgia Press now discloses the names of its poetry judges, who "are instructed to avoid conflicts of interest of all kinds."Alex Beam, "Website polices rhymes and misdemeanors," "Boston Globe", March 31, 2005, [http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2005/03/31/website_polices_rhymes_and_misdemeanors/ available here] ] . On October 27, 2005, the University of Georgia Press rescinded author Brad Vice's Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and recalled copies of his collection "The Bear Bryant Funeral Train." Vice was alleged to have plagiarized sections of one story from Carl Carmer's book "Stars Fell on Alabama" (1934) [ [http://www.nypress.com/18/48/news&columns/RobertClarkYoung.cfm "A Charming Plagiarist: The downfall of Brad Vice" by Robert Clark Young] "New York Press", Vol 18, Issue 48, November 30-Dec 6, 2005. Accessed Dec. 9, 2005.] (a charge that Vice and others dispute). [ [http://www.storysouth.com/comment/2005/11/fell_in_alabama_brad_vices_tus.html Fell In Alabama: Brad Vice's Tuscaloosa Night] by Jake Adam York. "storySouth". Accessed November 6, 2005.]

See also

*Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction

References

External links

* [http://www.ugapress.org Official site]
* [http://www.uga.edu/columns/060320/news-ugapress.html UGA Press names 15 members to its new Advisory Council, UGA Columns faculty staff newspaper, March 20, 2006]
* [http://www.uga.edu/news/newsbureau/releases/2001releases/0103/010323orchard.html UGA Public Affairs Press Release, Friday, March 23, 2001]
* [http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org The New Georgia Encyclopedia]