THE BOOK, JACKET, AND JOURNAL SHOW
Honoring the many design and production teams within our community whose work furthers a long tradition of excellence, the AUPresses Book, Jacket, and Journal Show annually recognizes achievement in the design, production, and manufacture of books, book jackets, and journals. Through a traveling exhibit and an acclaimed annual catalog of selected entries, the competition visually teaches the tenets of good design and fulfills its mission to “honor and instruct” while providing a source of discussion and creative and resourceful ideas.
The 2023 Book, Jacket, and Journal Show selections were announced in April 2023 via a virtual display on the AUPresses Design site. The show catalog was again produced, and the selections were widely promoted on the show’s Instagram account, @AUPressesDesign.
Judging for the 2023 Book, Jacket, and Journal Show had taken place at the AUPresses Central Office in New York City in January 2023, with jurors selecting 83 entries from 68 member publishers in 7 categories from among 488 entries.
The Book, Jacket, and Journal Traveling Show also returned with the 2023 selections appearing on display at 29 university presses across the US and Canada from September 2023 through June 2024. The show also made its UK debut with a display at UP Redux Conference 2024, held in Edinburgh, UK on May 15-16. The show’s UK debut had been planned for UP Redux 2020; the conference was cancelled due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
The 2024 Book, Jacket, and Journal Show judging took place in the AUPresses Central Office in New York City on January 25-26. Jurors selected 30 books and journals, and 51 jackets and covers as the very best examples from a large pool of excellent design. The selected entries were announced via the AUPresses Design website on the UP Commons in April 2024. The show will debut with a live display at the AUPresses 2024 Annual Meeting, which will take place on June 11-13 in Montréal, Quebec.
READUP AND MORE
The Association uses the #ReadUP tag on social media to highlight our members’ publications and stories about the valuable work of university presses. Though this tag originated in University Press Week celebrations and on a single social media platform, its exhortation is always relevant—just like university presses!
The AUPresses Bookshop.org shopfront continued to support our promotion of member work to readers. Through it, we once again expanded the reach of the UP Week Gallery, this year with the theme Speak UP.
UNIVERSITY PRESS WEEK
University Press Week 2023 kicked off with a 30+-page spread in Publishers Weekly, featuring the work of 20 member presses. Media coverage also included a New Books Network podcast interview with AUPresses President Jane Bunker (Cornell) and an illustrated feature about the Speak UP Gallery selections in LitHub. It concluded with a mention on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” during an interview with MIT Press and Princeton University Press authors Lee McIntyre and Adam Berinsky the following Monday, and a UP Week author event with Columbia University Press author Dan Sinykin, recorded by C-SPAN BookTV at the Strand Bookstore in New York and broadcast in December.
This year’s theme, Speak UP, focused on university presses’ role in giving voice to the scholarship and ideas that shape conversations around the world. This essential work was amply demonstrated by:
- 103 entries in the Speak UP Gallery and Reading List,
- 85 posts in the Speak UP blog tour, and
- 28 events, primarily in-person, celebrating university presses and university press authors from Bristol, UK to Cambridge, MA, and Seattle to Miami.
New this year: thanks to these publications’ generous offers of complimentary space, ads celebrating UP Week appeared in the print editions of Harpers, the New York Review of Books, Dissent, and n+1 as well as in the LA Review of Books e-newsletter.
University Press Week 2024 is scheduled for November 11-15.
STAND UP AWARD
The 2023 Stand UP Award was presented to essayist and New York Times columnist Margaret Renkl, recognizing her deep appreciation of university presses and university press books. “University presses understand something that ought to be obvious in a country as sprawling and pluralistic as ours,” Renkl wrote in a 2022 column entitled, “University Presses Are Keeping American Literature Alive” “The same book doesn’t have to matter to everybody, but everybody ought to have access to books that matter.” The award was announced during the virtual AUPresses 2023 Annual Meeting in June, and Renkl received her award plaque from Gianna Mosser (Vanderbilt) during the 2023 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville in October. Renkl is the author most recently of The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year (Spiegel & Grau, 2023) and Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South (Milkweed Editions, 2021), which received the 2022 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.
Through the Stand UP Award, the Association celebrates people who have done extraordinary work in support of university presses, recognizing advocates who are not on staff at a member press but who stand up from within the communities that presses work with, speak to, and serve.
UNIVERSITY PRESS BOOKS FOR PUBLIC AND SECONDARY SCHOOL LIBRARIES
Due to the Central Office staff restructure/reorganization, the University Press Books for Public and Secondary School Libraries remains on hiatus. We anticipate that this program will resume when the Central Office staff restructure/reorganization has been completed.