University of Virginia Press

09/12/2025

Congratulation to Rabih Alameddine, whose novel "The True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)" has made the longlist for the 2025 in fiction. UVA Press was proud to publish redently his masterful nonfiction book, COMFORTING MYTHS: CONCERNING THE POLITICAL IN ART. More info here: https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/10051/

The five finalists in each category will be named on will be named October 7, and winners will be revealed at an awards ceremony in New York City on November 19.

09/09/2025

Happy to "After the Fire: Richmond in Defeat" by Nelson D. Lankford!

In April 1865, the Civil War, which had consumed the lives of the residents of Richmond, Virginia, for four years, ended in a vast conflagration that nearly destroyed their city. As Confederate troops fled and Union forces streamed in, the world they had known literally went up in flames. None could predict what would replace it when the smoke cleared.

"After the Fire" tells what happened next, offering a kaleidoscope of perspectives to evoke a vanished world of privation, defeat, jubilation, false starts, engrained antagonism, and the lost causes of Confederate nostalgia and of racial reconciliation. Nelson Lankford deftly narrates the desperate struggle of Confederates and Unionists, men and women, and white and Black Americans to shape the postwar landscape. Unsettling any sense of inevitability about this pivotal moment in history, Lankford puts the reader in the shoes of those who lived through it.

https://upress.virginia.edu/title/10095/

09/08/2025

Buildings of Missouri – Buildings of the United States

Register here!
https://slpl.bibliocommons.com/events/6786bfb8018bbb1c3de13327

09/02/2025

Happy to "The Literatures of Spanish America and Brazil: The Twentieth Century— Volume 2" by Earl E. Fitz

The second volume of Earl E. Fitz’s magisterial survey of the field, "The Literatures of Spanish America and Brazil: The Twentieth Century" analyzes Spanish- and Portuguese-language writing throughout South and Central America as well as in the United States and Canada, where it expanded and flourished over the course of the century. Fitz argues that Spanish American and Brazilian literatures should be treated as two sides of the same coin, together forging a hemispheric identity as new literary aesthetics and political crises swept through the Americas. Fitz takes readers on a comparative journey, analyzing writers such as Octavio Paz and Juan Rulfo from Mexico, Julia de Burgos and Luis Palés Matos from Puerto Rico, Jorge Luis Borges and Victoria Ocampo from Argentina, and Mário de Andrade and Patrícia Galvão from Brazil, among many others, to inspire a more thoroughly integrated understanding of the literature of the Americas.

"Part manifesto, part memoir, part literary history."
Adam Joseph Shellhorse, Temple University

Take 40% off when you buy bundle together with volume 1

Use promo code at checkout!

https://upress.virginia.edu/title/5935/

08/29/2025

"VPAP stands as an institution in Virginia politics, a trusted one at a time when trust in others of longer standing has eroded . . ."

https://cardinalnews.org/2025/08/29/virginia-has-grown-a-organizational-unicorn-to-track-political-money-heres-the-story-behind-it/

Those who follow politics have come to rely on the Virginia Public Access Project. They may not realize how unusual it is, or the old-fashioned newspaper war that helped create it.

08/26/2025

Happy to "Trusted Source: How a Virginia Nonprofit Gained Bipartisan Support in an Era of Political Polarization" by David Poole!

In 1997, journalist David Poole launched a one-employee nonprofit to shine light on a blind spot in Virginia’s lax campaign finance system. Over the next quarter century, the Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP) assumed an increasingly larger role in state politics by addressing two crises in American democracy—the decline of newspapers and the tribalization of politics. VPAP built a sustainable business model that provided paywall-free insights into state politics. Most important, VPAP adhered to a fiercely independent, fact-based approach that won the trust of Republicans and Democrats alike.

"Trusted Source", written by VPAP’s founder, tells the unlikely story of how his organization revolutionized political transparency in Virginia. It describes the precarious early days when VPAP was financially dependent upon the same powerful interests it was shining a light on. Reflecting on VPAP’s first twenty-five years, Poole brings a unique perspective to some of the most vexing issues of our time: money in politics, the crisis of American newspapers, the fracturing of information sources, and the precipitous erosion of confidence in our institutions. His account provides a blueprint for plucky nonprofits and offers hope that bipartisan trust is still possible, even in times as troubled as ours.

"David Poole’s 'Trusted Source' is as wonky a book as you’re likely to read this or any year, seeing as how it’s the origin story of an effort to force political string-pulling into the light. But this behind-the-scenes account from the founder of the influential Virginia Public Access Project also happens to be a damn well-written and compelling story, and essential reading for those seeking to understand the commonwealth’s shifting political landscape. An unexpected page-turner."
- Earl Swift, New York Times bestselling author of "Chesapeake Requiem" and "Hell Put to Shame"

"David Poole does a masterful job of recounting the story of how VPAP went from an idea on a napkin to an invaluable resource for citizens, journalists and politicians. The lessons here could benefit any non-profit leader by pointing out the necessity of staying true to your ideals and constantly upping your game."
- Beth Macy, author of "Dopesick"

"'Trusted Source' shows the magic that happens when a gifted writer provides a candid firsthand account of truly interesting and transformative events. David Poole’s narrative about the improbable nonpartisan achievement that VPAP represents makes for a really good read about a really good deed."
- Frank B. Atkinson, author of "Virginia in the Vanguard" and "The Lion's Den: A Story of American Renewal"

https://upress.virginia.edu/title/10103/

08/22/2025

Happy to "Slavery's Medicine: Illness and Labor in the British Plantation Caribbean" by Claire E. Gherini!

From their inception, British Caribbean sugar plantations generated wealth on the basis of nightmarish systems of labor exploitation, where illness was a constant of enslaved life. Then, in the second half of the eighteenth century, plantation owners tried to “improve” plantation slavery, targeting medicine and healing. But rather than improve rates of illness, they sought instead to make the work of medicine and care more economically predictable and efficient and to hurry the sick back to work. Healthcare became an arena for contests for power, as people struggled with one another over the terms of their work and how they recovered from illness. "Slavery's Medicine" uses a rich and substantial archival base to document the experiences of the sick, managers, doctors, absentee plantation owners, enslaved healers, and medical advice authors in this new, modern system of body management. Modern medicine ultimately sustained hierarchies among enslaved people and middling whites. Yet modern medicine also encouraged acts of resistance. It was, therefore, the creation of proprietors as well as enslaved men and women themselves.

https://upress.virginia.edu/title/10074/