Wake Forest University Press

09/26/2025

We’re looking forward to the 20th Annual Bookmarks Festival this Saturday! We’ll be at table 5, across from the Hanesbrands Theater. Come on by and meet this year’s WFU Press interns. We’ll also be offering a special festival discount! 📚

09/19/2025

For our friends in Boston: Doireann Ní Ghríofa is coming to Boston College as part of the Lowell Humanities Series on Wednesday, September 24, at 7 pm! Learn more: https://www.bc.edu/content/bc-web/sites/bc-news/articles/2025/fall/lowell-humanities-series.html

A poet and essayist, Ní Ghríofa’s most recent prose work, A Ghost in the Throat, has been sold in 20 languages and was a Book of the Year in The Guardian, The Irish Times, NPR, The New York Times, and the Irish Book Awards, as well as Foyles Nonfiction Book of the Year. It also won the James Tait Black Prize for Biography, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, among other accolades. Her acclaimed books of poetry are explorations of birth, death, desire, and domesticity. A new North American selection of her poems, titled Lunulae, was published by Wake Forest University Press in 2024. Ní Ghríofa is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, the Ostana Prize, a Seamus Heaney Fellowship, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.

09/18/2025

What a wonderful reading and visit last week from Martin Dyar! Martin spent the week with us, on both the Reynolda and Wake Downtown campuses, for classroom visits and discussions on poetry and medical humanities. And on Wednesday, he gave a truly exceptional reading in celebration of his newest collection, The Meek. Thanks to everyone who helped us welcome Martin, especially the WFU Press interns and our co-hosts, the Wake Forest University Humanities Institute. And thanks to the Old Gold & Black for covering the event. You can read more about Martin’s reading here: https://wfuogb.com/27541/arts-and-culture/martin-dyars-poems-are-rivulets-of-love/

09/09/2025

Reminder: join us tomorrow for a poetry reading by Martin Dyar at 5:30 pm in the ZSR Library Auditorium, Wake Forest University!

We're thrilled to welcome Martin Dyar to campus! Join us for a poetry reading presented by Wake Forest University Press and the Wake Forest University Humanities Institute's Story, Health, & Healing Initiative in celebration of Martin Dyar’s new book, The Meek (WFU Press 2025). The reading will be held in the ZSR Library Auditorium on Wednesday, September 10, at 5:30 pm. A book signing and reception will follow. This event is free and open to the public, but registration is requested. Please register here: https://forms.gle/33cUwXieTHNw2KHXA

Originally from Swinford in County Mayo, Martin Dyar is the author of the Pigott Prize-shortlisted poetry collection Maiden Names (Arlen House, 2013) and The Meek (WFU Press, 2025). He has also written a play, Tom Loves a Lord, about the Irish poet Thomas Moore; and, with the composer Ryan Molloy, a poetry song cycle, Buaine na Gaoithe, for soprano, harp, and flute. He is also the editor of the anthology Vital Signs: Poems of Illness and Healing (Poetry Ireland, 2022).

The winner of the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award and the Strokestown International Poetry Award, Dyar has held writing fellowships at the University of Iowa, the Washington Ireland Program, and at the University of Limerick. He teaches in the field of Medical Humanities in the School of Medicine at Trinity College Dublin.

09/02/2025

We're thrilled to welcome Martin Dyar to campus! Join us for a poetry reading presented by Wake Forest University Press and the Wake Forest University Humanities Institute's Story, Health, & Healing Initiative in celebration of Martin Dyar’s new book, The Meek (WFU Press 2025). The reading will be held in the ZSR Library Auditorium on Wednesday, September 10, at 5:30 pm. A book signing and reception will follow. This event is free and open to the public, but registration is requested. Please register here: https://forms.gle/33cUwXieTHNw2KHXA

Originally from Swinford in County Mayo, Martin Dyar is the author of the Pigott Prize-shortlisted poetry collection Maiden Names (Arlen House, 2013) and The Meek (WFU Press, 2025). He has also written a play, Tom Loves a Lord, about the Irish poet Thomas Moore; and, with the composer Ryan Molloy, a poetry song cycle, Buaine na Gaoithe, for soprano, harp, and flute. He is also the editor of the anthology Vital Signs: Poems of Illness and Healing (Poetry Ireland, 2022).

The winner of the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award and the Strokestown International Poetry Award, Dyar has held writing fellowships at the University of Iowa, the Washington Ireland Program, and at the University of Limerick. He teaches in the field of Medical Humanities in the School of Medicine at Trinity College Dublin.

08/22/2025

Poem of the week: “Luck” by Martin Dyar appeared in The Irish Times this past weekend! Subscribers can read it online here: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/2025/08/16/poem-of-the-week-luck/

Martin’s new book, The Meek, is available now: https://wfupress.wfu.edu/books/the-meek/

07/17/2025

Looking for your next summer read? Martin Dyar's The Meek was recently recommended by Joseph O'Connor in The Irish Times: "an exceptional second collection from a poet who is also a gifted storyteller. Full of precision, acute observation and reverent encounters with the natural world, it’s a book I’ll come back to many times."

Read the full list here: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/2025/07/05/summer-reading-our-critics-recommendations-for-2025/

07/16/2025

"I found myself being interested in the aspects of ourselves that are authentically and passionately connected to animals." Martin Dyar joined Seán Rocks on RTÉ Arena last night to discuss his new collection, The Meek. Listen to the full conversation and hear Martin read three poems, including the title sonnet: https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22528073/

06/27/2025

Poem of the week: "Mischief at the Globe" by Gerard Fanning, from his posthumous collection Slip Road, published in Collected Poems (2024). Read the full poem on the WFU Press blog: https://wfupress.wfu.edu/poem-of-the-week/mischief-at-the-globe-by-gerard-fanning

In her selection of this week's poem, WFU Press intern Paulina Hernandez writes, "Gerard Fanning explores themes of mortality, the passage of time, and the ephemeral nature of human life through theatrical and natural imagery. The poem reflects on the vulnerability of the body—symbolized by a freckle—while simultaneously observing the flow of life outside the confines of the theatre. By weaving the world of performance with the steady movement of the Thames, Fanning creates an introspection on the transient nature of existence."

06/24/2025

"I hadn’t come across the late Gerard Fanning’s work before encountering it whole, as it were, in the shape of this Collected Poems. It comes with helpful apparatus—a foreword by Gerald Dawe, an afterword by Colm Tóibín ... All of these angles are helpful, perhaps even essential, to the new reader of his writing." Read the full by Declan Ryan in The Irish Times: http://bit.ly/4lipUfl

Collected Poems | Gerard Fanning is available now on our website: https://wfupress.wfu.edu/books/collected-poems-gerard-fanning/

The book is also available to international customers here: https://gazellebookservices.co.uk/products/9781943667154

06/20/2025

Poem of the week: "The Elsewhere Empire" by Medbh McGuckian, from The Thankless Paths to Freedom (2024). Read the full poem on the WFU Press blog: https://wfupress.wfu.edu/poem-of-the-week/the-elsewhere-empire-by-medbh-mcguckian/

In her selection of this week's poem, WFU Press intern Virginia Noone writes, "Medbh McGuckian explores the emotional and physical spaces that loss often occupies... When a loved one is lost, a portion of us feels lost within ourselves—or unconsciously placed elsewhere. This poem articulates this experience by weaving together fragments of environments and distant memories."

06/18/2025

"Medbh McGuckian has a gift of construction so rare I find myself seduced by her sentences long before I’m seduced by the poems. Seduction by the parts is the prelude to seduction by the whole." Read William Logan's review of The Thankless Paths to Freedom in the latest issue of The New Criterion: https://newcriterion.com/article/the-violets-bear-them-away/