If you would like us to insert a handwritten card with your order, please place your order here, and then send us an email at ndsuDOTpressATndsuDOTedu with your message.
Thank you!
New Author Signing!
Please join us in welcoming Dr. Thom Tammaro to our author lineup! The NDSU Press is proud to be publishing his poetry collection, Aurora, in 2026.
Thom Tammaro has produced a variety of work, from authoring poetry collections including Italian Days & Hours and Holding on for Dear Life, to co-editing anthologies such as Invisible World: Fifty Tiny Poems of Walt Whitman (with Sheila Coghill) and To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets from Pre-Territorial Days to the Present (with Joyce Sutphen and Connie Wanek). He has also co-edited several poetry collections inspired by the work of creatives such as Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Bob Dylan.
Thom Tammaro’s extensive body of work has won a variety of awards, including Minnesota Book Awards, the Midwest Booksellers’s Honor Award for Poetry, and a WILLA Award for Poetry from the Women Writing the West Association. His work has also been featured in publications including American Poetry Review, Chicago Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
In addition to his career as author and editor, Thom Tammaro served as an English professor at Minnesota State University Moorhead for thirty-four years, retiring as Professor Emeritus in 2017. During his time there, he co-founded and directed the MFA in Creative Writing program.
Publishing Students to Print 10th Annual Chapbook on Antique Printing Presses
from NDSU Press Publisher Suzzanne Kelley
Students in the Introduction to Publishing class at NDSU Press will be printing the cover of the tenth annual poetry chapbook for NDSU Press on an antique printing press at Bonanzaville, Sat., Sept. 27.
The class will be hand-feeding the covers into a Chandler & Price press from 1897 in The Hunter Times building in Bonanzaville’s pioneer village. The students will work in shifts from 10 a.m. to 3:45 p.m.
Fall 2025 Intro to Publishing Students: (at front, left to right) Grace, Maddie, Hannah, Mason, Maverick; (standing, left to right) Morgan, Eliza, Maggie, Tara, Alison, Aidan, Dr. Kelley, Ingrid.
Past publishing students at The Hunter Times: (left to right) Abbie, Breanna, Jamie, and Anish.
The students will travel to Braddock, ND, to print the inside pages of the chapbook on antique presses at The Braddock News Letterpress Museum the weekend of Oct. 10-12.
This year’s winners of Poetry of the Plains and Prairies (POPP) Award are co-authors Josh Gaines, Portland, OR, and Ben Clark, Minneapolis, MN, for their manuscript After the Floating Barn.
In our archives, we’ve found copies of, and photos of, chapbooks being letterpress published by poet and faculty member Richard Lyons in the 1950s and 1960s. Decades later, in 2016, NDSU Press returned to publishing chapbooks on letterpress equipment. Now, as we produce our tenth POPP Award publication, I’ve expanded the enterprise by taking my publishing students into North Dakota communities; by publishing state, regional, and nationally located poets; and by providing national distribution for our prizewinning chapbooks.
The success of our project is the result of our collaborative arrangement between Bonanzaville and The Braddock News Letterpress Museum of the South Central Threshing Association and the dedication of Allan and Leah Burke, retired weekly newspaper publishers, who are the driving force behind the collection, preservation, and revitalization of letterpress printing. We also rely upon the generous nature and expertise of pressman Mike Frykman and the Iron Men (and women) of the threshing association.
Beth Jansen, executive director of Bonanzaville, said she is pleased to welcome the students to the pioneer village. “There is nothing better than to have students visit Bonanzaville to experience history through 19th Century technology,” Jansen said.
Introduction to Publishing is one of the required classes for NDSU’s Certificate in Publishing.
A Safe Place
. . . where-in we share “A letter to Lance Richey,” author of Champagne Times: Lawrence Welk and His American Century (NDSU Press 2025) from Allan Burke, Secretary-Treasurer, Friends of the Welk Homestead, Inc., presented here with Allan’s permission.
Author Lance with a photo of Lawrence.
Lance,
I found one of your statements in the recent radio interview so profound that I spent considerable time transcribing it. I’m sure there is a way to transcribe it instantly with AI, but I did it the old-fashioned way by listening, typing, rewinding, listening, typing . . .
Here’s that section, which I’d like to title “A Safe Place”:
“Lawrence gave the people what they wanted. He was an entertainer. He wouldn’t describe himself as an artist. He loved Jazz music. He loved Dixieland. But he said, ‘I don’t play much of that on my television show because the audience wants something different.’
“Lawrence’s greatest success on network television actually came in the most tumultuous times, the 1960s. He hit the Top Ten of all television programs in 1968. In 1969 when the nation was coming apart at the seams with the Baby Boomer revolution, with the Vietnam War, with the civil rights movement. Because everyone knew for one hour a week I can check into Lawrence Welk and I’ll hear music I recognize, I won’t have politics in my face, and I can just for a moment step away from all the turmoil and enjoy a show that presents to me the America that used to be or that I imagine used to be. That was Lawrence’s secret.”
This section is what I think could be the heart of a marketing campaign for the [Welk] biography and documentary.
The times we live in today, highlighted by this week’s assassination of Charlie Kirk and earlier by the shootings of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband (not to mention school and other shootings), call for “A Safe Place.” At the risk of being declared sophomoric, I believe Public Television can provide that with the Welk documentary and The Lawrence Welk Show, and NDSU Press can market Champagne Times: Lawrence Welk and His American Century.
It seems to have gone unnoticed that The Lawrence Welk Show by Joyful Voices drew an estimated 600 people to the Welk Homestead on June 1. This past Sunday, Joyful Voices’ Lawrence Welk Hoedown drew several hundred people to a steamy machine shed at the South Central Threshing Show at Braddock, N.D. Contrary to the notion that Mr. Welk’s fans are dead, none of the people at the show in Braddock appeared to have left this life. In fact, there was some dancing at the end of the show.
In my opinion, public television stations across the country should be adding The Lawrence Welk Show . . .
Just some thoughts.
The best to you and Carol,
Allan
P.S. from Suzzanne Kelley, Publisher, NDSU Press: Here are some links to the Prairie Public documentary about Lawrence Welk (viewed already by 37,000+ people!) and the NDSU Press publication of Lance’s book Champagne Times: Lawrence Welk and His American Century. The biography (a 3-volume limited edition [just 500 copies, autographed and numbered], printed as hardcovers in a beautiful protective slip-case) contains photos and stories beyond the documentary with more insights to Welk’s motivation, aspirations, and success-driven route from farm boy roots to becoming a media mogul millionaire. A history of Lawrence Welk–North Dakota’s and the nation’s eminent entertainer of his time–is also part of a month-long exhibit at the NDSU Memorial Union Gallery, showcasing unique historical objects and running through October 9. For parking as the guest of NDSU Press, email NDSU.Press@ndsu.edu to obtain a free pass.
10th Annual NDSU Press Party!
How Our Books Go from Us to You
Note from NDSU Press Publisher, Suzzanne Kelley
Here is Emma Borah, Graduate Research Assistant in Publishing, taking care of sales and communications during the 2024 Western History Association conference in Kansas City. Hosting an exhibit table at conferences and book festivals is one way we are able to get our books into the hands of readers.
Almost every time we sign on a new author, they ask about our methods for distribution. This is a good and important question to ask. Authors (and their presses!) want to make sure that their books are getting into the hands of readers everywhere. Our authors are much relieved when I share the following information about our distribution practices.
- All of our books (since 2015) are available at Amazon, which works with us as a wholesaler. When Amazon receives orders for our books, they will then send us a list of the books we are to ship to one of their multiple distribution hubs. We receive that list every Monday at 3:00 a.m. We can only send Amazon the books that they request.
- Ingram Content Group also works with us a wholesaler, meaning they place orders with us when they receive orders from third parties, usually from bookstores.
- Follett School Solutions and Higher Education Follett work with us as wholesalers, too, filling orders for public schools and university or college bookstores.
- Baker & Taylor places orders with us for libraries across the United States.
- We sell direct to public libraries and bookstores (at discounts to each). For the past couple of years, we’ve opened subscription accounts to public libraries that want to receive a copy of every book we publish. As soon as we have those books in hand, we ship them off to the subscribing libraries. We also gift a copy of every book to the eleven higher education institutions in North Dakota. We send those gift copies to the North Dakota State Library, and they take care of placing the copies with the universities.
- We sell direct to individuals at our online store, at various conferences and book festivals, and at our own events, such as the POPP Poetry reading event that will take place this coming Saturday, December 12, and at our annual NDSU Press Party. Our 10th Annual NDSU Press Party is scheduled for May 3, 2025.
- We even give some copies away! If a book editor from a journal requests a copy, we send it, no charge. Likewise, if a faculty member at any college or university is thinking about using one of our titles as required reading for their classes, we’ll send a desk copy to that faculty member.
With the various vendors that are involved, we spend a lot of time on fulfillment: accepting purchase orders; picking, packing, and carting orders to delivery points; and then invoicing the companies in a variety of ways that meet their requirements for record keeping. We try to send out all orders within two business days of receiving them.
So, that’s the distribution scoop for NDSU Press!
Giving Day Lasts 1,890 Minutes This Year!
Every minute counts. Gifts received between 8 a.m. Dec. 3, 2024, and 3:30 p.m. Dec. 4, 2024, count toward the NDSU Giving Day totals. Fun fact: NDSU Giving Day 2024 will last 1,890 minutes to commemorate the year NDSU was founded!
Your contribution to NDSU Press supports the publication of award-winning scholarly and literary books. We hope you’ll consider our cause today…or sometime within the remaining number of minutes. 🙂
Follow this Donate Now link, scroll down to Arts and Sciences, and find NDSU Press General Fund.
On behalf of our authors, staff, and students, I THANK YOU.
Suzzanne Kelley
Publisher, NDSU Press
Associate Professor of Practice
Hello, Emma!
NDSU Press is pleased to introduce you to our new Graduate Research Assistant in Publishing, Emma Borah.
Emma is a graduate student at NDSU, seeking her MA in English. She is a recent graduate from NDSU with a BA in English, a minor in History, and the Certificate in Publishing. In her free time, Emma enjoys reading, creative writing, playing video games, and making coffee. She is also a fan of Chicago Manual of Style and digging into the 18th Edition!
In addition to Emma’s in-house duties for marketing, publicity, and fulfillment (she’s the one who ships out our orders), Emma has been representing NDSU Press at various conferences. So far, she’s hosted our exhibitor tables at the annual meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory (Fargo, ND), the Northern Great Plains History Conference (Sioux Falls, SD), and the North Dakota Library Association Conference (Bismarck, ND). Upcoming events include Rain Taxi’s Twin Cities Book Festival (St. Paul, MN), and the Western History Association Conference (Kansas City, MO).
Marjorie Buettner, Winner of the 2024 Poetry of the Plains & Prairies Award
It is with great pleasure that we announce the winner of our 2024 Poetry of the Plains & Prairies (POPP) Award, Marjorie Buettner, for her chapbook collection “Dakota Dreaming.”
Marjorie (Junkert) Buettner, born in Bismarck, North Dakota, is an American Pushcart Prize–nominated, award-winning haiku, haibun, tanka, and sijo poet. Her work has been published throughout the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., and she has won prizes in the James W. Hackett International Award for Haiku (2000 and 2003), the Harold G. Henderson Awards (2002, 2004, 2007, and 2011), the Robert Spiess Memorial Haiku Award (2003, 2004, 2005), the Robert Frost Poetry Festival (2008 and 2009), and the Kusamakura Haiku Competition (2006), among others. She has taught haiku and tanka at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and presented poetry workshops throughout Minnesota. She is a former editor for the online journal Contemporary Haibun Online, and she frequently writes book reviews for haiku and tanka journals. Seeing It Now, a collection of haiku and tanka, appeared in 2008; her collection of haibun, Some Measure of Existence (2014), won first place in the Mildred Kanterman Merit Book Awards and was also nominated for the Minnesota Book Awards. Buettner lives in Chisago City, Minnesota.
In keen competition, thirty-eight submissions for this year’s POPP Award were narrowed down to six finalists. As seen in this photo, they are, clockwise from top left: Carol Kapaun Ratchenski (ND), “A Place Made of Space”; Caroline Wellman (IL), “Just Before Sunrise”; Steve Gerson (KS), “There Is a Season”; Carmen Dressler Ward (NC), “Rhythms in the Wind”; Buettner; Lance Nixon (SD), “Round the Sun’s Paddock: A Prairie Year.”
Our finalist judge, Brendan Stermer (winner of the 2023 POPP Award with Forgotten Frequencies and finalist in the 2024 Midwest Book Awards), had this to say about Buettner’s manuscript:
“Dakota Dreaming” returns us to the ancient core of poetry as spiritual quest. But this book offers no standard hero’s journey – no daring descent into the underworld, no triumphant, hopeful return. It offers, rather, a gathering of visions received by one who has learned to dwell indefinitely in the liminal space between realms. While much of the collection is written in the Japanese haibun form, Buettner’s imagery is rooted deep in North American prairie soil. Her poems are like “abandoned houses which let the gold of afternoon light filter in through open windows,” offering some brief, imperfect respite for “those of us who have lost our way.” And when the daylight fades and the darkness becomes complete, Buettner guides us: “I borrow the light / of snow.”
As our 9th POPP Award winner, Buettner will receive our standard university press publishing contract, $400 ($200 for winning, $200 for serving as our next finalist judge), ten comp copies, 50 percent author discount, and national distribution. Her chapbook will be letterpress printed in fall 2024 at The Hunter Times (located at Bonanzaville in West Fargo) and The Braddock News Letterpress Museum (located in Braddock, North Dakota). For more information about the POPP Award and our letterpress printing projects, check out this previous NDSU Press story, Land of Sunlit Ice, and this video: Thunderbird and The Land of Sunlit Ice, produced by Sandbagger News.
With congratulations to all six finalists and Marjorie Buettner, and with appreciation to all the poets who submitted their work, we invite poets to consider submitting their manuscripts to next year’s POPP Award competition (January 17 through March 17, 2025). We do not charge an entry fee.
Wish Us Luck!
Note from NDSU Press Publisher Suzzanne Kelley
Will we take Gold or Silver? Or maybe one of each or two of one–since one of our titles is a finalist in TWO categories: History and Multicultural! Whatever way, we’re fine with the outcome! This Friday, April 26, 2024, the Independent Book Publishers (IBPA) Award winners will be announced during the dinner and ceremony being held in Denver, 6:00 to 9:00 P.M. CDT. This celebration of “the best in independent book publishing” is an exciting gala to attend for publishers and authors alike, but alas we cannot be there in person. Instead, you’ll find us tuning in at 8:15 P.M. CDT, as that is when the hosts will livestream the announcements via their Facebook page.
And who is our charmed finalist author? Historian John M. Shaw, whose debut book is garnering great attention! NDSU Press published In Order That Justice May Be Done: The Legal Struggles of the Turtle Mountain Band of Pembina Chippewa, 1795-1905 in July 2023. We hope you’ll tune in to the award announcements, too, and maybe even cheer us on!
In Order That Justice May Be Done is available from our NDSU Press online store, Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Amazon, and your favorite independent bookseller.