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Cover Reveal: The Distance That Isn’t Miles

from NDSU Press Publisher Suzzanne Kelley

This Sunday and Monday, our Intro to Publishing students will commence printing the covers for our newest Poetry of the Plains & Prairies (POPP) Award winner, The Distance That Isn’t Miles, by Anthony (Tony) J. Albright. We’ll meet at The Hunter Times, located at Bonanzaville, where pressmen Allan Burke and Sawyer Flynn have been prepping the Chandler & Price letterpress machine and making sure our printing plate is working in good order.

The selected cover concept for The Distance That Isn’t Miles.

 

This collection is about a Choctaw man (the author) who enters the military and becomes a parachute rigger. That means he’s in charge of packing parachutes for his army peers to use when they jump.

After reading and discussing the poetry collection, students prepared a creative brief for our designer, Deb Tanner, who does the bulk of our design work. The brief included senses and colors and emotions evoked by the poems, along with a summary of the collection and favored poem samples. We expressed a desire to add a design embellishment, perhaps something to represent parachute fabric or other textures to resonate with a rigger’s work.

Tony also provided specifics about parachutes; rigger uniforms and colors; suspension lines for parachutes; planes and helicopters commonly used with paratroopers; and more. He included these excerpts from his Author Questionnaire:

This book is therapy for me. I was able to cast many of my personal stories . . . and explore the ways in which my branching web of choices led to one outcome or another. In writing these poems, I found myself returning to the emotional residue of those years: the impressions, sensory flashes, the moments that never fully left my body . . . [These impressions/sense memories] reveal my in-most thoughts of my journey to climbing out of the circumstances of my childhood and end just short of the series of events that led to my successful and comfortable life of today. In that sense, the book became a way of honoring the younger version of myself who survived those years. At the same time, a literature of the Choctaw Nation is currently lacking, especially in specific use of the language . . . the inclusion of Chahta Anumpa isn’t decorative–it’s structural. It’s how memory actually sounds in my mind, how identity assets itself even in places designed to strip it away.


Our designer provided five concepts for us to choose from. Here is an excerpt from Deb’s description of the concept we chose. 

These are variations using the silk ribbon woven through the cover. The first page shows what would be printed; the last page shows how the ribbon could be woven into the cover. When reading about being a rigger, I imagine it to be a very precise, exacting job, which is the direction I went with the text and feel of this option. Very structured, very secure. The woven ribbon also evokes the sense of a road, which references miles. 

Upon seeing the concepts, Tony wrote:

I think the one I like best is the last one in the 5-page file, where the sage is woven through the title and continues on the other side. I think it’s a good analog for a journey in green with multiple fits and starts. 

Our author, students, designer, and I were unanimous in our selection! We have since chosen a brown cardstock and a sage-colored ribbon. Once the covers are printed, we’ll thread the ribbon to complete the full cover effect.

 

In the next couple of weeks, after the ink dries on the covers, we’ll add the satin ribbon embellishments. Then, in early October, we will print the interior pages at The Braddock News Letterpress Museum. There, the students will print, fold, and assemble all the pages; stitch; and trim each chapbook. Tony will join us, and he’ll autograph each copy as it rolls off the assembly line. Copies will be available for purchase upon our return.

If you’d like to reserve limited edition copies, we are accepting advance purchases here: The Distance That Isn’t Miles. 

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Our Sad Farewell to Dr. Bethany Andreasen

from NDSU Press Publisher, Suzzanne Kelley

Bethany Jayne Andreasen (1958-2026)

It is with surprise and sorrow that I write to let you know that Dr. Bethany Andreasen, who served on our Editorial Advisory Board for nearly a decade, died on June 6.

Beth was a hearty advocate of NDSU Press and a champion for our book productions, particularly our Little Book about North Dakota series and any other titles that were about North Dakota. She always provided thoughtful discussion when we were considering manuscripts for publication, and she was always in good humor and collegiality . . . attributes we shall sorely miss.

Beth earned her master’s and PhD in American History from Cornell University, and shortly afterward, began what would become a decades-long history professorship at Minot State University. On her trips to Fargo for our annual press party, she would also sing karaoke in one of our downtown pubs. I regret now that I never got to hear her sing, but I am grateful for her friendship and scholarly avocation.

Beth always drove quite a distance from Minot to Fargo for our press board meetings and annual press parties, but she wasn’t able to attend our last press party on May 11 due to another commitment and, as she described, “a flashing light on my dashboard that indicates a long drive is probably not a wise choice right now.” May 11, 2026, was her 68th birthday.

Beth’s memorial service will be next Friday in Withee, Wisconsin. On behalf of our editorial board and the press, we extend our condolences to Beth’s family and friends and to her peers and students at MSU.

Full Obituary Notice 

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The Distance That Isn’t Miles: Our 2026 POPP Award Winner

Every year, we host our annual Poetry of the Plains & Prairies (POPP) Award competition. In 2026, we are pleased to announce that Anthony J. Albright is our winning author. This fall, we will letterpress publish Tony’s chapbook-length poetry collection, The Distance That Isn’t Miles, as our 11th chapbook in the series.

Tony will receive nationally distributed publication, ten comp copies, $400 ($200 at the signing of his contract + $200 when he serves as next year’s finalist judge), and our author’s discount.

Tony is a Choctaw writer, army veteran, and scholar whose work traces memory, landscape, and recovery across the Plains. His poetry and prose appear in North Dakota Quarterly, Hawaii Pacific Review, and Issued: Stories of Service. He holds a PhD in Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture from North Dakota State University.

 

Our POPP Award competition is conducted with double blind peer review. This year we had ten in-house readers and two finalist judges. Usually, we have just one finalist judge, but co-authors won last year, so Tony received double-good powerful praise. 😊 We’ve included both of the finalist judges’ comments below, and we’ve changed the pronouns they used for the narrator–since they did not know the author’s identity–to Tony’s name. The finalist judges are Josh Gaines and Ben Clark, co-authors of After the Floating Barn and other fine works of poetry and prose.


From Josh: 

Ish haklo ho? The Distance That Isn’t Miles is a military journey through narrative poems that carried me through places I am familiar with as a veteran, but unfamiliar with as a non-Native American. This book creates a new lens, changing the view of common experiences into the uncommon, the spiritual, and even the magical. Tony Albright writes, “I feel the land daring me to rise. I whisper holisso, book-spirit, teach me how to read this place before it reads me first,” while at the same time this book is teaching me how to read it, how to experience. Words give dimension to thought, and so with new words I learn a new way to think. This holisso reminds me of the things I value, of promises I’ve made, and of lives I gave up before I could even name the one I was already living.
“Every mile feels borrowed from another life,” writes Albright. And whose life or lives we are living, our own, our ancestors, our government’s? The narrator begins with putting his life in the hands of the military with a signature, and the military does what it does and accepts the offer. Nothing can be the same past this moment. The world grows smaller as it is crossed. There is training, gas to breathe, wars to witness and bear the scars of, while the narrator clings to vanished versions of themselves. T.S. Eliot said, “We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.” Distance That Isn’t Miles says, maybe not. It asks, what happens if we can never truly arrive where we started because part of us can never leave where we’ve been. It asks, what if home is only a thing one can leave.

 

From Ben:

I was pulled into the journey of The Distance That Isn’t Miles and the effortless way the poems worked together in a uniform, chronological narrative, while also standing alone as individual pieces. What a great use of the chapbook format. And what wonderful language: descriptive, understated, emotive, and masterfully paced: “Her fingers are small storms,” “windows rattling like restless bones,” “humming hvshi hvshi / under my breath, the syllables slipping / like sparks between whistling teeth,” and “Dawn here is a blade: sharp, sudden, / cutting the night from the day with no apology.”
This is a narrator that is stripped of everything, remade, but is also resilient enough, thankfully, to keep hold of his language, which he uses like a prayer, a shield, a song passed down through generations. This language is the road, if not back to who they were before the military, then to the version of themselves that “can fall— / not metaphorically, / but literally, repeatedly, / with something like grace.” Repeatedly, the key word in this poem, as it implies rising from the fall with something like grace as well.

 

Past POPP Award Publications:

  • 2025 After the Floating Barn, by Joshua C. Gaines (Nebraska) and Ben Clark (Minnesota)
  • 2024 Dakota Dreaming, by Marjorie Buettner (Minnesota)
  • 2023 Forgotten Frequencies, by Brendan Stermer (Minnesota)
  • 2022 Surrender Dorothy, by Brett Salsbury (Nevada)
  • 2021 Prairie Madness, by Katherine Hoerth (Nebraska)
  • 2020 A Muddy Kind of Love, by Carolyn A. Dahl (Texas)
  • 2019 Harvest Widows, by Nick Bertelson (Iowa)
  • 2018 Destiny Manifested, by Bonnie Larson Staiger (North Dakota)
  • 2017 Thunderbird, by Denise Lajimodiere (North Dakota)
  • 2016 Land of Sunlit Ice, by Larry Woiwode (North Dakota)

Next year’s POPP Award submissions period will be open (as usual) from January 17 through March 17. Poets, please mark your calendar! Submissions can be uploaded here when the portal opens: NDSU Press Submission Manager.

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NDSU Press and the Use of AI

from NDSU Press Publisher, Suzzanne Kelley

NDSU Press “shall not upload the Work or any of Author’s personal information to consumer-facing AI systems for purposes such as generating summaries, assessments, or marketing copy.” And, NDSU Press “agrees that it will not use AI to edit a manuscript, other than for the use of basic spelling and grammar-checking applications. Further, NDSU Press warrants that any textual or art changes it proposes will not have been created by AI.”

Such matters of ethics have been in flux in the publishing world, and we appreciate the forthrightness of the above statements delivered today from an informational group we keep up with called Publishers Lunch. The text comes from “Today’s Meal,” which shares recommendations from the Authors Guild in regard to manuscripts and AI tools.

 

The concern as expressed in Today’s Meal follows reports that professionals are “uploading manuscripts and authors’ personal information into consumer-facing AI systems for uses such as generating summaries, assessments, and marketing copy.” The ethical practice of refraining from use of such systems avoids the potential of having original content used by AI companies for training and/or contributing to AI-generated content.

In addition to practices in acquisition and marketing, we are working on a similar ethics statement to use in our contracts to ensure that authors are likewise contributing only original content. In consultation with our copyrights attorney, we find that at present such a statement seems to be a moving target, hard to set in a fixed format just yet. So, for now, we stick to our present contract terms, which state in brief: “Author will be the sole author of the Work [and] the Work is original with Author.”

Follow this link If you’d like to subscribe to Publishers Lunch (it’s free!).

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“the best thing I’ve done here!”

from NDSU Press Publisher, Suzzanne Kelley

Lexie Karst, who has earned her Certificate in Publishing while working with NDSU Press, pronounced her experience here as project manager as “the best thing I’ve done here!” Well, she’s accomplished a lot here at NDSU in her studies as a Music major with a minor in Creative Writing, so we’re glad her publishing experience is right up there at the top!

In addition to many other tasks, Lexie served as project manager for Aurora, poetry by Thom Tammaro, which we released on April 1. She was tasked with copyediting; developing marketing, publicity, & distribution plans; producing metadata and a creative brief for the designer; and liaising with her author. Pictured here is Lexie opening the first box of Aurora from the printer . . . you can see she truly is excited about having shepherded the manuscript through all the production stages, and now she’s seeing the final product for the first time.

Firsts. When someone is learning the history, business and practice of small press and university press publishing, there are a lot of “firsts.” The “firsts” of our enterprise include responsibility. Lexie took to heart the seriousness of checking for edits and industry standards throughout the whole process. And now she reaps the reward of her labor. We’re going to miss having her steady hand and cheerful outlook around here.

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In Memory of Adrienne Stepanek

from NDSU Press Publisher Suzzanne Kelley

Sadly, we report the recent passing of one of our authors, Adrienne Stepanek. I met Adrienne a few years ago in the cafe section of Books on Broadway in Williston, North Dakota. While sipping some of Chuck’s splendid coffee, we talked about a book project she was working on with her co-author, Doreen Chaky. We–including a book team consisting of Certificate in Publishing graduates Taylor Blumer, Mike Huynh, and Connor McCormick–published their manuscript in 2024. Grounded in research–one of Adrienne’s special skills–Lynched: Mob Murders on the Northern Great Plains, 1882-1931 went on to win:

  • Bronze, Independent Publishers Awards in the category of Nonfiction Regional, Plains
  • First Place, Independent Press Awards, in the category of Western History
  • First Place, Independent Press Awards, in the category of History, United States

Co-authors Doreen Chaky (at left) and Adrienne Stepanek visit with Suzzanne Kelley, editor in chief, at Books on Broadway, Williston, ND.

It was our pleasure to work with this dynamic team, and we mourn the loss of Adrienne’s continued contributions to history and her good nature.

Those wishing to make a donation in her honor are asked to consider the Williston Community Library or a charity of your choice.

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New Author Signing!

Please join us in welcoming Thom Tammaro to our author lineup! The NDSU Press is proud to be publishing his poetry collection, Aurora, in 2026.

Thom 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’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 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.

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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.