Note from NDSU Press Publisher Suzzanne Kelley

Recently, Lonna Whiting, Communications Consultant for The Arts Partnership, asked member partners and artisans what books they liked best from 2023 and what they plan to read in 2024. I replied to Lonna with updates about some of our NDSU Press titles–past, present, and future–in an interview she published in the Arts and Entertainment section of The Fargo-Moorhead Forum, “Check out this list of the best reads for 2023.” We’re thankful for the attention provided to our press publications.

Lonna’s query got me to thinking about other kinds of reading that I conduct over the course of a year. As my TBR list for 2024 grows, I cannot help but think about books read previously–manuscript submissions under consideration for publication and books that help to inform which books we acquire, books that aid us in the professionalization of our work at NDSU Press, books that help us to stay au courant in the machinations of the publishing industry and in trends of scholarly and literary nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and translated publications. 

As the editor in chief for NDSU Press, I have the privilege of reading heaps of manuscripts before they come to the publication stage. Working through submissions can be a daunting task as we now receive more than one hundred submissions annually. I count my lucky stars to have the assistance of Dr. Kyle Vanderburg, Composer in Residence and Assistant Professor of Practice in the Challey School of Music. Kyle, a recent graduate of the Certificate in Publishing and a published composer, assists with our online submissions portal by tracking submissions, securing blind peer reviewers, and taking part in the first reads of submissions. 

Because our press has a regional mission, we are steeped in works about our state and the northern plains region. Happily, I love reading such works! But when I want to escape responsibility for edits and marketing, I reach for books outside the scope of our mission, but often within the scope of publishing as a field of study.

It’s hard to narrow my favorite reads from 2023 to just a few, but I’ll start with my top choice: Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver—a fabulous story that I did not want to end! I also loved Also a Poet, by Ada Calhoun, which I listened to as an audiobook. Calhoun’s biographical-memoir about her father (and her relationship with him) mesmerized me with her reading and her inclusion of audio excerpts from old-fashioned tape-recordings preserved from when her father was a younger man and she was just a child. I’m choosing, too, The Editor, by Stephen Rowley, a sweet, farcical fiction on the relationship between author and editor, with his editor being none other than Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

I’ve just finished reading Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction, by Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd. This memoir by an author and his editor is a lovely back-and-forth narrative about building relationships and trust. The subtitle says this book is about the “art of nonfiction,” and it is, but my biggest takeaway is that the book is about the art of being a writer working with an editor and vice versa. Particularly on point for me, the editor, is a comment from p. 157: “[T]he ability to preserve the distinction between the writer and the writing is a skill the editor needs more than the writer does.” Kidder thus reminds us of the vulnerability of the writer, and that–as an editor–I must be cognizant of that vulnerability at every turn, because the distinction between the writer and the writing is not one that the author is always capable of making. The chapter called “Memoir” is one I especially recommend! 

I generally begin my New Year’s picks for reading by going to the National Book Awards winners and finalists, but right now I have on my desk two titles next in the queue. First up is The Pages, a novel by Hugo Hamilton that I just picked up at Full Circle Books. Described on the jacket as a “formally inventive novel,” with a storyline that takes place in the 1930s and is about “a book–a 1924 edition of Joseph Roth’s masterpiece Rebellion–[that] narrates its own astonishing life story.” I am intrigued by the notion of a book as narrator! Hamilton’s writing drew me in, and so did his connections that focus on censorship…apparently a timeless topic. Next on my TBR list is Index, A History of the, by Dennis Duncan. The perfect play of an index entry in the title won me over, and I’m eager to see how this story unfolds.

In addition to books, I subscribe to The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and Publishers Weekly, all of which keep me up to date on current writing trends and topics and new and not-so-new authors in fiction and nonfiction. With these resources, I’m always spying new books for my reading list. AND, I’m always looking for recommendations from readers! Feel free to reply with YOUR recommended read. 🙂