Tag / NDSU Press

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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.

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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. 

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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!

by ndsupress

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).

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Good Prose: On Reading, Writing, & Publishing in 2024

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. 🙂

 

by ndsupress

Our Semester Ends with Something New . . .

Note from NDSU Publisher Suzzanne Kelley

All good things must come to an end, but that does not mean the end of all good things. Yesterday–our final exam day for the Intro to Publishing–closed with brief and not-so-brief presentations from each of the thirteen students. Beginning with our graduate students, we learned new information through cutting edge research and two how-to (and how-not-to) segments, all three presentations bringing new insights to our understanding of the publishing industry. The graduate student presentations were followed by a round of three-minute book summary presentations. Every student chose a book related to publishing, sometimes broadly construed. Students were asked to select from fiction or nonfiction genres on virtually any topic grounded in the publishing industry. Their formal reviews will soon make it to our Books on Books page at this NDSU Press website.

Dibyanshu (pictured above) started off the presentations with the topic of Artificial Intelligence and Publishing. Working on his PhD in Computer Science, Dibyanshu combined his interests in technology with his interests in publishing. Since the publishing industry is driven by the latest technologies, this match of interests made for perfect exploration.

One of Dibyanshu’s findings is that there is little scholarly research published to date on what he identified as the “Artificial Intelligence Taxonomy for Publishing.” The data he collected and shared–which we might hope will find its way into a scholarly publication–was most informative, outlining attention to technologies, applications, and benefits.

Abbie, our second presenter (pictured below), is a college lecturer in writing (and a mom and a former hockey player), a freelance editor, and a nonmatriculating Certificate in Publishing graduate student. (She may be joining us next fall to work on her PhD in English.) As each of the presenters’ topics were related to their individual interests plus the publishing industry, their personalities and subjects turned out to be beautiful blends of study and articulation. Abbie outlined benefits and pitfalls for authors who self-publish books, and she provided keen insights for the discipline of writing. 

Mike (pictured below), our Graduate Research Assistant in Publishing and also a poet (and film production manager from his undergrad program at Concordia in Moorhead), melded his research with the prospect of publishing poetry as video and audio productions. He selected a poem, “December,” from our recent publication of Mark Vinz’s The Trouble with Daydreams: Collected and New Poetry. Collaborating with one of last spring’s graduates of the Certificate in Publishing, Mike worked out musical sequences and film production, adding Mike’s voice overlay. In the picture below, Mike shows how to “storyboard,” or visualize, the video production process. May I never forget the day when Mike came to my office, excited to show me footage he had collected for the project, flashing through brief videos on his cell phone and sharing each scene and its potential. 

Our last moments in class included (pizza and homemade pumpkin rolls and) individual book talks from each of the students. Jamie got us started with Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing, by John B. Thompson (published by Polity). Briefly (although the book is anything but brief), we learned about the author’s theories on how “the idea of the book” has changed over time. Each student’s presentation will eventually land on our Books on Books page. 

It is sad to see the semester draw to a close, and yet we are all glad for a breather. We also congratulate the students who are graduating this semester. We laud their good work, and we’ll miss seeing them in the classrooms. Whether the students are continuing on to the Practicum in Publishing or leaving campus, I’m confident they can field questions about the history, business, and practice of small press and university press publishing, and they depart with ideas about new trends in AI and publishing, poetry published in video form, and self-publishing.

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A Good Day to Give

Today is the perfect day to contribute in large or small ways to the work we do at NDSU Press. ALL of our production, marketing, and distribution are dependent upon sales and donations. Your contribution is most appreciated. Please help us in our efforts to give region a voice.

Follow the link below to Arts and Sciences and choose NDSU Press Endowment. THANK YOU.

https://bit.ly/NDSUPressGivingDay23
#NDSUPress #NDSU #NDSUFoundation

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Keeping a Close Eye on Fonts

Note from NDSU Press Publisher Suzzanne Kelley

Breanna (at right) and Megan scrutinize each font’s every twist and turn in their mystery collection.

Our 2023 Introduction to Publishing class has just returned from its Braddock Expedition. While at The Braddock News Letterpress Museum, located on the grounds of the South Central Threshing Association, NDSU students were tasked with a number of activities under the tutelage of Leah Burke and Allan Burke. The museum collection of fonts is magnificent, replete with multiple cases full of alphabet and punctuation pieces. The fonts are mostly formed of metal, but some are wooden and large. A few of the font styles are italic; some are bold. Each case contains lowercase and uppercase fonts of a single type. Previous classes and volunteers have sorted the type so that there is only one style per case, a detail-oriented task that has taken place over time in order to organize the collection. Now, students and volunteers are tasked with the detective work of identifying the measurement and name of each type style. 

Type Gauge Tool

There are tools–physical, printed, and digital–to help the students determine the size and style of the type case they are assigned. Beginning with the Type Gauge Multi-Tool, students insert a sample piece of type to determine the height of each font. Font heights are measured as “points,” there being approximately 72 points to an inch. A size 36 font is about one-half inch, and a size 12 (typically used for Word documents) measures at 12/72 of an inch, or, about 1/6 of an inch. (OK, that is enough math.) 

 

Sara, shown here using digital means to narrow down her font identity search.

A digital resource our font detectives enjoy using is Identifont, one of many free options available for finding font families. Identifont asks questions such as, “Do the characters have serifs?” If the answer is yes, then the next question might be, “What style is the upper-case ‘Q’ tail?”

Each question the students answer leads them to the next narrowing-down clue, much like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure kind of book. Students can also make use of type-face identification books held in the museum library.

Ella and Mike study a printed font-style resource.

 

Once the students identify the font style in their type case, they have the great fun of setting type, using their fonts to name the type in their case, and thus building pages for a museum catalog in progress. 

 

Some mistakes were made. It is not easy to set type to “read wrong” and “print right.” (Yes, these are the technical terms.) Here, we see that a first try at typesetting and printing the font identity and size needs a little work.

 

Fortunately, our mistakes are easily corrected. (Maybe not completely in the first try. Can you see the extant error?) 

 

Check out this brief video, where you’ll see that Anish (in the blue jacket and yellow tee) and Abby keep at the task until everything reads right.

Mission accomplished! 

Among other assignments on site this past weekend at The Braddock News Letterpress Museum, all students had their try at identifying fonts, typesetting, and printing. Our hands-on learning experience illustrated how typesetting and printing were done at the turn of the twentieth century and provided a plethora of new-to-the-students terms for the art and process of letterpress publishing. (They also learned about the magic of Gojo.)

We so appreciate our community-university partnership, teaching students (new and) old ways of publishing, while providing aid to the collection management at The Braddock News Letterpress Museum. Special thanks go to Tracy and Paula Moch–who kept us fed and hydrated (and to Johanna for her delicious homemade brownies)–and to Allan and Leah Burke, who kept the training and tasks a’coming! Leah, in all those years of running the newspaper business, you may have missed your calling as a teacher! 

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Big Prize for a Little Book

Note from NDSU Press Publisher Suzzanne Kelley

We are thrilled that our first Little Book about North Dakota has made it as a finalist in the Independent Book Publishers Association Benjamin Franklin Award Program! 

With more than fifty competitive categories, IBPA recognizes “excellence in book editorial and design” and is “regarded as one of the highest national honors for independent publishers.” More than 160 book publishing professionals administer and assess the competition, including librarians, bookstore owners, reviewers, designers, publicity managers, and editors. That our first launch for the Little Book about North Dakota Series has made it to the top in the large category of Poetry is a huge pat on the back for our author, Margaret Rogal; series editor and illustrator, Mike Jacobs; and designers Jamie Trosen (cover) and Deb Tanner (interior). Dreaming up the series was the work of Suzzanne Kelley (editor in chief) and Ana Rusness-Petersen (graduate of the Certificate in Publishing). The NDSU Press Editorial Advisory Board unanimously endorsed moving forward with the series in March 2020.

Each of the three finalists are already winners as one will take the Gold Award and the others will win Silver. The Gold winner will receive an engraved trophy marking the author’s achievement. The winners are “announced to major trade journals, select libraries, all IBPA social media channels . . . and more.”

In addition, all winners (Gold and Silver) receive:​

  • Recognition prior to the awards ceremony on the IBPA website.

  • Archived listing after the awards ceremony on the IBPA website.

  • Two tickets to the awards ceremony recognizing all of the award winners.

  • 15% off all IBPA marketing programs during the book(s) winning year. 

  • A press release template to use when personally announcing the winning book(s).

  • A personalized award certificate.

  • Special award stickers to affix to the winning books.

While this is the first time we’ve had a Little Book in the running, it is not our first star-studded appearance at the IBPA awards. In 2021 we won Gold with Denise K. Lajimodiere’s collection of poetry, His Feathers Were Chains, and in 2022 we won Silver for The Night We Landed on the Moon: Essays between Exile & Belonging, a memoir by Debra Marquart.

 

Help us keep tabs on this year’s announcement of the Gold and Silver winners by checking in at this website: Winners: Poetry | IBPA Book Award (ibpabenjaminfranklinaward.com)

For a more detailed essay about our Little Book about North Dakota Series, follow this link: Little Books with Big Impact | North Dakota State University Press (ndsupress.org)

All of our books are available at Ingram, Amazon, your favorite independent bookstore, and our online store: Welcome to North Dakota State University!. NDSU Press (nbsstore.net)