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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE     A Year of Honors and Awards for SIU Press Books and Authors June 2003 - June 2004       Over approximately the past year, many Southern Illinois University Press books have been formally recognized for excellence in a variety of fields—including rhetoric and composition, political science, women’s studies, true crime, theatre, gay and lesbian studies, baseball, American history, and Illinois history. These honors commend the scholarship and research of the Press’s international corps of authors and showcase its continuing devotion to publishing a diversity of works.   John Y. Simon, a professor of history at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and executive director of the Ulysses S. Grant Association, was honored with a special Lincoln Prize of $20,000 for his achievement in editing 26 volumes to date of The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, all of which have been published by Southern Illinois University Press. Administered by Gettysburg College, the Lincoln Prize is awarded annually by the Lincoln and Soldiers Institute. Up to two prizes a year are given for the finest scholarly works in English on Abraham Lincoln, or the American Civil War soldier, or a subject relating to their era.              Sweden and Visions of Norway: Politics and Culture, 1814–1905 by H. Arnold Barton was named an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice magazine, a publication of the American Library Association. Barton is a professor emeritus of history at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and the author of numerous, renowned scholarly works on Scandinavian history. Criteria for selection include excellence in scholarship and presentation, significance with regard to other literature in the field, and recognition as an important, often the first, treatment of a specific subject in print or electronic format. The list is quite selective: it contains approximately ten percent of some 6,600 works reviewed in Choice each year.   Three SIU Press publications were recognized in ForeWord magazine’s Book of the Year awards, which reward excellence in publishing from independent presses. Robert A. Schanke’s biography “That Furious Lesbian”: The Story of Mercedes de Acosta garnered the Gold Medal in the Gay and Lesbian Non-Fiction category; Molly Hurley Moran’s Finding Susan, a memoir about the death of her sister, received the Bronze Medal for True Crime; and Our Culture of Pandering, one of the last books from the late Paul Simon, was named a finalist among Political Science books.   Schanke’s work on Mercedes de Acosta has also been honored elsewhere. “That Furious Lesbian” and its companion volume, a collection of plays edited by Schanke and entitled Women in Turmoil: Six Plays by Mercedes de Acosta, were finalists in the Lambda Literary Awards, a national competition for the best in gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender literature. “That Furious Lesbian” was also chosen as a selection for the InsightOut Book Club, which celebrates excellence in gay and lesbian writing. Schanke was recently awarded the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s Sustained Achievement in Editing award.   For years, SIU Press has ranked as one of the leading publishers in the field of rhetoric and composition. Some of the highest honors in that field are the awards given by JAC:  Journal of Advanced Composition and the Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition. Literacy and Racial Justice: The Politics of Learning after Brown v. Board of Education by Catherine Prendergast was named the winner of the 2003 W. Ross Winterowd for Best Book of the Year in Composition Theory. Defining Reality: Definitions and the Politics of Meaning by Edward Schiappa received the Gary A. Olson Award for the Best Book in Rhetorical & Cultural Theory.   SIU Press has also made a name for itself in the world of baseball books. Under the editorship of SIU professor emeritus of English Richard Peterson, the Writing Baseball series has developed a loyal following of readers and has generated attention from fans, book reviewers, and journalists alike. Baseball’s Natural: The Story of Eddie Waitkus by John Theodore was named part of Booklist magazine’s Spotlight on Sports, which features the top twelve non-fiction sports books of the year. Waitkus was the character on whom Bernard Malamud’s The Natural—and the subsequent movie starring Robert Redford—was based, and Booklist called the book “a fascinating biography.”      The most recent of the awards came from the Illinois State Historical Society, which singled out two SIU Press publications for special recognition. Chicago Death Trap: The Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903 by Nat Brandt and An Uncertain Tradition: U.S. Senators from Illinois, 1818–2003 by Robert Hartley and SIU professor emeritus of political science David Kenney both received awards of excellence. The Society also honored the Press’s long-running Shawnee Classics series with a superior achievement award for special programs.   SIU Press has also received an award for a different kind of publication—its regional catalog, which features books published by the Press that are of specific interest in Illinois and the Midwest. “The Prairie Collection”— which was printed by Ripon Community Printers and features the work of southern Illinois photographer David Hammond on the cover—earned second place in the “Coldset/Non-heatset Printing Competition,” an international competition sponsored by the Web Offset Association, an affiliate of Printing Industries of America. The catalog was recognized as an excellent finished product combining coldset/non-heatset methods with other printing processes and with the catalog being produced by the entrant. Jessica Miller, representative for Ripon Community Printers, thanked SIU Press for “the opportunity to print such a clean, classy, and award-winning piece.”   All of these award-winning books, as well as “The Prairie Collection” catalog, are available from Southern Illinois University Press.     More marketing news