A call for celebration for AU Press!

Book Awards

Three AU Press books have been shortlisted in the 2019 Alberta Book Publishing Awards. The awards aim to recognize the best of the Alberta book publishing industry. Each category speaks to the diverse nature and quality of the books that AU Press publishes.

“It really is an honour when we are recognized as publishers of important material by a jury of our Canadian peers. Each of the nominated books—one bilingual poetry collection, one memoir, and one scholarly monograph—make a significant contribution to literature and scholarship in Canada. We are so pleased to see the authors of these titles receive this nomination,” said Megan Hall, AU Press director.

The collection of poems What We Are When We Are by Cvetka Lipus, translated by Tom Priestly was shortlisted in the Robert Kroestch Award for Poetry. For the trade non-fiction category, Amma’s Daughters: A memoir by Meenal Shrivastava was nominated. American Labour’s Cold War Abroad: From Deep Freeze to Detente; 1945-1970 by Anthony Carew was shortlisted for the scholarly and academic category. The winners for the awards will be announced in September, and we’ll be cheering on the AU Press team until then.

In other book award news, The Medium is the Monster by Mark McCutcheon was awarded the Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology. Mark’s book describes Marshall McLuhan’s influence on contemporary literary, cinematic, scholarly, and popular cultural adaptations of Frankenstein.

Funding

Two Athabasca University Press journals received support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) through the Aid to Scholarly Journals Program to continue their work in providing open access content to the scholarly community.

The Aid to Scholarly Journals supports Canadian scholarly dissemination by allowing journals to explore innovative activities and assist with the costs associated with publishing scholarly articles, digital publishing, and journal distribution. This year has been a year of great change for the Aid to Scholarly Journals program. Previously all journals could apply for the SSHRC funding, but now there is a condition in place that journals must be open access to apply for the funding.

The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning (IRRODL) received the maximum amount of funding and over the next three years to support its goals. IRRODL disseminates original research, theory, and best practice in open and distributed learning worldwide. As one of the first open access journals to receive funding back in 2004, this shift to open access signifies that IRRODL and Athabasca University Press were on the right path.

“We are very grateful for the SSHRC support that has helped IRRODL to become one of the leading journals in the field of educational technology and THE leading open access journal in the field,” said Dr. Rory McGreal, UNESCO/ICDE Chair in OER and IRRODL co-editor.

Labour/ Le Travail, a journal of Canadian labour studies also received funds to continue to its work in the field of working-class history, industrial sociology, labour economics, and labour relations. Although primarily interested in a historical perspective on Canadian workers, the journal is interdisciplinary in scope.

Appointments

We would also like to congratulate the Director of AU Press, Megan Hall for her recent appointment as Vice President of the Association of Canadian University Presses (ACUP)! This appointment represents the first time that a director of an open access has been on the executive. It is also an important step in recognizing and giving voice to the diversity of publishers that make up the association.

“I believe acknowledging and retaining diversity in the industry makes it more resilient and that this diversity will put Canadian university presses in a better position to respond to the challenges and opportunities developing in the scholarly communications environment,” Hall said.