For more than sixty years, Bison Books has helped sustain the intrigue of the West by serving as the living literature of western lands and people. Within the imprint, we preserve the history of the peoples and cultures that have shaped this spectacular land and generated so many stories about it. This month the University of Nebraska Press is happy to offer a 

UNP staff members are always reading new books, both within our list and outside of what we publish. Here are some of the titles where our noses have been buried. "An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green is a science fiction story about dozens of samurai suit wearing sculptures appearing in cities all around the world without warning or explanation.

The University of Nebraska Press is pleased to announce the selection of the next book in the fiction series, Zero Street. Open Wounds by Sam Moe will be published on May 1, 2027. Open Wounds is a short story collection of ghosts, lost daughters, and transformation. Each story focuses on a different set of characters who, for reasons relating to trauma or violence, are incapable of communicating with each other.

The wait is over—Big Red Boost starts today! From now through October 16, you can help make a meaningful impact at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln by supporting projects that are creating opportunities for students, faculty, and staff across campus. We're proud to share that we are one of this year's featured projects. The Nebraska Publishing Apprenticeship is designed as a paid cohort experience for eight students at the University of Nebraska Press.

New Issues Western American Literature 60.4 (Open Access) Read an article: "To Be Water, To Be Taught: Embodiment, Translation, and the Pedagogy of Survival in Natalie Diaz’s 'The First Water Is the Body'" by Lisa LeBlond Storyworlds 14.2 (Open Access) Read an article: "Characters Across the Multiverse in Contemporary Screen Media" by Gabriele D’Amato and Luca Diani Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships…

Reviews Striped Reckoning Review in Publishers Weekly: "Journalist Bradley (Twisting in Air) delivers a comprehensive history of exotic big cat breeding in the U.S. . . . It’s a vital portrait of the quest to save these mistreated wild animals." Parishioners of Sovereignty Review in H-LatAm: "Scholars interested in reconstructing the life of ordinary people in the context of state- and nation building, republicanism and authoritarianism will find an inspiring text."

Daniel H. Usner is Holland N. McTyeire Professor Emeritus of History at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Native American Women and the Burdens of Southern History and Weaving Alliances with Other Women: Chitimacha Indian Work in the New South, among other books. In 2024 Usner was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Ethnohistory.

Adam O. Davis is the author of Index of Haunted Houses, winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Poetry Prize. He is a recipient of the 2022 Poetry International Prize and the 2016 George Bogin Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. His work has appeared in AGNI, the Believer, the Kenyon Review, the Paris Review…

Book Birthdays celebrate one year of a book’s life in reviews, social media posts, and more. This month we’re saying Happy First Book Birthday to Frontier Comrades: From the Fur Trade to the Ford Car (Bison Books, 2025) by Jim Wilke. About the Book: Frontier Comrades examines six accounts of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender lives on the frontier of the American West.

Sarah Eppler Janda is a professor of history at Cameron University. She is the author of Prairie Power: Student Activism, Counterculture, and Backlash in Oklahoma, 1962–1972 and the coeditor (with Patricia Loughlin) of This Land Is Herland: Gendered Activism in Oklahoma from the 1870s to the 2010s. Patricia Loughlin is a professor of history at the University of Central Oklahoma.

The University of Nebraska Press is proud to be on NetGalley’s publisher list. NetGalley is a digital platform that helps authors and publishers promote digital review copies to book reviewers and other publishing industry professionals. Join the online reader community here! Peruse the forthcoming titles that are available on the platform this month: Have You Seen Romit? CHITAL MEHTA…

To celebrate our 85th anniversary, UNP staff members reflect on some of their favorite books published in our history. "I am always glad to work on any book UNP acquires in the realm of wildlife conservation. One of my recent favorites, Starlings: The Curious Odyssey of a Most Hated Bird (Bison Books, 2025) by Mike Stark is a whimsical, well-researched narrative that blends human folly with bird ecology." -Kari Andresen…

The University of Nebraska Press is proud to announce the winner of the Backwaters Press Prize in Poetry for 2026: Ayling Dominguez and the manuscript Be Obsidian. Ayling Dominguez "My poetry is not just my own; it is a tapestry of the hearts, communities, and lands that have worldbuilt before and alongside me," said Dominguez. "May this book be a continuation of worldbuilding, may it be both refuge and kindling.

UNP staff members are always reading new books, both within our list and outside of what we publish. Here are some of the titles where our noses have been buried. "I recently finished The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby by Michael Blanding, an exposé of the family behind the notoriously religious craft store chain. I was interested because I already knew that Hobby Lobby denies their employees insurance coverage for contraception and has turned money towards supporting fundamentalist Christian organizations, but I was unfamiliar with the extensive looted and forged biblical antiquities they were acquiring for their Museum of the Bible.

Below is a conversation between authors Joe Wilkins and John Clayton. Wilkins has published award-winning poetry, memoir, and fiction, and is perhaps best known for his extraordinary recent novel The Entire Sky. His nonfiction book, Every Sky at Home: Essays on Landscape and Family (Bison Books, 2026), is now available. John: Several of these essays are set in what your fans will find familiar territory: your hardscrabble childhood in eastern Montana’s Big Dry high desert.

Reviews HUM Review in Publishers Weekly: "In Urdu, hum can mean both 'we' and 'I,' an ambiguity Sheriff uses skillfully in many poems about their beloved." 52 Writing Prompts Review in Hippocampus Magazine: "The beauty of the book is in its place as both a companion and manual for writers at all levels, whether beginner, intermediate, or professional."

On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Organic Act, which established the National Park Service. Today, we celebrate National Park Service Founders Day to recognize the conservation and preservation efforts of the National Parks System covering more than 84 million acres and including 59 fully designated national parks. And as a bonus, find these ebooks at half-price for a limited time wherever you buy your ebooks!

Patricia Jabbeh Wesley is the first major poet out of Africa’s oldest republic of Liberia since the nation’s founding and remains one of the most important poets from Africa. Spanning two decades of work, the poems in this collection tell stories of Wesley’s homeland that would have otherwise been forgotten. This volume published this month and is in the African Poetry Book series…

Jeff Goldberg was the UConn women’s basketball writer for the Hartford Courant from 2001 to 2006 and is the author of Bird at the Buzzer: UConn, Notre Dame, and a Women’s Basketball Classic (Nebraska, 2011) and Unrivaled: UConn, Tennessee, and the Twelve Years that Transcended Women's Basketball (Nebraska, 2015). I found myself recently making one of those observations that causes you feel every bit of your age, which at 57, can really pack a wallop.

Emma Comery is a writer and the assistant director of communications for one of the largest veteran services organizations in Texas. Her work has appeared in The Bend Magazine, Military Families Magazine, Reserve and National Guard Magazine, Arts and Letters Journal, Line of Advance, and Poets.org. Her book, Have You Landed?: Military Love Stories in Essays (Potomac Books, 2026), was published this month.

Congratulations to these UNP authors who were recently recognized for their work! 2026 International Book Awards Hostage (Potomac Books, 2026) by Mimi Nichter is a finalist in two categories in two categories, Autobiography/Memoir and Nonfiction: Creative. Big Sky Award Be a Man (Bison Books, 2026) by Russell Rowland is a finalist for the Big Sky Award. 2025 International Latino Book Award…

Brian K. Burton is professor emeritus of management and retired associate vice president for academic affairs at Western Washington University. He is the author of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville: A Battlefield Guide (Nebraska, 2026), The Peninsula and Seven Days: A Battlefield Guide (Nebraska, 2007), and Extraordinary Circumstances: The Seven Days Battles. Covering all aspects of the war in Virginia in the first six months of 1862, …

The African Poetry Book Fund (APBF) promotes and advances the development and publication of the poetic arts through its book series, contests, workshops, and seminars and through its collaborations with publishers, festivals, booking agents, colleges, universities, conferences and all other entities that share an interest in the poetic arts of Africa. The winner of APBF's 2026 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets is Afia Ansong (Ghana/US) for her collection "I buried in a field of lemongreass." Ansong will receive a $1000 USD cash award and publication of their manuscript as part of the University of Nebraska Press' …

ICYMI Ojibwe Ethnogenesis (Nebraska, 2025) is the Winner of the 2026 Wisconsin Historical Society Book of Merit Award. Rare Good (Nebraska, 2026) was featured in Publishers Weekly’s Fall 2026 Fiction & Nonfiction Preview. Reviews Ford Frick Review in Epoch Times: "Bohmer, with factual precision and an uncompromising appreciation of baseball history, pulls back the veil on Frick, as a prolific writer, broadcaster, pioneering executive, and good steward of sports with his dedicated biographical project."

T.R. Sullivan is a retired beat writer who covered the Texas Rangers from 1989 to 2020. He was inducted into the Texas Baseball Hall of Fame in 2005. His new book The Texas Rangers and Me: A Baseball Writer's Thirty-Two Years in Arlington (Nebraska, 2026) was published in July. Since the team was established in 1971, the Texas Rangers have built a rich history and identity that makes them unique among MLB teams.

Her Choice to Make: A Review of Jill Christman’s The Heart Folds Early

Congratulations to the following UNP authors who were medalists for the 2026 Independent Publisher Book Awards! Essays Gold Medal Winner How to Change History: A Salvage Project by Robin Hemley. In How to Change History Robin Hemley grapples with the individual’s navigation of history and the conflict between personal and public histories. In an attempt to restore, resurrect, and reclaim what might otherwise be lost, Hemley meditates and speculates on photography, scrapbooks, historical markers, travelogues, TV shows, real estate come-ons, washed up rock stars, incontinent dachshunds, stalkers, skeletons in the closet, and literature.

Named a 2025 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleLaura Ingalls Wilder, author of the well-known Little House series, wrote stories from her childhood because th...

"This book required me to go back and mine some really difficult experiences, and I realized it was easier to do if I focused on craft and form."

The University of Nebraska Press is proud to be on NetGalley’s publisher list. NetGalley is a digital platform that helps authors and publishers promote digital review copies to book reviewers and other publishing industry professionals. Join the online reader community here! Peruse the forthcoming titles that are available on the platform this month: Every Sky at Home JOE WILKINS…

The Sealey Challenge is a community call to read one book of poetry a day for the month of August. For those looking to challenge themselves further, the organizers invite you to fill out the 2026 challenge bingo card to play for book giveaways, or share a "shelfie" online with the hashtag #SealeyChallenge. Need help planning your reading list? Start here!

When Argentina take on Spain in Sunday's World Cup final, many will be rooting for Argentina to lose. How did they become the villain of the tournament? NPR's A Martinez asks sports writer Adam Elder.

Dima Arzyutov is a historical anthropologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures at Ohio State University. His research examines Arctic and Siberian Indigenous histories in relation to the critical assessment of the production of anthropological knowledge, as well as archives and museum collections. He is coeditor of The Franz Boas Papers, Volume 3…

Film-maker Christopher Nolan on transforming the ancient Greece epic for the big screen.

Liza J. Nicholas is the author of Becoming Western: Stories of Culture and Identity in the Cowboy State (Nebraska, 2008) and coeditor of Imagining the Big Open: Nature, Identity, and Play in the New West. Her new book Bloodlines: A Story of Horses, Family, and Obsession (Bison Books, 2026) was published in July. Bloodlines: A Story of Horses, Family, and Obsession…

A curated collection of more than 100 books considering Revolutionary-era history and offering insights into the American experiment, 250 years along

UNP staff members are always reading new books, both within our list and outside of what we publish. Here are some of the titles where our noses have been buried. "This month I finished reading Saratoga Schaefer's horror novel, Trad Wife. The novel follows Camille Deming, a tradwife influencer, after she makes a wish for a baby at an old well in the hopes that a child will salvage her relationship with her husband and increase her standing on social media.