Friday Varia and Quick Hits: The Digital Press and NDQ Edition

Happy New Year!

While it is hard to deny that 2020 was a bit of a disaster, some good things did come out of it and in an effort to give credit where it’s due, I thought I’d shine a spotlight on some of the amazing work that appeared in the two “sister projects” to this blog:North Dakota Quarterly and from The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota. (Actually, it doesn’t feel right to call NDQ a sister project, it’s more of a “granduncle” or “first cousin once removed” or something and The Digital Press might be some kind of “nephew” or whatever. I’ll stop.)

In any even, for the first “Friday Varia and Quick Hits” in 2020, I want to shed some light on the fine work by other folks whom I had the good fortune of shepherding along its way. 

First, from NDQ:

We were particularly happy to see that when we made a digital version of issue 87.1/2 available for free, it received over 2000 downloads. You can still download it here for free.

If you liked what you read and you can afford to subscribe, a subscription very much helps support the Quarterly’s work. It’ll also give you over 500 pages a year of fiction, poetry, essays, reviews and art in a glorious paperback package! If you’d like to subscribe, go here. 

Finally, as a way to look back over this year, here are the top 15 most read posts over at the NDQ blog. To be clear, there are plenty of great posts that didn’t make this list: Erin McIntosh’s “The Doll’s House,” Terry Toma’s “how it will happen,” and especially Megan Howell’s freakishly prescient “Harper and Marisol” come immediately to mind. 

1. Poetry from Craig Santos Perez. 2. Mainstreaming Racial Slurs: White Nationalism Comes Home to Roost.  3. The Poetry of John Sibley Williams. 4. An Interview with Laila Lalami. 5. Role Playing Games. 6. Poems: Mythe and Death by Project Management Webinar. 7. Remembering John Lewis. 8. Poetry from Kirby Olson: 1453 and All That. 9. Maunel Tzoc Bucup’s Poetry for a Pandemic: Bullshit in oblivion. 10. Two Poems by Whitney Waters.  11. A Prodigal Poem by Caroline Parkman Barr. 12. Bonnie Larson Staiger’s Poem: Still. 13. Shane Castle’s “Ursa.” 14. A Poem by Amalia Dillin: Unvarnished. 15. James Sallis’s “Scientific Methods.”

Over at The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota, things were every bit as busy in 2020 and have set the stage from a particularly exciting 2021.

Check out the five books that we published this year:

1. Derek B. Counts, Erin Walcek Averett, Kevin Garstki, and Michael Toumazou, Visualizing Votive Practice: Exploring Limestone and Terracotta Sculpture from Athienou-Malloura through 3D Models. 2020.

2. Sebastian Heath, ed. DATAM: Digital Approaches to Teaching the Ancient Mediterranean. 2020.

3. Calobe Jackson, Jr., Katie Wingert McArdle, David Pettegrew, eds. Foreword by Lenwood Sloan, One Hundred Voices, Harrisburg’s Historic African American Community, 1850-1920. 2020.

4. Kyle Conway, ed., Sixty Years of Boom and Bust: The Impact of Oil in North Dakota, 1958-2018. 2020.

5. Epoiesen. Vol. 3.

Special Publication: The University of North Dakota and the Great War.

What’s almost as exciting is that our back catalogue continues to attract readers, downloaders, and even the odd buyer! If you want to buy a book from the Digital Press and support a small bookstore you can check out the options on this page. 

If you want to sample the top five books in our back catalogue, all of which receive over two downloads per day in 2020 check out the links here:

1. Nicole Burton and Hugh Goldring and Patrick McCurdy, ed., The Beast: Making a Living on a Dying Planet. Expanded Digital Edition. 2018.

2. David Haeselin, editor, Dakota Datebook: North Dakota Stories from Prairie Public. 2019.

3. Shawn Graham. Failing Gloriously and Other Essays. With a foreword by Eric Kansa and afterword by Neha Gupta. 2019.

4. Eric Burin, ed., Protesting on Bended Knee: Race, Dissent, and Patriotism in 21st Century America. 2018.

5. William Caraher and Kyle Conway, eds. The Bakken Goes Boom: Oil and the Changing Geographies of Western North Dakota. 2016.

Special mention goes to two other books from The Digital Press that have continued to garner attention in distinct ways. More people purchased Eric Burin’s edited volume, Picking the President: Understanding the Electoral College (2016) than downloaded it. In contrast, our very first book, Punk Archaeology (2014) edited by myself, Andrew Reinhard, and Kostis Kourelis enters its seventh year of availability consistently getting more than one download per day.

Finally, it’s not a Friday Quick Hits and Varia without a couple dog photos: