Prime print production
Miller Williams and Willard Gatewood had an idea in 1980. They believed that the University of Arkansas required an additional outlet for scholars who wanted to publish their work. They believed that Arkansas had a shortage of publishing opportunities, as well as a lack of attention to its history and culture.
The University of Arkansas Press was established in the McIlroy House, Fayetteville’s renovated residence, on December 20, 1980.
Brent Riffel wrote the following for the Central Arkansas Library System’s Encyclopedia of Arkansas: “A stylized depiction of the house became the UA Press Logo.” “Initially, the press did not have the resources and staff to produce its own work. Williams arranged with William King, the head of University of Missouri Press. Missouri would be the editing and production house.
The UA Press was not independent until 1983 when it began to function. The first title it published was “The Governors of Arkansas Essays in Political Biography”, which Timothy Donovan, a UA historian, published in June 1981.
Today I am looking through the 40-page 2022 Catalog and I see many books I want for myself as well as other titles that I want to order as Christmas gifts. You wouldn’t know that the press had a turbulent past judging by the quality and quantity of its books. It was the “little university presses that could.”
McIlroy House was set on fire in November 1983. The staff had to leave for nearly a year. The September 1987 fire in McIlroy House that destroyed many books and damaged a warehouse was also a factor. John White, the UA Chancellor, attempted to close down the publishing house in the late 1990s.
It’s also the story about some of the most gifted people to ever live in this area.
Arkansas and their determination to see UA Press succeed. Williams and Gatewood rise at the top.
Williams was one of America’s most prominent poets of the 20th century. He served 33 years as a UA Professor of English, foreign language and comparative literature for the University of Arkansas. Fayetteville was home to a number of talented writers, many from all over the country. Williams was an author, editor and translator of over 30 volumes of poetry, fiction, literary criticism, and literary criticism.
Williams was born at Hoxie in April 1930. Williams was born in April 1930 at Hoxie. He was the son and daughter of a Methodist minister. He graduated from Fort Smith high school in 1947. He entered Hendrix College, Conway, as a freshman. He then transferred across the city to what is now the University of Central Arkansas. He was then transferred again to Arkansas State University, Jonesboro. In 1952, Williams published “Et Cetera,” his first collection de poems.
In 1951, he received a bachelor’s degree from Jonesboro in biology. Two years later, he earned a masters degree at UA in zoology. He was a biology teacher for the next ten. Williams was a teacher at Millsaps College Jackson, Miss. He also briefly attended the University of Mississippi’s medical school.
Gatewood, his friend, wrote later that “In 1962, Flannery O’Connor helped him get a job in Louisiana State University’s English department.” “Four years later, Williams was appointed to the Loyola University faculty in New Orleans. He founded and edited The New Orleans Review’. He returned to UA in 1970 as a member the English department and of the graduate program for creative writing.
“His growing prominence in the literary world was demonstrated by the numerous honors he received since the 1950s. These include the Henry Bellman Award for 1957, Breadloaf Writers Conference Fellowship for Poetics in 1961, Harvard University’s Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship for poetry in 1963-64, New York Arts Fund Award for 1970, Fulbright Professorship in Mexico in 1970 and Prix de Rome for Literature in 1976. The Charity Randall Citation for Contribution in Poetry as a Spoken Arts 1993 was also among them.
Williams was awarded the John William Crrington Award for Literary Excellence in 1994 as well as the National Arts Award (1997).
Gatewood wrote that Williams gave lectures and readings about tours to several continents, while mentoring UA students at the State Department’s request. “President Bill Clinton chose him to read his poem “Of History and Hope” at the 1997 presidential induction. Williams said that he was a product of the small-town South. He also benefited from his long commitment to science.
Williams is remembered for his broad imagination and his use irony, subtlety, and ambiguity. He was referred to by a journalist as “the Hank Williams” of American poetry. In 2009, Miller Williams was awarded the Porter Prize’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The UA Press gives the Miller Williams Poetry Prize each year.
Williams died Jan. 1, 2015, at Fayetteville. Lucinda Williams, his daughter, was a well-known poet and songwriter. Multiple Grammy Awards have been won by her. Time magazine named her America’s best songwriter in 2002.
“As a child she met many her father’s writers friends, including Eudora Worldy and Flannery, who famously permitted Lucinda, 5 years old, to chase her peacocks,” Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, wrote. “By the age of 12, she was already writing her own songs on the guitar and performing for guests at her parents’ weddings.” After a brief time at the UA, she became an itinerant performer, performing in bars and coffee houses throughout Austin, Nashville, Houston, Greenwich Village, and Houston.
Lucinda Williams was the headliner of a benefit concert in September 2007 to raise funds for Miller Williams Poetry Prize.
Miller Williams was growing in Arkansas’ small towns, while Gatewood was raised in North Carolina on a tobacco farm. Gatewood was born February 1931. He received his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees from Duke University. In 1957, he began his college teaching career with East Tennesssee State University. Gatewood taught at East Carolina University and North Carolina Wesleyan College, as well as the University of Georgia.
Gatewood arrived in Arkansas in 1970 to be the University’s first Alumni Distinguished Professor for History. This chair was endowed by the alumni association. The chair was his until his retirement in 1998. He served as UA Chancellor between 1984 and 1985, taught hundreds of undergraduates, and directed 25 doctoral theses. Some of these students went on to become college historians.
Tom DeBlack, a fellow Arkansas historian, wrote that Gatewood received most of the major awards granted by the university to professors during his time at UA. These included the University Distinguished Research Award (in 1980) and the Chancellor’s Medal for Distinguished Service (in 1994). “He was the author or co-author of 14 books, and more than 75 articles for scholarly journals. His books included many pioneering works in African American history.
Gatewood’s “Aristocrats of Color”: The Black Elite, 1880-1920 was published by UA Press in 1990. It was nominated for a National Book Award. Gatewood served as president of the Southern Historical Association from 1986 to 1987.
2002: UA Press published “The Southern Elite & Social Change: Essays In Honor of Willard B. Gatewood Jr.” These essays were written by former students as well as colleagues.
“There will be other great teachers and scholars,” was the introduction to the book. However, all contributors to this volume agree that Dr. Willard B. Gatewood Jr. has been a deep teacher and scholar. His enthusiasm and admiration for history are ours.
Gatewood died October 2011, Gatewood and Williams had been publishing university books since 1970. In October 2011, Williams and Gatewood received a break with Ellen Gilchrist’s collection of short stories, “The Land of Dreamy Dreams”. It sold over 10,000 copies within 10 months, and was widely praised by critics.
Gilchrist is a Vicksburg, Miss. native. She graduated from Vanderbilt University, and then received a second degree from Millsaps. There she studied under Welty. Gilchrist, who did postgraduate work at UA in creative writing, was a contributing editor to the Vieux Carre Courier in New Orleans between 1976 and 1979. She also published her first poetry book.
Gilchrist decided to have “The Land of Dreamy Dreams”, published by UA Press, rather than a commercial publisher. Its success led to a contract with Little, Brown & Co. “Victory Over Japan”, her collection of short stories, won the 1984 National Book Award.
UA Press was able in July 1982 to hire Stephanie Brown as its first editor due to the success of Gilchrist’s 1981 collection. Williams handled most manuscript acquisitions. In February 1984, UA Press created a student writing award. It opened its London office two more years later. It created a journals section in 1988 which produced scholary books.
Riffel wrote that UA Press had become a major publishing house for American poets “by the 1990s.” The press also published other award-winning poetry books, including Frank Stanford’s posthumous work. … Because of his friendship with Williams, Jimmy Carter, the former President of the United States became a major contributor to the list of authors over these years. Carter was able to write on many topics through the press.
Carter’s books included “An Outdoor Journal, Adventures and Reflections”, 1988 and “The Blood of Abraham: An Insights into Middle East”.
White was elected chancellor in 1997. He decided to shut down the press after it lost so much money. His decision sparked controversy statewide.
Riffel wrote that Gatewood and other Arkansans responded by launching a public campaign to keep the doors open. White conceded that the plan to shut down the press was a misguided one in 1998. The funding provided by Tyson Foods, Springdale allowed the press to reorganize itself as a non-profit organization and continue publishing new titles.
“The press hired Lawrence Malley in 1998 as its director. This was partly due to the establishment of the King Fahd Center of Middle East and Islamic Studies at the UA. Recent years have seen Arkansas history made a significant contribution by the press, with the release of the Histories of Arkansas series. It traces Arkansas’s past from its territorial period through the modern day. Malley resigned at the end 2013 and Mike Bieker was appointed as assistant director.
The publishing house is still a major focus for poetry, fiction, as well as books on the Middle East.
The awards keep coming in. Kathleen Condray’s “Das Arkansas Echo” won the 2021 Booker Worthen Literary Prize. Kenneth Barnes received the 2022 J.G. Award for “The Ku Klux Klan 1920s Arkansas: How Protestant White Nationalism Came To Rule a State” Arkansas Historical Association, Ragsdale Book Award
“Winthrop Rockefeller – From New Yorker, Arkansawyer and 1956” was published by John Kirk of University of Arkansas at Little Rock earlier this year. The book is already being praised.
Cherisse Jones Branch, ASU history professor, has received positive reviews for her book “Better Living With Their Own Bootstraps: Black Women’s Activism in Rural Arkansas (1914-1965).”
Current releases “Country Boy” by Colin Edward Woodward is still on my winter reading list, as well as “Up South in Ozarks: Dispatches From the Margins” by Brooks Blevins of Izard Country.