April 4, 2024
Dodd, co-editors receive publishing award
Elizabeth Dodd, university distinguished professor of English and creative writing in the College of Arts and Sciences, has received a prestigious award for her editorial work.
The Associated Writing Programs, or AWP, has awarded the 2024 Small Press Publisher Award to Dodd and her co-editors for their peer-reviewed journal Terrain.org, a nonprofit, independent magazine of place, climate and justice. Dodd serves as nonfiction editor for the journal and a member of the Terrain Publishing board of directors.
The award was presented at the AWP's annual conference and book fair in February.
The AWP's Small Press Publisher Award is an annual prize for nonprofit presses and literary journals honoring their contributions to the literary landscape through their publication of consistently excellent work. Terrain.org was chosen as the winner after being named a finalist in 2022, 2020 and 2018. The journal is the world's first online literary journal of place and has been publishing since 1998.
In collaboration with Texas Tech University Press and the Sowell Collection in Literature, Community, and the Natural World, Terrain Publishing has also launched a new award series in nonfiction, poetry and fiction. The Sowell Emerging Writer Award is given to one outstanding manuscript per year for works that explore the relationship between human communities and nature and that may be informed by scientific inquiry and/or personal experience. Winning books will be published by Texas Tech University Pres.
Two winners have been announced: Kate Neville, associate professor of political science in the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto, for "Going to Seed" (nonfiction) and Ibe Liebenberg, Chickasaw poet and lecturer at Chico State University, for "Birds at Night."
In her role as editor, Dodd will host the launch of the series' inaugural book with an online reading by Neville on Thursday, April 25, at 6 p.m. CDT. The reading is free and open to the public; registration is available here.