Hot off the summer presses

Central Michigan University Department of English professors kept the presses busy launching new publications this summer.

Darrin Doyle published his new novella Let Gravity Seize the Dead in July through Regal House Publishing based in North Carolina. Focused on a family who moves into a cabin in a Michigan forest, this Gothic novella shows two separate timelines (1907 and 2007) and investigates the lingering pain of trauma and how it becomes woven into families. Doyle appeared on WCMU, WNEM, and Michigan Public Radio to publicize his new book.

Jeffrey Bean launched his third full-length poetry collection, Everywhere, Everywhere, winner of the 2024 Vern Rutsala Book Prize, published by Cloudbank Books.

Of Bean’s book, Poet Lee Ann Roripaugh writes, “These are poems that joyously celebrate presence and attentiveness. You will want to read them everywhere, take them with you everywhere.”

Bean and Doyle celebrated their publications with a co-launch reading at Sleepy Dog Books in August.

Robert Fanning published his third poetry chapbook Prince of the Air, a limited-edition, handmade book featuring 20 poems, through Seven Kitchens Press in Cincinnati.

“Even in smallish doses, Robert Fanning’s work in words is mighty tonic, succor and comfort, and provocation. Read and be healed,” writes celebrated Michigan author Thomas Lynch.

Finally, the ever-prolific Jeffrey Weinstock celebrated the publication of his 30^th book, The Routledge Introduction to the American Ghost Story, co-authored with Scott Brewster, an Associate Professor of English at the University of Lincoln, UK. The book explores the main tropes, thematic preoccupations, principal settings, and stylistic innovations of literary ghost stories in the United States, and the ghost story’s rich afterlife in cinema, television, and digital culture.

But why stop at 30? Dr. Weinstock’s 31^st book, Disney Gothic: Dark Shadows in the House of Mouse, co-edited with Lorna Piatti-Farnell, was published by Rowman and Littlefield, and explores Gothic elements in Disney productions.

Want to have a look at more books by English Professors? Stop by the bookcase display on the 2^nd floor in Anspach Hall outside of the English Department and have a look at all the literary treasures.