New books from the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry now available from SIU Press

Heavenly Bodies, by Cynthia Huntington

"This is a poetry of woundedness and defiance. Heavenly Bodies has a stark integrity in its refusals to beguile or comfort; no one could call it uplifting. Yet there is something bracing, even encouraging, in the hungry survival of this sister of Sylvia Plath and in her self-insistence: I do not give up my strangeness for anyone. "—Mark Halliday

"Cynthia Huntington’s Heavenly Bodies is the most searing and frightening book of poetry I have read in years. The poems arise from pain and illness, from the body’s rebellions and betrayals, and yet they are also curiously exhilarating, even redemptive: perhaps because they are utterly free of self-pity, and find the means—through the sustained ferocity and invention of their language—to transform suffering into a vision so bold it must be called prophetic. Heavenly Bodies is a remarkable collection, on every level."—David Wojahn, author of World Tree


Cynthia Huntington is the author of four books of poetry, including The Radiant (winner of the Levis Prize), The Fish-Wife, and We Have Gone to the Beach, as well as a prose memoir, The Salt House. A former New Hampshire State Poet Laureate, she is professor of English at Dartmouth College where she serves as senior faculty in creative writing. She served as Chair of the Poetry Jury for the Pulitzer Prizes in Poetry for 2006.


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Lacemakers, by Claire McQuerry

“The poems of Lacemakers have much in common with the experience of gliding she describes so vividly in one poem—all lightness and delicacy and daring. At the same time, their urgently associative cinematography moves and accrues until with the poet we feel equally sized to the sky and fastened to the particular and exquisite life of things. Lifted on the page by an impeccable ear and her careful, unflinching eye for the arresting metaphor, these graceful lyrics manifest a twenty-first-century pilgrim’s desire to dwell in the space between the gravities of place and the lure of the placeless, between bodily desire and the clarity of the bodiless, between the ties of Earth and those of an elusive Heaven.” —Daniel Tobin, author of Belated Heavens

"Bearing both the loving attention and the estimable skill of the lacemaker, Claire McQuerry attends to the abundant, often perplexing threads that comprise the apparent world, intent on making of that abundance something that serves. Hers is a craft that makes apprehensible that 'sweetness of all things beyond reach.'"—Scott Cairns, author of Compass of Affection

Claire McQuerry is a creative writing fellow at the University of Missouri-Columbia and an editor for The Missouri Review. She was a 2011 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg prizewinner and a finalist for the Olive B. O'Connor fellowship in creative writing. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in American Literary Review, Louisville Review, The Los Angeles Review, Western Humanities Review, Creative Nonfiction, and other journals.

Drafting for the Theatre, Second Edition, available in February!

In this newly revised second edition, veteran stage designers and technical directors Dennis Dorn and Mark Shanda introduce industry-standard drafting and designing practices with step-by-step discussions, illustrations, worksheets, and problems to help students develop and refine drafting and other related skills needed for entertainment set production work. By incorporating the foundational principles of both hand- and computer-drafting approaches throughout the entire book, the authors illustrate how to create clear and detailed drawings that advance the production process.

Early chapters focus on the basics of geometric constructions, orthographic techniques, soft-line sketching applications, lettering, and dimensioning. Later chapters discuss real-life applications of production drawing and ancillary skills such as time and material estimation and shop-drawing nomenclature. Two chapters detail a series of design and shop drawings required to mount a specific design project, providing a guided path through both phases of the design/construction process. Most chapters conclude with one or more worksheets or problems that provide readers with an opportunity to test their understanding of the material presented.

The authors' discussion of universal CAD principles throughout the manuscript provides a valuable foundation that can be used in any computer-based design, regardless of the software. Dorn and Shanda treat the computer as another drawing tool, like the pencil or T-square, but one that can help a knowledgeable drafter potentially increase personal productivity and accuracy when compared to traditional hand-drafting techniques.

Drafting for the Theatre, second edition assembles in one book all the principal types of drawings, techniques, and conventional wisdom necessary for the production of scenic drafting, design, and shop drawings. It is richly illustrated with numerous production examples and is fully indexed to assist students and technicians in finding important information. It is structured to support a college-level course in drafting, but will also serve as a handy reference for the working theatre professional.


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A professor emeritus and former Director of Theatre at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dennis Dorn served in the Department of Theatre and Drama as a technical director and/or designer for over 180 productions. He is an active member and Fellow of the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT), and has been an active contributor to Theatre Design and Technology.

Mark Shanda is a professor at The Ohio State University and former Resident Technical Director and Department of Theatre Chair. He is currently the Interim Dean of Arts and Humanities at Ohio State and Vice-President for Communications for USITT and has authored numerous articles about theatre technology.

Giant in the Shadows: The Life of Robert T. Lincoln available in March, 2012

Although he was Abraham and Mary Lincoln’s oldest and last surviving son, the details of Robert T. Lincoln’s life are misunderstood by some and unknown to many others. Nearly half a century after the last biography about Abraham Lincoln’s son was published, historian and author Jason Emerson illuminates the life of this remarkable man and his achievements in Giant in the Shadows: The Life of Robert T. Lincoln. Emerson, after nearly ten years of research, draws upon previously unavailable materials to offer the first truly definitive biography of the famous lawyer, businessman, and statesman who, much more than merely the son of America’s most famous president, made his own indelible mark on one of the most progressive and dynamic eras in United States history.

Meticulously researched, full of never-before-seen photographs and new insight into historical events, Giant in the Shadows is the missing chapter of the Lincoln family story. Emerson’s riveting work is more than simply a biography; it is a tale of American achievement in the Gilded Age and the endurance of the Lincoln legacy.

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“Jason Emerson, the premier young Lincoln scholar today, has written the definitive biography of one of America’s neglected and misunderstood leaders in both 19th- and 20th-century industry, law and politics. Beautifully written and illustrated, this is one of the best Lincoln books to appear in many years.” —Wayne C. Temple, author of Abraham Lincoln: From Skeptic to Prophet

“Here at last is the biography Lincoln aficionados have been waiting for. Historian Jason Emerson sweeps away a century of myths and misinformation about Robert T. Lincoln, including the musty old canard that he had no respect for his famous father and no sympathy for his emotionally fragile mother. This is an intimate, in-depth portrait that will be praised, quoted, and consulted for years to come.” —Thomas J. Craughwell, author of Stealing Lincoln’s Body

New books from the Concise Lincoln Library

The first four books of our new series are available, and our excitement continues to grow as we prepare for the next two books, expected out this Spring.

Lincoln and the Constitution, by Brian R. Dirck

In this highly readable study of Abraham Lincoln’s thoughts and actions concerning the U.S. Constitution, Brian R. Dirck combines extensive primary research and thoughtful, accessible consideration of Lincoln’s views to reveal new insights into Lincoln’s impact on the U.S. Constitution. In the statesman’s roles as a leading antebellum politician, an ardent critic of slavery, and the president of the United States during the Civil War, Lincoln fashioned a strong antislavery constitutional ideology and articulated a constitutional vision of the Civil War that reinforced his determination to restore the Union.

"Anyone who reads his accessible, vivid, even entertaining book will understand why Abraham Lincoln cannot be ignored in any account of the constitutional history of the United States."--Mark E. Neely, McCabe-Grier Professor of the History of the Civil War Era at Penn State University


Lincoln and Race, by Richard Striner

Abraham Lincoln is known as the Great Emancipator, yet his personal views on race have long been debated. While Lincoln took many actions to fight slavery throughout his political career, his famously crafted speeches can be interpreted in different ways: at times his words suggest personal bigotry, but at other times he sounds like an enemy of racists. Lincoln and Racetakes on one of the most sensitive subjects of Abraham Lincoln’s legacy, exploring in depth Lincoln’s mixed record and writings on the issue of race.

“With lawyerly precision, Richard Striner mines the speeches and writing of our 16th president to make a compelling case for a President Lincoln who, contrary to contemporary belief, had a long and abiding commitment not just to the end of slavery, but also to equality before the law for all men, whatever the color of their skin.”-Clay Risen, staff editor at the New York Times