Publisher Highlight: Rare Bird Books

Posted on by Bee Lehman

Tyson Cornell founded Rare Bird Books in 2010 in Los Angeles. While starting life in the Midwest, Cornell attended UCLA. In Los Angeles, they ended up working at the legendary, independent bookstore Book Soup. Interested in ethnography, Cornell initially worked in the newsstand, but increasingly supported events and worked with authors and publishers.[1]

Those experiences led Cornell to found Rare Bird in 2010 and have influenced the press’ focus since. The publisher’s more than 100 titles often serve as partial ethnographies, with heavy emphasis on lived experience through memoirs and “operat[ing] from a shadowy locus between Northeast LA and epistemological collapse.”[2]

Readers can follow Rare Bird and their website or through their Instagram page.

Recent Titles

Notes

[1] Joey Claudio, “Founder of Rare Bird Books Tyson Cornell Provides Insight Into His Sources of Inspiration and How He Maintains a Permanent Sense of Creativity,” Thrive Global, September 29, 2021, https://community.thriveglobal.com/founder-of-rare-bird-books-tyson-cornell-provides-insight-into-his-sources-of-inspiration-and-how-he-maintains-a-permanent-sense-of-creativity/.

[2] “About Rare Bird,” Rare Bird: Publisher of the Great & Infamous, accessed May 26, 2026, https://rarebirdlit.com/about-rare-bird/.

Publisher Highlight: Hat & Beard Press

Posted on by Bee Lehman
Collage of Hat and Beard covers

J.C. Gabel and Brian Roettinger founded Hat & Beard in Los Angeles in 2016.[1] This publisher and print production house focuses on nonfiction literary and artistic output. They are heavily interested in the visual arts and, alongside poetry and essays, publish artist monographs in collaboration with artists and museums. Their stated goal is to produce works of “pop-culture and historical significance” [2].

This House produces beautiful material objects as well as fascinating works of poetry. Interested in design, these books are works of art in and of themselves. Frequently hardback with high-quality materials, these volumes are as much about the object as about the content.

For more information about their titles and their activities, check out their website or Instagram page.

Titles at UC Berkeley

More in the UC Libraries

Take a look at additional titles in the UC library systems using the Advanced UC Library Search.

Notes

[1] “About Us,” Hat & Beard Press, accessed May 19, 2026, https://hatandbeard.com/pages/about-us.

[2] Scott Timberg, “J.C. Gabel’s Indie Press Gamble, Hat & Beard,” Los Angeles Times, August 23, 2018, https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-hat-and-beard-20180823-story.html.

[3] Dan Fox, “Is Art Publishing on the Rise?,” Frieze, September 23, 2016, http://www.frieze.com/article/art-publishing-rise.

May 2026 – Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

Posted on by Literatures at the Library

May 2026 Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

Celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month this May with our featured collection of books by AAPI authors.

New Faculty Publication by Shiben Banerji

Posted on by Nina Bayley

Check out Shiben Banerji’s new  award winning book Lineages of the Global City: Occult Modernism and the Spiritualization of Democracy (University of Texas Press, 2025)   which was awarded the 2026 PROSE Award for Architecture and Urban Planning.  It is available as an e-book through UC Library Search. “The AAP’s annual PROSE Award Winners exemplify the highest standards of scholarly publishing, contributing innovative research and impactful scholarship to their respective fields Judged by peers, librarians, and professionals since 1976…”

Lineages of the global city book cover

From University of Texas Press:

“The forgotten history of the occult foundations of the early twentieth-century global city.

War, revolution, genocide, rebellion, slump. The economic and political turmoil of the early twentieth century seemed destined to rip asunder the ties that bound colonizers and the colonized to one another. The upheaval represented an opportunity, and not just to nationalists who imagined new homelands or to socialists who dreamed of international brotherhood. For modernists in the orbit of various occultisms, the crisis of empire also represented an opportunity to reveal humanity’s fundamental unity and common fate.

Lineages of the Global City recounts a continuous, if also contentious, transnational exchange among modernists and occultists across the Americas, Europe, South Asia, and Australia between 1905 and 1949. At stake were the feelings and affect of a new global subject who would perceive themselves as belonging to humanity as a unified whole, and the urban environment that would foster their subjectivity. The interventions in this debate, which drew in the period’s most renowned modernists, took the form of a succession of plans for cities, suburbs, and communes, as well as experiments in building, drawing, printmaking, filmmaking, and writing. Weaving together postcolonial, feminist, and Marxist insight on subject formation, Shiben Banerji advances a new way of understanding modernist urban space as the design of subjective effects.”

 

Publisher Highlight: Manic D Press

Posted on by Bee Lehman
Manic D Press collage banner with logo

Jennifer Joseph founded Manic D Press in 1984 in San Francisco (Bernal Heights) with the goal of publishing their own poems. Working at and writing in Caffe Trieste in North Beach, a New York literary agent told Joseph that no one was publishing poetry. In response, Joseph acquired a handbook about how to do self-publishing. Soon after, Joseph published their first book under the Manic D logo with art from Scot Charland and Julia [sic] (UC Library Search Link).

Under Joseph’s leadership, Manic D has published over 100 titles with around four books a year between 1990 and 2015. The Press has anthologies of poetry, novels, art books, non-fiction about art, and a small array of children’s books. The press has slowed down over the last decade, but they have continued to release phenomenal works.[1]

Readers can find more about Manic D Press’ publication and events through their Instagram page.

Recent Titles

For More at the UCs

For more titles from Manic D Press in the UC System, check out our UC Library Search‘s Advanced Search with a limited of “Publisher” to “Manic D” and limit Material Type to “Book.”

Notes

[1] Evan Karp, “Manic D Press Changes the World,” SF Gate, April 10, 2010, https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/manic-d-press-changes-the-world-3193246.php.

New Acquisitions in the Romance Languages

Posted on by Claude Potts

New book lists for publications from France, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal have been generated just in time for summer break. Follow the links below to view sortable lists of these print books that have made the long passage from Europe to the shelves of the UC Berkeley Library’s Main Garner Stacks for your reading pleasure. And don’t forget that book recommendations are encouraged and accepted at anytime!

New acquisitions in French

collage of new books in French

New acquisitions in Italian

collage of new books in Italian

New acquisitions for Iberian Studies

collage of new books from Spain and Portugal

UC Libraries Arts & Humanities Open Access Publishing Fund

Posted on by Timothy Vollmer

A grid of eight academic journal covers, including Social Research, The Journal of Transcultural Studies, Postscriptum Polonistyczne, New Design Ideas, Radical Philosophy, Educación y Humanismo, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, and Bioarchaeology International.

Are you an early career researcher in the arts or humanities looking to publish your work open access? UC Libraries is extending its existing pilot fund to help cover the costs.

What Is the Fund?

The UC Libraries Arts & Humanities Open Access Fund is a pilot program that pays article processing charges (APCs) for eligible early career authors publishing in arts and humanities journals. Funding is provided via the California Digital Library, not campus budgets, and covers the full cost of open access fees for qualifying articles.

Why Does This Matter?

Existing UC-wide open access publishing agreements already cover about 55% of UC publishing activity, but these agreements tend to benefit authors in STEM fields. Arts and humanities scholars, especially those early in their careers, are less likely to have grant funding to pay OA fees out of pocket. This fund is designed to close that gap.

Who Is Eligible?

The fund is open to early career authors, including:

  • Pre-tenure faculty
  • Graduate and undergraduate students
  • Postdoctoral researchers
  • Other non-tenured early career authors

Eligible authors must be the corresponding author on the article and affiliated with one of the participating campuses: Berkeley, Davis, Los Angeles, Irvine, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, Santa Cruz, or San Francisco. Each author may receive funding for one article during the pilot period.

Which Journals Qualify?

The fund covers articles published in arts and humanities journals on a pre-approved list of more than 3,600 titles. These are non-profit or society publisher journals not already covered by an existing UC open access agreement. If your target journal is not on the list, there may still be options, and you can contact UCLIB-ARTS-HUMANITIES-OAFUND-L@listserv.ucop.edu to ask.

How Do You Apply?

Simply fill out the online application form. You will receive confirmation that your application was received, and a decision will be made within five business days. You can apply before your article is accepted, but you will need to submit proof of acceptance before receiving reimbursement. Articles must be accepted for publication after November 21, 2025 to be eligible. Articles published prior to this date are not eligible. The pilot program runs until June 30, 2027.

Questions?

Visit the UC Libraries Arts & Humanities Open Access Fund webpage for full details, or reach out with questions:

Publisher Highlight: Inventory Press

Posted on by Bee Lehman
banner for inventory press with collage of covers

Inventory Press is not primarily a literary publisher. Instead, they “publish[…] books on topics in art, architecture, design, and music, with an emphasis on subcultures, minor histories, and the sociopolitical aspects of material culture.” That frequently includes literary components.

After establishing the press in 2014 in New York, Adam Michaels (graphic designer and editor) and Shannon Harvey (design strategist) opened an “independent design and editorial studio” in Los Angeles called Inventory Form & Content (IN-FO.CO). The Press, in turn, in now situated primarily in Los Angeles.[1]

Founded by designers, the Press is interested in the form, look, and function of a book as much as the content. In consequence, their books are often word art (e.g., The Endless Line | Gesture, Painting, Technics) and about the art of letters and words (e.g., A Queer Year of Love Letters) more than they are strictly poetry or prose.[2]

Readers can look at more of their titles and work on their webpage or on Instagram.

Titles at UC Berkeley

For More Books in the UC System

To find additional titles in the UC Library system, take a look at the UC Library Search and limit an advanced search to “Publisher” to “Inventory Press” and “Material Type” to books (sample).

Notes

[1] “IN-FO.CO / Inventory Press,” accessed April 20, 2026, https://in-fo.co/form-content/inventory-press.

[2] Adam Michaels and Shannon Harvey, guests, 106. Adam Michaels and Shannon Harvey, Scratching the Surface, January 16, 2019, https://scratchingthesurface.fm/post/182049895520/106-adam-michaels-and-shannon-harvey;
Wes Del Val, “Taking Stock of Books with Inventory Press,” Designers & Books, October 20, 2020, https://www.designersandbooks.com/blog/taking-stock-of-books-inventory-press.

French African Journals in Africa Commons

Posted on by Claude Potts

Africa Commons is a collection of archives, streaming media, newspapers, journal articles, and other types of documents and records that is uniquely expansive in both its size and geographical breadth. The UC Berkeley Library has purchased access to the 4-part collection from Coherent Digital, which provides coverage of news and events as well as research publications from the east, west, and south of the African continent. The multidisciplinary nature of this database’s content makes it useful to a wide variety of researchers working on all things African.

Complementing Berkeley’s strong African print holdings, here are three French language journals included in the most recently purchased module – West African Journals:

L’Afrique Littéraire et Artistique

L’Afrique Littéraire et Artistique (also called L’Afrique Littéraire in some issues) was a French-language literary and cultural magazine published by the Société Africaine d’Édition in Paris. Most issues focused on a specific aspect of African literature, cinema, and art, and include in-depth analysis and commentary on books and films created in or about Africa. This collection includes fifteen issues of the magazine, including a special film edition. Dates range between 1972 and 1989.

La Vie Africaine

La Vie Africaine was a cultural and political magazine published between in France between 1959 and 1965. The publication covered many important events in 1960s Africa, at a time when many countries were gaining independence and working to define themselves anew. It also explored cinema, literature, and music by or about Africans. This collection includes 44 issues of La Vie Africaine, ranging from 1959 to 1965.

L'Afrique Actuelle

L’Afrique Actuelle was a bilingual French/English monthly magazine, and succeeded La Vie Africaine. It covered political, economic, and cultural issues, including independence movements and the relationship of newly formed African governments with European and American states. This collection includes 19 issues of L’Afrique Actuelle, covering the years 1967-1969.

 

Coherent Digital brings the values of academic publishing to real-world information—organizing, curating, and digitizing—so that information is preserved, trackable, stronger, and more impactful. In collaboration with libraries, archives, NGOs, and subject experts, they ensure that preservation is ethical, representative, and aligned with community needs.

April 2026 Neurodiversity Celebration Month

Posted on by Literatures at the Library

Guide to April 2026 Neurodiversity Celebration Month

Celebrate Neurodiversity this April with our featured collection of books by neurodiverse authors.