Hitting the Books

Hitting the Books

Pub Hub, Wolfson Press, and 42 Miles Press becoming increasingly prolific

When George Garner, assistant director and curator of IU South Bend’s Civil Rights Heritage Center, began putting together a booklet to be used as a study guide for the CRHC’s local landmark tour, he partnered with the College of Arts and Sciences Publishing Center, a.k.a. the Pub Hub. The Pub Hub’s director is Professor of English Kelcey Ervick, who is also director of the creative writing program. She and her team were able to provide help with editing, graphics, and layout. Garner had initially envisioned a modest-sized publication, but as his research deepened, he found that he had more than enough material to generate a document of far broader scope. He ended up with a book titled Placing History: An African American Landmark Tour of South Bend, Indiana, a 213-page work that stands as the most comprehensive history yet written of the African American experience in South Bend. It is a highly noteworthy achievement, and the Pub Hub provided every tool he needed.

Placing History is one of several new books to be published under the auspices of IU South Bend, which has also seen a great deal of activity from its two on-campus publishing houses, Wolfson Press and 42 Miles Press.

The first three titles under the Wolfson Press imprint are all local histories, and they were issued in quick succession as the “On Their Shoulders” series in 2009-10. Katherine O’Dell’s Our Day: Race Relations and Public Accommodations in South Bend, Indiana charts the stories of the first generation of Black residents who came to the area after World War I, hoping for a better life than they could have in the Jim Crow South. Lisa Swedarsky’s A Place with Purpose: Hering House 1925-1963 is a history of a community center that thrived for decades.

The third book in the series is a reprint of a priceless document that was nearly lost. The Rev. Buford F. Gordon, a clergyman and early civil rights activist, published The Negro in South Bend: A Social Study in 1922. The only in-depth analysis of socioeconomic conditions in the city during that period, the book eventually fell into obscurity, and Wolfson was able to reprint it thanks to one library copy, possibly the last one in existence. Wolfson editor David Healey added a new introduction. 

Garner says that the Placing History book would likely have been impossible were it not for the information he was able to gather from the “On Their Shoulders” series. Garner also consulted countless old newspaper articles and oral histories, but the Wolfson books laid the groundwork. 

“Those three books have been deeply influential to my work. I can’t express enough how important it was to be able to build off that foundation,” Garner says.

O’Dell, Swedarsky, and Healey all began their research work as graduate students studying with Professor Lester Lamon in the Master of Liberal Studies program. In addition to teaching in the history department, Lamon was appointed interim chancellor of IU South Bend from 1995-97 and served as director of the CRHC from 2000-06. Wolfson Press takes its name to honor another chancellor, the campus’s first – Lester Wolfson, who held the position from 1969-87. 

Emeritus Associate Professor Ken Smith led Wolfson Press as director and editor in its earliest years; the position is now held by Joseph Chaney, professor of Renaissance literature, also from the English department. Chaney says that the writing of O’Dell and Swedarsky was clearly of publication-level quality, and Wolfson Press wisely capitalized on the opportunity. 

“The idea was that we could take this good research being done by students for their master’s thesis, and get it all further developed,” Chaney said. “That’s what happened with those pieces – they were clearly good enough to be transformed into a book.”

Wolfson Press has cultivated a roster of authors who come from a variety of backgrounds, but there is a regular emphasis on certain themes, such as social justice, mental health, and life in the Midwest. Recent titles from the imprint include Renée Agatep’s Ohio Radio, poems delineating her stark recollections of childhood in Ohio, and What My Hound Dog Is Scenting Through the Sloughgrass Is a Way of Scenting Me, a collection of surrealistic visions by George Kalamaras, former poet laureate of Indiana. 2023 also brought the release of Wolfson Press’s graphic novel, Nothing is a Cure, by Jeff Horwat, depicting a harrowing, spiritual battle with anxiety. 

Many of the books feature striking cover art by Ginger “Sky” Santiago, a freelance graphic designer and a graduate of the Master of Liberal Studies program. Wolfson Press is currently readying its next title, a chapbook (a small paperback booklet) by Estonian poet Triin Paja, titled Sleeping in a Field.

In November 2023, Wolfson debuted an online Wolfson Review, a journal dedicated to reviewing books from other small and independent presses. The reviewers are IU South Bend students, with oversight from a faculty editorial team. 

Another dimension of the Pub Hub is a sister operation to Wolfson: 42 Miles Press, directed by Associate Professor of English David Dodd Lee. Focused entirely on poetry, 42 Miles Press has released 14 books of poems, most recently Jennifer Oakes’ We Can’t Tell if the Constellations Love Us, which confronts problems ranging from violence to climate despair, and Claire Bateman’s experimental, mystical Wonders of the Invisible World. 42 Miles Press has launched an online journal as well. The journal, called The Glacier, bears the strapline “Poetry for the Coming Ice Age,” although it does make room for some visual art and short prose pieces alongside the poems. 

IU South Bend introduced an interdisciplinary publishing minor in 2022 to serve precisely the type of students who gravitate towards the Pub Hub. The publishing minor in English and fine arts combines training in art, digital media, and graphic design with instruction in writing and editing. Chaney teaches the required core course and Ervick is the coordinator. 

“We now have six student journals that come out every year, funded by the Student Government Association, to publish student research and creative work,” said Ervick, who serves as the chair of the Student Publications Committee. “The student-run literary journal, Analecta, has been in publication for over 50 years, the longest in the IU system for creative arts and literature. We recently got all the Analecta issues digitized, going back to 1968.” 

Wolfson Press is currently partnering with the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary on an oral history of the Black community in Elkhart for a book called What Happened at Benham West: African American Stories of Community, Displacement, and Hope. More work with the CRHC is underway as well. 

“We’re partnering with the Civil Rights Heritage Center on a project that is going to be a series of children’s books about local civil rights icons,” Ervick said. 

Work is underway on a book called The Little Girl in the Red Bathing Suit, the story of local African American woman Barbara V. Brandy, whose resilience in the face of racism has become a symbol of positive progress in the community. As a child, she was denied admission to the racially segregated Engman Natatorium on Washington Street in South Bend, which is the same building now occupied by the Civil Rights Heritage Center. In fact, the logo for the center incorporates an image of Brandy in a red bathing suit.

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