TRENDS IN UNIVERSITY-PRESS AND SOUTHERN PUBLISHING
TO BE THEMES OF REGIONAL CONFERENCE

	CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., March 13 -- Some 100 representatives
of university book-publishing presses from throughout the South will
be in Charlottesville March 22-24 for the 1996 annual meeting of the
Southern University Presses, hosted by the University Press of
Virginia.
	The region's literary culture and new trends in university
press publishing, including a growing effort to publish scholarly
electronic books as well as general-audience books, will be
important themes of the conference.
	Among conference highlights, all to be held at the
Charlottesville Omni Hotel:
	¥ A panel on "Publishing the South" at 9 a.m. March 23.
Panelists will include David Moltke Hansen, director of the Center
for the Study of the South at the University of North Carolina, and
Richard Howorth, owner of one of the South's leading independent
booksellers, Square Books in Oxford, Miss.
	¥ A panel at 1:30 p.m. March 23 on "The Washington Book
Scene."  Panelists will include Michael Dirda, Pulitzer
Prize-winning book critic for the Washington Post, syndicated
public-radio host Diane Rehm and Jack Shoemaker, editor of the
Washington-based Counterpoint Press.
	¥ Also at 1:30 p.m. March 23 a panel on electronic scholarly
projects will include John Unsworth, director of U.Va.'s Institute
for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, and U.Va. historian
Edward Ayers, an innovator in electronic scholarship and creator of
an important electronic archive about the Civil War.
	¥ At 9 a.m. March 24 a panel of Southern press directors,
including Nancy Essig of Virginia will discuss "Bombs and
Surprises:  Their Favorite Sleepers and Unanticipated Disasters."
	¥ At 10:45 a.m. March 24 a session will focus on
book-reviewing in the South.  Among panelists will be Bob Summer of
Publishers Weekly and National Book Award-wining novelist John Casey.
	For additional information contact Mary Kathryn Hassett,
assistant editor of the University Press of Virginia at (804)
982-2932.
###
March 12, 1996
(complete conference schedule attached)