The University of Cincinnati Press has been named a 2023 finalist in social justice publishing from the Next Generation Indie Book Awards for their book Surviving the Americas: Garifuna Persistence from Nicaragua to New York City by Serena Cosgrove, Jose Idiaquez, Leonard Joseph Bent and Andrew Gorvetzian.

“Since UC’s faculty senate and university administration chose social justice to be our core area of publishing, the press is thrilled to have elevated the university’s publishing efforts to an internationally recognized stage as a publisher of social justice scholarship,” said Elizabeth Scarpelli, director of the University of Cincinnati Press. “These awards signal to scholars, students and experts that UC is a global leader in peer-reviewed social justice scholarship, open access publications and regional books. This recognition will help bring more award-winning, globally impactful scholarly and regional authors to UC as part of the #Next phase – Acceleration.”
About the book
In Surviving the Americas, Serena Cosgrove, José Idiáquez, Leonard Joseph Bent and Andrew Gorvetzian shed light on what it means to be Garifuna today, particularly in Nicaragua. Their research includes over nine months of fieldwork in Garifuna communities in the Pearl Lagoon on the southern Caribbean coast of Nicaragua and in New York City. The resulting ethnography illustrates the unique social issues of the Nicaraguan Garifuna and how their culture, traditions and reverence for their ancestors continues to persist.
About the Next Generation Indie Book Awards
The Next Generation Indie Book Awards is the largest International awards program for indie authors and independent publishers. In its seventeenth year of operation, the Next Generation Indie Book Awards was established to recognize and honor the most exceptional independently published books in 80+ different categories, for the year, and is presented by Independent Book Publishing Professionals Group in cooperation with Marilyn Allen of Allen Literary Agency (formerly the Allen O’Shea Literary Agency).



The University of Cincinnati Libraries empowers discover, stimulates learning and inspires the creation of knowledge by connecting students, faculty, researchers and scholars to dynamic data, information and resources. The University of Cincinnati Libraries comprises 10 locations that support the university’s undergraduate, graduate and professional programs. A new display on the 5th floor lobby of the Walter C. Langsam Library features the various libraries and encourages people to visit each one.


Tiffany Grant, PhD, assistant director for research and informatics and co-director of the University of Cincinnati Libraries Research and Data Services Unit, in a ceremony held April 4, was honored to receive the 2023 Marian Spencer Equity Ambassador Award for Faculty. Named for the celebrated civil rights activist, this award is designed to showcase current campus-affiliated individuals and groups whose efforts relate to diversity, equity and inclusion and who have had a positive impact on the university.
In celebration of National Poetry Month, an exhibit installed on the 4th floor lobby of the Walter C. Langsam Library features work by the 2022/23 Poetry Stacked poets. Included in the exhibit are poems from 13 of the University of Cincinnati student, faculty and community member poets that read at the series. Included in the exhibit are UC faculty poets: Aditi Machado, Rebecca Lindenberg, Felicia Zamora and Simone Savannah.
