Finding a University Press

In late 2024, I was near the end of six years of researching, writing, correcting, and rewriting my biography of Mary Todd (1941-2016), who had spent her childhood and teenage years in suburban Washington and ended a dotted college career by leaving for Cuba.. After trying several titles, I’d finally come up with Translating for the Revolution, which captured Mary’s long loyalty to the Cuban revolution, along with her success as Cuba’s premier English translator. The daughter of Laurence Todd, Washington Bureau Chief for the Soviet news agency TASS, Mary was traumatized in fifth grade when a Saturday Evening Post article calling her father “a spy for Stalin” prompted the ostracism of her classmates. She was 22 and had been living with a black roommate when she discovered that the FBI was following her, as they had followed her father throughout her childhood. Certain that a “normal life” was impossible in the United States, and unwilling to suffer the ongoing stress of surveillance, she left for socialist Cuba, where she lived out her life, comforted by policies that made a priority of equality among its citizens. Despite suffering horrific domestic violence from a former Cuban husband who left her re-traumatized, she became a beloved English teacher and skillful translator, traveling internationally with Cuban delegations to the Non-Aligned Movement and translating some 20 books by Cuban scholars.

Relative to its historical and cultural significance, this book seemed more suited to a university press than a commercial publisher. I decided to choose this path to publication.

I have a substantial track record as an author, publishing eight books of fiction and nonfiction, including a biography, Simone de Beauvoir: A Life of Freedom, and an edited collection, Between Women, in which women reflected on their biographical subjects. Nevertheless, a biography of Mary Todd wasn’t an obvious best-seller. Although Mary Todd had regularly traveled internationally as a translator for Cuban delegations, and trauma had exacerbated her tendency to personal conflict, when not traveling, she had lived much of her life at her desk. I also recognized that from a publisher's perspective, though Mary translated over 20 books by Cuban scholars, she was far from a household name to American readers, who are rarely curious about the lives of translators. My hope was that Mary’s long years in Cuba, whose socialist government the United States has attempted to bring down through an invasion, assassinations, and a longstanding boycott that has distorted the Cuban economy, would increase readers’ interest.

The Association of University Presses offers a detailed online graph showing the topics on which each university press is interested in receiving submissions. I thought my manuscript fit into three areas of interest: Cuba or the Caribbean, women’s studies, and biography. Although several prestigious universities, such as Rutgers, North Carolina, and Duke, were interested in seeing manuscripts in these three areas, I decided to start with a less well-known university: the University Press of Mississippi. If they found correctable problems, I could make the necessary changes before going to a more high-profile university such as Rutgers or Duke.

I spent the first week of December 2024 responding to detailed requests from the University Press of Mississippi (UPM) for information about myself and my book. By December 10^th, I received an acknowledgement of my submission, along with a promise to respond in six weeks to two months. Exactly two months later, I received a warm email from Lisa McMurtray, an acquisitions editor. The letter described the Press as a “mid-sized organization with in-house editorial, production, marketing, and customer service teams.” I was told that, once I sent in the completed manuscript, UPM would move forward with the next stage of the process, “peer review.”

For the last few years, whenever I mentioned the biography on which I was working, I was likely to be asked whether I had a publisher. It would have been lovely to say yes, but I knew that I would only be able to present my project in a succinct and attractive way once I had mastered its complete storyline. Although I still had trouble describing what my biography was about, I had managed a good enough job to arouse the UPM’s interest, and their letter gave me bubbles of wordless joy. Though Lisa McMurtray and her colleagues still needed to read the entire biography, and I had to make it through the University Press’s peer review process, I had been a researcher in a university-based facility for several decades and felt confident about my work.

I should add that, below her name, Lisa McMurtray had added a maxim that I saw as indicating her commitments, and moved me deeply:

“We acknowledge all indigenous peoples who once occupied the territory now considered Mississippi, as well as the enslaved people of African descent forced to work here. While we cannot undo this long history, we hope our work stands against ongoing systemic inequities and honors and respects the legacy of the land and its people.”

In fact, I had been in fifth grade in Topeka, Kansas, when the Supreme Court decided in Brown v. Topeka Pubic Schools that separate schools for black children were inherently unequal. I also remembered my family’s first train trip through Oklahoma and Texas, and my horror at seeing a “coloreds” sign on a dirty water fountain on a station platform. I had spent several decades supporting myself in university-based research institutes, studying issues of inequality in public education. Now my frail new connection with UPM prompted me to order Eyes on the Prize from my local library. The four-part documentary detailed more than a decade of desegregation efforts starting in 1954, and much of the worst violence had occurred in Mississippi. I began to imagine a trip to UPM to experience the terrible years along with whatever the “deep South” had become.

On March 3^rd, I emailed my entire manuscript, including possible photographs, to Lisa McMurtray, the acquisitions editor. Although I am old enough to know that editors work on multiple projects at the same time, six years of working largely alone on my biography had left me hungry for a response. Several weeks went by with little more than an acknowledgement that the manuscript had been received, and that it would likely be “summer” before the peer review process had been accomplished.

After much unnecessary turmoil, I allowed myself to email Lisa McMurtray and her assistant. I wanted a conversation in which I could learn whether the manuscript had actually gone out for review; what the specialties of the reviewers were to whom it had been sent, or would be sent; whether she or her colleagues had “looked at” my manuscript; and whether she would continue as my editor after I moved past peer review. After a few days’ delay, Lisa emailed back, asking me to give her a couple of times when I would be available for a telephone call or Zoom, and which I preferred.

On April 7^th, having waited on pins and needles during the hour of difference between our Time Zones, I opened Zoom at 3 pm to see a dark-haired woman of around forty wearing glasses and a black sweatshirt. She was more businesslike and not as warm as she had seemed in her emails. But she gave her attention to my questions and answered them fully. Manuscripts needed two positive reviews, along with board approval, to move to a UPM contract. However, if there were negative reviews, they went out to as many as four reviewers. Peer reviewers looked for such things as factual errors, coherence, the manuscript’s arc, organization, and writing. The University Press of Mississippi served eight colleges and universities in Mississippi, and two board members from each university met four times a year to decide on UPM publications.

I winced when told that the average time from receipt of the manuscript to publication was two years, twice as long as I had imagined. I was also surprised to hear that academic presses generally took two years to launch a book. Those that didn’t were the ones who saved time by not copy-editing. Lisa explained that UPM’s schedule was already filled until fall 2026. Since my book was a hybrid between an academic and trade book, and spring was the best time to publish hybrid books, they would likely decide that a better time to publish it would be spring 2027, which would coincide with the Associations of Caribbean Studies and Women’s Studies. When I asked whether I was still free to send it to another press, Lisa said yes; however, I should tell her if I sent it elsewhere.

I had attended an online session on launching a book and, on the assumption that I’d be publishing next year, had begun to work with a publicist who had helped me with a previous book. I decided I would start writing monthly on Substack and likely add some of the editorials I had written for my local newspaper. Would all this be too early? Lisa said that the UPM launched their books online nine months ahead, and even beginning now, it wasn’t that far ahead.

Feeling pleased with our conversation, but afraid that I might go stir-crazy waiting for her to be in touch, I asked if I could contact her in the meantime. Lisa reassured me that I could contact her whenever I wanted. She is responsible for 30 books a year and tends to get engrossed in whatever book she is working on, forgetting about the others for the moment.

The meeting had been sobering; I was no longer bubbling with excitement about the prospective publication of my book. On the other hand, nothing had made me fear that it WOULDN’T be published.

In fact, something was settling inside me. I could use the two years to write for my local paper and perhaps start blogging on Substack. I’d become a working writer again, and the time would pass productively.