The Teaching Press had 21 students working as interns and staff in Fall 2023. We’re featuring their work in small batches—the same way we print books at the Press!
Olivia Meyer became the Project Manager on A Portrait of Grief and Courage: Hmong Oral Histories and Folktales, in early 2023, when the manuscript was still part of a collection Sandra Shackelford was arranging to donating to the UW-Green Bay Cofrin Library Archives. She met with the author, guided the project through its full year of workflow, collaborated on the book’s “Introduction,” and wrote the biographies of translator May Lee Lor and transcriber Ma Lee Lor.
Kat Halfman has been the Chief Copyeditor of this title since early 2023. She created the most ambitious style guide The Teaching Press has encountered, standardizing spelling of numerous individuals’ names and dozens of place names from multiple spellings from multiple translations; researching the use editorial conventions in oral histories; and leading two semesters’ staffs through multiple rounds of copyediting.
There is nothing that our team fears more than failing to deliver. So, once our Lower Fox River PCB Clean Up Timeline book hit our production line, we all knew that we would have our work cut out for us. Thankfully, with the bright minds at our printing press, our staff quickly formed a method to create what we now deem as “Foldie-Outtie” books. Here, we share our secrets.
Launching in December 2023, A Portrait of Grief and Courage documents the lives of Hmong refugees in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in the 1980s and 1990s.
