Alexander Street: Literature, Drama, and Performing Arts

Black Women Writers - Licensing News

The licensing department at Alexander Street Press has been busy recently, acquiring the rights to publish the works of several prominent authors.  Soon to appear in Black Women Writers are the writings of Maya Angelou, Pearl Michelle Cleage, Beryl Gilroy, Opal Palmer Adisa, and Sonia Sanchez.

Upon completion, Black Women Writers will contain 100,000 pages of literature and essays by authors from North American, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe.  Enduring both sexism and racism, these authors detail the various historical, economic, and political conditions affecting women from the 18th century through the 20th century.

Black Women Writers is available to libraries through annual subscription or one-time purchase of perpetual rights.  You can browse the collection now, without a username or password, and see the rare, hard to find, and previously unavailable works currently available.

For more information or to request a trial please contact us.   

Important Blog Updates

We are in the process of updating and enhancing the Alexander Street Press blog sites.  We have taken steps to make our RSS feeds compatible with a wider range of readers and browsers.  If you currently subscribe to the Literature, Drama, and Performing Arts feed you may want to update your feed address.

The new feed address for this blog is http://feeds.feedburner.com/AlexanderStreetLiterature.  Please add this to your preferred reader now, or use the icons in the left column to subscribe.

Additionally, we have created new headline animators for each blog site.  Feel free to grab this animator for use on your library website, blog site, or MySpace page.

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If you prefer to receive Alexander Street news and updates via email you can simply opt-in using the form  in the right column.

If you have any questions regarding the blogs or animators email us at marketing@alexanderstreet.com.  Thanks and enjoy.

World Literature Online is now Alexander Street Literature

The online collection formerly known as World Literature Online has been renamed Alexander Street Literature.  The URL and any bookmarks you have made will not be affected, but libraries should update their catalogs and Web sites to reflect the new title.

The Literatue blog has expanded

The Alexander Street Literature blog has expanded to include news, updates, and information on our drama, film, and performing arts collections. Our award-winning collections in drama focus on the works and writings of individuals previously overlooked, as well as mainstream authors and playwrights. 

Rare, previously unpublished, and in-copyright materials are available in full-text, and our streaming video collections enable scholarly research of the performing arts in ways never before possible.  A complete list of drama collections can be found here.

Stay tuned for more news and updates, including information on our new Critical Video Editions series.

The Unknowns

Our database is loaded with heavyweights from the world of literature.  But the greatest satisfaction comes from finding absolute gems in any one of our products.  The old saw "there is something for everyone" should be improved to "remain curious."  The sheer multitude of works and authors in the database absolutely rewards digging for gold.  The student/scholar who comes to the table looking for information on X or corroboration of Y is more than welcome, but why not thumb around a little and look outside your area of focus.  Volume broadens context.  Sure, there is going to be a lot of wading but what better exercise for the intellectually adventuresome.  It is very rare, to me, to look at just about any work of art without even the smallest sense of sympathy for the artist's effort, goodwill, or even propagandistic/ideological goal.  Moved to act, they created.  They shared.  Bringing good faith to interfacing works of art is vital in the learning process.  Jadedness, narrowness can make you overlook what does not readily slide into your world-view.  Take some time to look around.  At the database.  At the world around you.

World Literature Series Launch

We are very pleased to announce the debut of the Alexander Street Press World Literature Series. This is a fully interactive collection of definitive, full-text databases covering literatures of place, race, and gender. In addition to celebrating the creative achievements of women from across the globe, the World Literature Series allows users to explore the rich literary heritage of Africa and its Diaspora, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, and other regions. Today it comprises more than 5,500 plays and more than 250,000 pages of poetry, fiction, and essays. Every two weeks Alexander Street adds thousands of pages of new content--giving users immediate access to a steadily growing treasury of classic, rare, and contemporary literature.  Please come share this fascinating and expansive collection.