What We’re Writing

Keith Buckley (BA ’03)

Fans of the Buffalo hardcore band Every Time I Die, who are known for getting tattoos of vocalist Keith Buckley’s lyrics, should find plenty of potential ink in Buckley’s first novel, “Scale.” Framed as the memoir of an indie rocker whose dysfunctional lifestyle has caught up with him, the story bears some resemblance to Buckley’s own, and the author maintains the same balance of sardonic wit and deadly gravity he puts into his songs. (Rare Bird Books, 2015)

Alan Feldman (PhD ’73)

Roughly 40 years after publishing an academic monograph on the poet Frank O’Hara, Feldman, professor emeritus of English at Framingham State University, offers this book of poems. In it, he applies the New York School poet’s playful sensibility to the aging process—something O’Hara, who died at 40, never got to experience. From the poem “Imagining Uruguay”: “This is the republic of naps, a country on the other side of death.” (University of Wisconsin Press, 2015)

David Head (PhD ’10, MA ’02)

A group of privateers, who were semi-legitimate pirates during the early 19th century, took the cargo of Spanish ships by force on the authority of nations Spain was attempting to colonize in the Americas. Head digs deep into the fraught history of these seamen, who captured millions of dollars of gold, silver and dry goods, and were also involved in the slave trade. (University of Georgia Press, 2015)

Ronald R. Fraser (BA ’66)

Citizens hold the ultimate political leverage in American government—or do they? In “America, Democracy & You,” Fraser, a longtime public policy writer, both challenges the notion that Americans are self-governing and encourages readers to regain control of their political system. (Cheshire & Company Viewpoints Publishing, 2015)

Buffalo News reporter and UB alumna Charity Vogel (PhD ’04, MA ’00) has been awarded a 2016 Herbert H. Lehman Prize for Distinguished Scholarship from the New York Academy of History for her book “The Angola Horror: The 1867 Train Wreck That Shocked the Nation and Transformed American Railroads.” (Cornell University Press, 2013)