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Dan Williams Runs TCU Press

The Honors professor of humanities shows students how literature can help them grapple with everything from darkness to laughter.

Daniel Williams, director of the TCU Press and professor of humanities in the John V. Roach Honors College, August 14, 2020. Photo courtesy of TCU Press

Dan Williams is the director of the TCU Press and professor of humanities in the John V. Roach Honors College. Courtesy of TCU Press

Dan Williams Runs TCU Press

The Honors professor of humanities shows students how literature can help them grapple with everything from darkness to laughter.

You’ve been teaching at TCU since 2003. What made you want to also get involved with TCU Press?

About 10 years ago, the chancellor considered closing the Press. I wrote him and said the university needs a good academic press because it brings prestige. If it was a matter of paying personnel, I offered to volunteer. And the next thing I know, I got a call from June Koelker, then dean of the library, who said, “Come in and talk to me about the Press.” And I just started working here.

You’ve been working for the TCU Press since 2009. There, you oversee the staff and review books people have submitted for publication consideration. What is it like working at a university press?

I’m lucky to work with great colleagues at the press. I rely on them for a majority of the work that gets done around here because I have two full-time jobs. Besides the supervision of the press and its personnel, I’m responsible for contracts and acquisitions.

Every day I come to work looking forward to whatever the day brings, and that’s a great feeling. Publishing is a challenging industry. It’s undergoing a lot of changes, but the changes are generally all good.

What kind of changes?

“Every day I come to work looking forward to whatever the day brings, and that’s a great feeling.”
Dan Williams

Book buying has gone down. The challenge is to realign our business model and to take into account that sales in certain areas are decreasing. We need to produce books — however you define a book — that people want to read. Our primary mission is to support the university and the discovery and dissemination of knowledge. We’re not a commercial press. We like to publish books that aren’t necessarily going to be bestsellers. Some of our scholarly books maybe only will sell 150 to 200 copies, and that’s not enough to recover the cost of production. So we try to balance that with books that will be more popular with buyers.

TCU Press publishes about 17 titles a year, including coloring books such as Color Me Purple and more scholarly tomes such as Shots of Knowledge: The Science of Whiskey. What are the criteria for a book to be published by the Press?

Well, excellence — that’s obviously the bar we try to reach in every work we publish. And it takes a good idea, a good concept, and then you have to follow through with the writing and submit it. Right now, there aren’t a lot of presses like us publishing what I would call midlevel literary work. You’re either in New York or you’re self-publishing. And there aren’t a lot of places in between. We get a lot of queries and manuscripts just about every week. And we have to sort through them; we try to find the best that fit our mission and shed light either on Texana or Southwestern history, literature and culture.

What do you think makes TCU Press unique among university presses?

There are about 130 university presses in the country — and several thousand institutions of higher learning. So the university presses all have a unique role in producing the scholarship that’s necessary for knowledge to go forward. We try to contribute to that. What makes us unique is that we are a small press. And we do a lot of regional work, but despite our size and regionality we’ve actually won some prestigious awards over for the last few years.

“Oh, I love the honors students. They’re a tough audience because they expect a lot from their instructors. You can’t cut corners.”
Dan Williams

When you’re not managing the publication process, you’re wearing a professor’s hat. What’s your favorite part of teaching in the John V. Roach Honors College?

Oh, I love the honors students. They’re a tough audience because they expect a lot from their instructors. You can’t cut corners. You can’t be lazy about things. You need to always be giving them your best. That requires reading and rereading and preparation and a lot of enthusiasm. But these classes are among the best I’ve ever taught, and I’m grateful for the privilege.

What are some of the classes that you’ve taught?

I taught a course on environmental literature. We started out reading some traditional authors — Henry David Thoreau, for example. Then we did Edward Abbey. But then for six weeks we did volunteer work at the Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge. I’ve also taught a course on the history and theories of humor and laughter. That was really a fun one. We laugh, and we take laughter for granted. But it’s a very complex subject.

Do you have a teaching philosophy?

To motivate the students to think for themselves. I don’t want them repeating what I believe in or adopting any of my perspectives. I just want them to make choices according to what is relevant in their own lives and to think for themselves.

“I just want [students] to make choices according to what is relevant in their own lives and to think for themselves.”
Dan Williams

What was the inspiration behind The Boller Review, the journal of undergraduate research you started and have now published four times?

It was time. We needed a journal to display our best undergraduate scholarship and creativity. There had been a startup by Bonnie Melhart, former vice chancellor for research, but it was not sustainable. There was just no money to cover it. And it just got to be a case where this was something the university really needed. So I sat down with some people, and we made a proposal to the provost’s council and to the deans. And we just went forward with it.

What do you hope the journal will do for the TCU community?

I hope the TCU community will know some of our outstanding undergraduates better. The whole journal was supposed to profile them and their work. I think it’s a wonderful opportunity for the university to display how outstanding this work really is among our students.

It’s an annual, so we do it once a year. It’s all run by students. I sit down with them, but then they do all the work. They have collected nominations from all of TCU’s schools and colleges. We do not review work. We asked the colleges to nominate two of their most outstanding students for inclusion in the journal. It’s considered an honor. We have all different kinds of work. We have papers; we have PowerPoints; we have video. Sometimes a student writer is working with a professor and several others on a publication. In that case, we can’t publish the work ourselves. So that’s when we do interview profiles of the students.

You’ve published six of your own books. What started your interest in writing novels, most recently The Lords of Absence and The Lords of Leftovers (both Ink Brush Press) about feasible dystopias?

Obsessive compulsion. I was an English major long before I declared an English major in college. I grew up with books and writing and never really thought about publishing my own work until a happy sequence of events took place and an editor took an interest in my work.

What inspires you to write fiction?

It’s just something I do every day. I get here between 6:30 and 6:45 in the morning, and I write for a couple of hours. It’s a great way to start the day. Then I go on to work in my other areas. I have been working hard to produce a book about Spencer and Marlene Hays, who are great benefactors of the university.

“I think that working in publishing — and at the same time teaching literature — gives me a great insight into the process of reading as it goes on today, as well as the concept of what a book actually is.”
Dan Williams

What’s the most recent novel you’ve read that has affected you?

Oh, I read all the time. And every book, I would say, impacts me. At night, I read mysteries for a while before I go to bed, and those can be powerful works. I’ve read some books on Buddhist mindfulness and meditation, and those have impacted me. So I guess I’m malleable. Whatever I read tends to stay with me.

What is it like to balance publishing with writing?

I think there’s a synergy in which both areas help each other. I mean, obviously, I keep a close watch on what’s being published and what comes into the Press as a possible publication. I get to know certain writers personally, and they’re quite influential as well. I think that working in publishing — and at the same time teaching literature — gives me a great insight into the process of reading as it goes on today, as well as the concept of what a book actually is. We think of books as being bound and being set on shelves. But there are all other kinds of books being published today as well.

You said you have two full-time jobs. How do you balance everything?

Some people would say I don’t. Each day, I put together a new to-do list, and it’s a mixture of everything I have to do. I try to apply myself to whatever is coming closest to a boil and meet my deadlines. But sometimes it’s not easy.

Editor’s Note: The questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.