CCNY faculty publish a host of new books earning high praise

Faculty from The City College of New York are publishing new works and receiving popular and critical praise. The department of English and MFA Creative Writing program has a spate of new publications from faculty. Author Irvin Weatherby, Jr., the Bernard Mendik Visiting Professor, has a new book “In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space.” The book was featured on ABC News Live Prime and has received favorable reviews, including The Philadelphia Tribune and a starred review by BookPage. Weatherby, Jr. will teach creative nonfiction for the MFA for two semesters. 
 
Other new books and literary accolades include:
·      The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts, a debut novel, by Soraya Palmer, adjunct assistant professor, generates buzz as Goodreads’ Buzziest Debut Novel of the Year, as well as a Finalist for the PEN Open Book Award and a Finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Palmer is a recipient of the New York State Council on the Arts/ New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellowship in the Fiction category.
 
·      Author, professor, and director of undergraduate writing Salar Abdoh has had his translation of the story “Firefly,” by author Alireza Iranmehr, selected for inclusion in the 2026 edition of the anthology Best Literary Translations published by Deep Vellum. Guernica magazine also published an essay by Tarek Abi Samra “A Man Made of Dust,” for which Salar was guest-editor. Abdoh most recently published the highly acclaimed novel “A Nearby Country Called Love” which was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing.
 
·      Professor Lyn Di Iorio’s "Maritza and Carmen" was selected by guest editor Celeste Ng for “The Best American Short Stories, 2025.”
 
·      Longtime Guest Professor David Groff was presented with the 2025 Michele Karlsberg Leadership Award by The Publishing Triangle Awards.
 
·      Faculty from other departments in The Division of Humanities and the Arts, have also published recently, including “Emporialism: Department Store Fictions and the Politics of the Mediterranean” by Amr Kamal, associate professor of French, Arabic and Comparative Literature.
 
·      Professor Ben Vilhauer, chair of the philosophy department, has made waves with his book "Kant on Rational Sympathy."
 
·      Elise Crull, associate professor of philosophy, has co-written "The Einstein Paradox: The Debate on Nonlocality and Incompleteness in 1935" with Guido Bacciagaluppi, associate professor of the Universiteit Utrecht.
 
·      Massimo Piglucci, K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy, has co-written “Beyond Stoicism” with Gregory Lopez and Meredith Alexander Kunz. Using the wisdom of 13 Greek and Roman thinkers to navigate life’s thorny problems, “The Wall Street Journal” praised the book that gives you exercises to test-drive each philosophy to fulfill the quest for eudaimonia—a life worth living.
 
·      Assistant Professor of history Yaari Felber-Seligman, has written “Fashioning Inland Communities: Trade and Popular Culture in Central East Africa.”
 
·       From The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, Professor Damon Bolhassani has published the top-selling newly released book in the Architectural Materials category on Amazon entitled “Funicular Structures: The Art of Building Efficiently.”
 
·      "Breaking Point: Job Stress, Occupational Depression, and the Myth of Burnout" is co-written by psychology Professor Emeritus Irvin Sam Schonfeld of the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership and Renzo Bianchi, associate professor of psychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
 
·      “Liberation Stories: Building Narrative Power for 21st Century Social Movements” by anthropology and interdisciplinary programs Distinguished Lecturer Shanelle Matthews, Marzena Zukowska and the Radical Communicators Network. Matthews was the communications director of Black Lives Matter. 
 
·      Award-winning Colin Powell School Distinguished Lecturer Cristina Jimenez Moreta has written a memoir titled, “Dreaming of Home: How We Turn Fear Into Pride, Power, and Real Change.”
 
·      From the Grove School of Engineering, electrical engineering Professor M. Umit Uyar debuts his book “Machine Learning and AI with Simple Python and Matlab Scripts: Courseware for Non-computing Majors.”