The Emory community filled the Jones Room of Woodruff Library on Feb. 6 for "Feast of Words," celebrating the diverse scholarship of Emory faculty members who published books in 2016.

The annual gathering, hosted  by the Center for Faculty Development and Excellence (CFDE), Emory Libraries and Information Technology and the Emory University Bookstore, and sponsored by the AJC-Decatur Book Festival, honored 113 faculty members who served as authors or volume editors of 118 books last year, on topics ranging from poetry to physics, pastoral care to public health.

After an introduction by Pamela Scully, director of the CFDE, Interim Provost Stuart Zola took the podium to review the faculty's publishing success over the last year:

Of the list of 118 books published by Emory faculty in 2016:

• Emory College of Arts and Sciences faculty members are represented 57 times.
• Emory School of Medicine faculty members are represented 28 times.
• Emory School of Law faculty members are represented 16 times.
• Candler School of Theology faculty members are represented 12 times.
• Oxford College and Rollins School of Public Health faculty members are represented six times each.
• Goizueta Business School faculty members are included four times.
• Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing faculty members and Campus Life staff are each represented once.
• Emeriti faculty are included on the list nine times.
• Twelve faculty members are represented on the list more than once.

Zola also noted that at least three 2016 books by Emory faculty have already won national or international honors: 

• "Never Better! The Modern Jewish Picaresque," by Miriam Udel, associate professor of Yiddish language, literature and culture in both the Department of German Studies and the Tam Institute of Jewish Studies, won the National Jewish Book Award for Modern Jewish Thought and Experience.
• "White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide" by Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies, has been short-listed for a National Book Award.
• "Neuro-Ophthalmology Illustrated" by Valérie Biousse and Nancy Newman, professors of ophthalmology in the School of Medicine, won the British Medical Association first place book award for neurology.

"These volumes represent many years of hard work. In some ways, writing a book can be a solitary activity, but increasingly at Emory, we are seeing this as a collective effort," Zola noted before leading the annual toast to the university's authors.

"Whether it is a collaboration with co-authors and co-editors, a writing group that meets in person or one that meets virtually online," he continued, "faculty are finding communities of support and camaraderie for their work as scholars, creators and writers."