This week’s Roundup is brought to you by the letter M! You may recognize her from marketing campaigns like this one or songs from the ’90s like this one. But this week we’ve got Ms up to a bunch of literary magic.
First up is a two-fer: Lookout author Matthew Neill Null who asked this week on Paris Review Daily, “Will anyone in America give a damn about Maria Beig?” The German author remains largely unread in America, sadly. Matt says, “Her writing, so invested in the disappearing rural world, is particular, yes, but universal: her characters love and long and pine away. She would be totally unknown here if not for the good labor of the novelist Jaimy Gordon and her husband Peter Blickle, a German academic, who have translated and published Lost Weddings and Hermine for small presses.” We cannot wait to read the work of ninety-five-year-old Beig, available in the U.S. from New Issues Poetry & Prose.
Matt Null is meeting up with a couple of other Ms at the Boston Book Festival this weekend, Ecotone contributor Megan Mayhew Bergman and Matt Bell. They’ll talk about fiction grounded in real places or real life stories, read from their work, and answer your most pressing questions. Don’t miss these three fantastic writers on Saturday from 1–2 p.m.
And if you’re in the Provincetown area, you won’t want to miss another one of Matt’s events at the Provincetown Public Library. Matt will be in the (wait for it) Marc Jacobs Reading Room on Thursday, October 29 at 6 p.m., where he will read from Honey from the Lion.
In the category of things that make you go mmmm:
Ecotone contributor Toni Tipton-Martin was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, discussing African-American culinary history, and her forthcoming book, The Jemimi Code.
We have two Notables (and two more Ms) in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2015 both from issue 17: Matthew Clark, for his essay “Shedders,” and Matthew Neill Null for his story “The Island in the Gorge of the Great River.”
We hope your weekend is filled with marvels, mysteries of the best kind, and as much literary magic as you can muster!