Content Tagged ‘awp15’

We’re back from a fantastic week in Minneapolis for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs annual conference. Thanks to everyone who took our books home with you and subscribed to Ecotone. We especially enjoyed meeting readers at our Thursday evening mingle and talking with you during the panel discussions throughout the conference.

Now that all 12,000+ of us have dispersed, we’re excited to continue the conversations virtually, and the Literary Hub, launched April 8, is the perfect gathering place. The featured daily content includes interviews with authors and cover designers, among others; and this week Ecotone 15 contributor Megan Mayhew Bergman and Musings editor Mary Laura Philpott discuss Southerners with a dark(ish) hearts, work ethic, and the fertile ground for storytelling between history and literature.

In the final installment of our three-week video series, we talk to Ecotone contributor Cary Holladay about place, travel, and risks in her writing. Read her beautiful story “Horse People” in Astoria to Zion: Twenty-Six Stories of Risk and Abandon from Ecotone’s First Decade.

Happy Friday! We’re gearing up for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference next week and looking forward to our Thursday evening mingle with Ecotone, the Common, Archipelago Books, New Directions, and the New York Review of Books. Please join us at Mackenzie’s Scotch Pub in Minneapolis.

If it’s your first conference, Bustle offers these tips for how to avoid literary burnout. Among them, locate your favorite lit mags and presses at the book fair in advance (we’ll be at tables 1018 & 1020 with the Ecotone crew) and keep an eye on Twitter for #AWP15 (and of course follow us: @lookoutbooks).

Don’t miss the Lookout and Ecotone editorial team on the following panels:

Founding editor David Gessner
But Seriously . . . Is It Time for More Humor in Environmental Writing?
Friday, 4:30 p.m.

Publisher Emily Louise Smith
Image Is Everything: Literary Magazines on Design, Friday, 4:30 p.m.
Literary Publishing in the 21st Century, Saturday, 3 p.m.

Editor Anna Lena Phillips
Ecotone at Ten: A Reading and Conversation
Friday, 10:30 a.m.

Associate editor Beth Staples
Pinning Editors Down: Lit Mag Fiction Editors Define What Works
Friday, 9 a.m.

We continue our video series featuring three Astoria to Zion authors with Shawn Vestal, author of Godforsaken Idaho, a collection of short stories. Last week, we heard from Rebecca Makkai and the origin of her story: bog mummies! In this video, Shawn Vestal discusses place and risk in his writing, as well as what it means to write about his Mormon upbringing and family. Check out his story “Winter Elders” in Astoria to Zion: Twenty-Six Stories of Risk and Abandon from Ecotone’s First Decade.

Happy Friday, everyone!

Did you miss Bookriot’s feature on bookstores in weird and wonderful places? From barns to boats, abandoned trains to haunted houses, the descriptions of  these stores will leave you itching to travel.

Photos courtesy of the Gallifreyan Detective tumblr.

Judith Rosen of Publishers Weekly checked in on six indie bookstores opened within the past two years—from Scuppernong in Greensboro, NC, to Bookbound in Ann Arbor, MI—to see how they’re faring. As Scuppernong owner Brian Lampkin said, “There’s a growing shop-local movement. People are so ecstatic to have the downtown come back.” His NC store, which emphasizes literary fiction and poetry, also boasts an ambitious events schedule. Good news: they’re thriving!

Looking for a book job with a view beyond the Empire State Building? Bustle rounded up some of our peer indie presses from across the country. Like us, they’re championing unique and original voices that may have been eschewed, or were not the right fit, for the big five. Glad to see two of our Southern favorites in the mix: John F. Blair Publisher in Winston-Salem, NC (our distributor), and Hub City Press in Spartanburg, SC.

Speaking of indie presses, our publisher, Emily Louise Smith, will give a presentation at the Pamlico Writers Conference this weekend on the role of independents in the current book publishing landscape. If you missed it on Facebook, check out Pamlico’s interview with Emily.