Content Tagged ‘Ben Fountain’

After a long hiatus, we’re finally back with our weekly Lit News Roundup.

Hearty congratulations are in order for several Ecotone contributors:

Shawn Vestal recently won the $25,000 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction for his story collection, Godforsaken Idaho, and we couldn’t be prouder that two of the stories in the book, “Winter Elders” and “Opposition In All Things,” first appeared in the pages of Ecotone. “Winter Elders” also has a home in our best of Ecotone fiction anthology, Astoria to Zion.

And Ecotone 16 contributor Molly Antopol’s stunning story collection, The UnAmericans, made the 2014 longlist for the National Book Award in Fiction. You can read “My Grandmother Tells Me This Story” in full on the Ecotone website.

With our sister magazine, Ecotone, we value a strong sense of place. In Wilmington, NC, where our imprint and magazine are based, it’s our good fortune to relish sights like this one nearly every day.

Now, for this week’s news—

We highly recommend that you make time this weekend to read Ben Fountain’s piece for the New Republic, highlighting the heartbreaking failure of Haiti’s recovery four years after the earthquake. “The day after my arrival, I was walking down a dusty, noisy street near the center of town and passed a rough-hewn cinderblock church, a cavernous space with crude turrets at the corners and iron bars across the windows. Inside, a choir composed of what must have been visiting angels was singing a Bach cantata, the angels hidden behind the walls and bars of the church but their song floating into the street like a break in the battle, a cool cloth laid over a fevered brow. And that’s how Haiti breaks your heart, with these hits of grace and beauty constantly sailing out of the wreckage.”

This week, we’ve got a mash-up of author updates and literary news the Lookout Books and Ecotone staffs have been perusing over the past few weeks.

If, like us, you just can’t wait until April 8 for Maggie Shipstead’s new novel, Astonish Me, One Story (winner of AWP’s Best Small Press Award) has an excerpt available to subscribers. Don’t worry non-subscribers, the current issue is only $1.99! (And, breaking news, Maggie will be reading from her story in Astoria to Zion on Monday, April 7, at the Center for Fiction in NYC. Stay tuned for details.)

Ben Fountain’s novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, has been chosen as the Wall Street Journal Book Club’s March selection by author of The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini. Hosseini said he chose the book “because of the story’s provocative premise, emotional nuance, and inventive use of language.”

Lookout is thrilled to celebrate the official publication day of Astoria to Zion: Twenty-Six Stories of Risk and Abandon from Ecotone’s First Decade.

We unveiled Astoria to Zion last week during the surprisingly sunny whirlwind that was AWP Seattle. Ecotone, Lookout, and Milkweed Editions co-hosted a book release party atop downtown Seattle’s gorgeous Sorrento Hotel. Longtime friend of Ecotone Ben Fountain, who wrote the foreword, introduced the collection; contributors Brock Clarke, Cary Holladay, and Rebecca Makkai offered fantastic readings from their stories. For more photos from the event, please see our coverage on Facebook. Check back here for upcoming video interviews with the gracious contributors as well.

Now that the annual AWP conference is just days away, we’re setting our sights on Seattle. In case you’re under the impression that it’s all coffee and mist, here are a few things we think might be fun to do while you’re in town.

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Seattle Underground

When founded in the mid-nineteenth century, Seattle was several stories lower and its buildings were made of wood. After the Great Seattle Fire in 1889, city officials banned wooden structures and decided that instead of rebuilding the city at its original level, they would reconstruct it a story or two higher. What this means to you: you can tour Old Seattle (family-friendly or adult-oriented) and pretend you’ve time-traveled 150 years and live in the seedy underbelly of the American West.

(photo © Dougtone via Flickr Creative Commons)

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The Sound Garden

If you’re the type to venture off the beaten path, you might want to do some exploring and find Seattle’s Sound Garden—yes, the band is named after it. It’s one of five public artworks located on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration (NOAA) campus, overlooking Lake Washington and adjacent to Magnusson Park. It’s an installation of  hollow metal pipes that spin, whistle, and howl as wind blows through them. The effect is said to be beautiful, eerie, and maybe even a little supernatural.

Since 9/11, access has been limited, but the campus is open from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. (Entry is allowed till 3:30 p.m.). It’s free, but you’ll need to bring a photo ID to get in, and be prepared to have your bags searched.

(photo © The Kozy Shack via Flickr Creative Commons)

We’re back at it, and there’s plenty of author news to share this week.

Steve Almond helped heat up Valentine’s Day weekend along with authors John Papernick and Lana Fox at Harvard Book Store’s 50 Shades of Night: A Night of Erotica to Make You Blush.

Andrew Tonkovichdiscusses Mormonist Lit and Scientology, and gives a shout out to fellow Ecotone contributor Shawn Vestal’s short story “Winter Elders.”

In an attempt to keep track of Lookout’s first four prolific authors—Edith Pearlman, Steve Almond, John Rybicki, and Ben Miller—as well as the contributors to Astoria to Zion: Twenty-Six Stories of Risk and Abandon from Ecotone’s First Decade, we’re beginning a new weekly roundup department, featuring author news. We at Lookout and Ecotone are awfully proud of our growing family, and we hope you’ll show these authors some love by clicking through. Enjoy our first roundup.

• Karen E. Bender writes “The Emotional Power of Verbs” for the New York Times.
• The Express Tribune’s Nuzhat Saadia Siddiqi praises Maggie Shipstead’s book Seating Arrangements, saying that “the book under review steers so far away from the average chick lit bestseller that you’ll be left with a grin on your face and satisfaction over time well spent.
• Steve Almond offers advice to readers on Cognoscenti’s Heavy Meddle blog.
• Aspen Public Radio featured Ben Fountain and Rick Bass in their weekly show, First Draft, which “highlights the voices of writers as they discuss their work, their craft and the literary arts.”

We’re excited to announce our first book giveaway through Goodreads. Just sign up before February 7 to receive one of twenty early copies of Astoria to Zion: Twenty-Six Stories of Risk and Abandon from Ecotone’s First Decade with a foreword by Ben Fountain and featuring stories by Steve Almond, Rick Bass, Kevin Brockmeier, Lauren Groff, Cary Holladay, Rebecca Makkai, David Means, Edith Pearlman, Benjamin Percy, Ron Rash, Bill Roorbach, Maggie Shipstead, Marisa Silver, Brad Watson, and Kevin Wilson, among many others! And if you do receive a copy, we’ll hope that you’ll review the book and help us spread the word.

 

Astoria to Zion with a foreword by Ben Fountain

Giveaway ends February 07, 2014.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Still in search of last-minute holiday gifts for your bookish family members and friends? We’ve got you covered.

When you purchase a one-year, two-issue subscription to Ecotone, we’ll throw in a copy of our forthcoming best of Ecotone fiction anthology, Astoria to Zion: Twenty-Six Stories of Risk and Abandon from Ecotone’s First Decade. The total for this three-title package? Just $25!

The two-issue subscription—normally $16.95—will begin with issue 16, which is devoted to the theme of migration—work that engages a broad sense of motion, memory, journeys, and movement in thought. Among many others, it features Jim Shepard, Angela Carter, Molly Antopol, Cary Holladay, Hailey Leithauser, and Luis Alberto Urrea.

Both the migration issue and Astoria to Zion—$18.95 retail—will arrive in early 2014 in a single package, and the next issue of Ecotone will arrive in fall 2014. It’s the gift that keeps on giving!

Place your order today, and we’ll even email you a set of PDF-writable  gift cards you can send to the lucky recipient, just in time for the holidays.

Need more incentive?

Salman Rushdie named Ecotone one of a handful of journals on which “the health of the American short story depends.” And in his foreword to Astoria to Zion, Ben Fountain writes, “Ecotone defines itself as the magazine for reimagining place, a claim that deserves to be applauded as a rare instance of truth in contemporary advertising. In an age where place has never seemed more tenuous and abstract, it’s hard to conceive of a more relevant mission for a literary magazine.”

Anthology contributors include Steve Almond, Rick Bass, Ron Rash, Edith Pearlman, and Brad Watson, as well as important emerging voices Lauren Groff, Ben Stroud, and Kevin Wilson.

Place your order today, because this offer won’t last long!

Stumped on what to buy your most literary, well-read family members and friends for the holidays? When you purchase a one-year, two-issue subscription to Ecotone, we’ll throw in a copy of our forthcoming best of Ecotone fiction anthology, Astoria to Zion: Twenty-Six Stories of Risk and Abandon from Ecotone’s First Decade. The total for this literary package? Just $25!

The two-issue subscription—normally $16.95—will begin with issue 16, which is devoted to human and animal migration, as well as work that engages the theme in a broader sense of motion, memory, journeys, and movement in thought. Among many others, it features Jim Shepard, Angela Carter, Molly Antopol, Cary Holladay, Hailey Leithauser, and Luis Alberto Urrea.

Both the migration issue and Astoria to Zion—$18.95 retail—will arrive in early 2014 in a single package. It’s the gift that keeps on giving!

Place your order today, and we’ll even email you a printable gift card you can send to the lucky recipient, just in time for the holidays.