Content Tagged ‘Memoir’

Today in Seven Questions, we talk to Cameron Dezen Hammon, whose debut memoir This Is My Body: A Memoir of Romantic and Religious Obsession was recently released by Lookout Books. Kirkus calls it “a generous and unflinchingly brave memoir about faith, feminism, and freedom,” and the Millions adds, “Hammon explores motherhood, her relationship with her husband, her infidelity, and her growing sense of her own feminism. Her strikingly contemporary reflections about her treatment in conservative churches . . . make her story a salient one for this particular moment, in the wake of the #MeToo Movement.” 

Hammon’s writing appears in The Kiss anthology from W. W. Norton, Catapult, Ecotone, the Houston Chronicle, the Literary Review, NYLON, and elsewhere; and her essay “Infirmary Music” was noted in The Best American Essays 2017. She earned an MFA in creative writing from Seattle Pacific University and is currently a writer-in-residence for Writers in the Schools in Houston.

Why was it important to publish this book now? How do you hope This Is My Body will enrich the conversation, especially around #metoo and #churchtoo?

I think women who have experienced sexual assault and harassment in a church context are hungry for stories that speak directly to their experience. There’s something particularly egregious about someone using spiritual authority to harm, and we need to talk about this.

It’s been a week of wild weather for most of the country, and wild things have been happening for Ecotone folks too.

Paul Lisicky is getting RAVE reviews for his memoir, The Narrow Door, released last week, a section of which appears in our Anniversary issue. This book is about the big stuff: friendship, for sure, but also “Writing. The chaos of sexuality. Competition and envy, dying and grieving. The high (unrealistic?) expectations we have of those we love, with our needs becoming so great we drive them away.” Check out the full NYT review, and then get your hands on a copy.

Ecotone‘s founder, David Gessner, recently hosted a one-hour episode of National Geographic’s “Explorer: Call of the Wild,” which discusses how “As humans become more addicted to technology and withdrawn from nature, our brains are becoming rewired.” Here’s a short clip of David from the show.

Awards are wild for our contributors! Hearty congrats to National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Lauren Groff, and to Wendell Berry, recipient of the Book Critics’ Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award!

On a very sad note, farewell to Eva Saulitis, who died in Alaska last week. Eva was a passionate advocate for orcas, Prince William Sound, and all things wild, as well as beautiful and immensely talented writer. Eva’s work appeared in Ecotone 15,  but we’d like to share this podcast from Orion, in which she reads an essay that appeared in their March/April 2014 issue.

We hope your week is filled with less shoveling (we didn’t get a flake here on the coast, we’re sad to say!) and more of wonderful wild things. Thanks for tuning in!

Because I was determined that my life be about more than my worst hours on earth —River Bend Chronicle by Ben Miller

Type treatment by Eric Tran, Lookout Intern

Ben Miller has a playlist for his memoir, River Bend Chronicle, up at Largehearted boy, a music blog that also has interest in the literary world. Here are some of our personal favorites from the list:

“Carry On Wayward Son” – composed by Kerry Livgren – performed by Kansas

Sudlow Junior High lunch room. Again I’ve beaten the rest of the losers to our table because I don’t push my flab through the line anymore. I bring an apple only. The words of this, my latest eating theme, runs over and over in my aching head. There will be peace when you are done. That is, finish what I am starting.

“Moonshadow” – composed by Cat Stevens – performed by Cat Stevens

When the anger bubble bursts there’s the quiet of this hymn – blue bringing blue out of black and black bringing black out of blue. Prayer prowling in a pulp grotto. Melody configuring my sensation of being shipped through weeks like a box not sealed, stuff spilling out…phosphorescence of spent emotion behind the postman, eyes calmly rolling on a sidewalk, mouth a tired rubber band draped over a curb.

“Free Man in Paris” – composed by Joni Mitchell – performed by Joni Mitchell

In her I heard the ire of my sisters reborn as direction, heard a mother’s keen reformed or resolved – ebullient demise of conflicted voices and the paralysis. “Alive,” she sang to my head on a pillow of notebooks. “Alive and unfettered.”

One Story picks Ben Miller as LIterary Debutante

Ben Miller rocked his reading at KGB Bar last night–his first from River Bend Chronicle!

How was your weekend? On Friday we had a (belated) picnic to celebrate the release of Ben Miller’s River Bend Chronicle. Thanks, Ben, for the tasty bubbly!

“Miller’s prose throughout combines that knack for close observation and gently mocking tone, such as when he romanticizes his neighbor Mr. Hickey but bemusedly remembers how the man’s sister tried to equip him with a gun. His mother comes in for the harshest treatment, as he catalogs her self-martrying attitude and emotional disorganization, symbolized by a massive handbag he calls Moby Purse.”

Read the rest here!

Happy Publication Day, Ben Miller! We are so proud!

Today is the official release date of Ben Miller’s River Bend Chronicle: The Junkification of a Boyhood Idyll amid the Curious Glory of Urban Iowa. This weekend, Steve Almond said that he read his copy of RBC while commuting to and from work. Three times in one week, he missed his stop because he was so engrossed in the book.