Content Tagged ‘paul lisicky’

Last night, students in the MFA program here at UNCW hosted their End of the World Reading. School is over, and many of our students–some who have worked so hard on Ecotone and Lookout–are leaving us. We’re sad to see them go, but so excited about the possibilities ahead for them. In honor of this end-of-the-world feeling, and because we have so much good news to share this week, a request: read the following bits of news quickly, and to the tune of REM’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).”

Like the whole rest of the world, we were saddened by the death of Prince this week. Ecotone Sound contributor shirlette ammons wrote this tribute for a Triangle-based Indy publication.

“Uh oh, overflow!”

This week saw the first annual Edith Pearlman Creative Writing Award given at Brookline High School. Congrats to Alma Bitran! And to Edith Pearlman, whose work continues to inspire and change us.

Speaking of Lookout authors, Matthew Neill Null’s forthcoming story collection (from Sarabande) was reviewed by the Rumpus this past week, and they had nice things to say about Honey from the Lion too:  “It has become one of the laziest clichés to claim that the place in which a story is set becomes a character in that story. Works of fiction as great as Matthew Neill Null’s epic evocations of West Virginia deserve better.”

“Feeling pretty psyched.”

Ecotone contributor Melissa Pritchard was awarded the 2016 Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellowship for Writers at the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians in Columbus, Georgia. She’ll be living in Carson McCuller’s childhood home for three months this fall.

Ecotone Sustenance issue contributor Toni Tipton-Marton won a James Beard Award this week for her book The Jemima Code (which was excerpted in our issue).

“Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives, and I decline.”

Guernica did a nice interview with Ecotone issue 19 contributor Paul Lisicky, largely about The Narrow Door (we excerpted that too).

Clare Beams, author of Lookout’s forthcoming book We Show What We Have Learned, has a great Ploughshares blog about the difference between flashy short stories and longer ones that go for the “slow reveal.” Also, here’s a photo of Clare holding a galley of her book. So much greatness in one photo!

“Leonard Bernstein!”

Speaking of Ploughshares, this blog post by Ecotone issue 13 contributor Emilia Phillips about lyric essays, and how she turned to them after she had cancer removed from her face, is so very moving.

Ecotone contributors Christopher Cokinos and Eric MaGrane will be doing a reading and discussion about the Sonoran Desert tonight at Tucson’s Antigone Books.

“You symbiotic, patriotic, slam but neck, right? Right.”

Orion is finishing up its national poetry month feature, curated by Ecotone contributor Aimee Nezhukumatathil–photographs of poetry books in the wild. Here’s Anna Lena’s (Ecotone‘s edtitor).

“Birthday party, cheesecake, jellybean, boom.”

Ecotone contributor Shawn Vestal has a novel coming out called Daredevils. Check out this excerpt from LitHub.

I’ll leave you with this final lyric to ponder: “It’s the end of the world as we know it (It’s time I had some time alone).” Join me back here next week when we’ll start a new world all over with the best news of the week.

We’re going to tackle recognition as the common thread tying together this week’s roundup of Ecotone and Lookout news. Ecotone contributor Jeff Sharlet took some e-mail bait this week and wrote back to a writer demanding an audience for his work, in this powerful and thoughtful essay for LitHub. “We read by hope and hint and free association, because publishing isn’t a meritocracy, it’s a vast, often unjust and always clumsy empire of too many words, including our own,” Jeff says, and ain’t it the truth. Those competing forces–to read, to write, to publish–are often so hard to balance.

In part, it’s why this column exists–to recognize the writers in our family who are getting the publications and awards and attention they so deserve. We like to toot their horns ever-louder. Which isn’t to say that it’s only the writers who win the awards or the grants who deserve our attention–we know that’s not the case, and we love championing work in Ecotone and Lookout from writers just starting out or writers whose voices have had trouble finding the right home for their work. But as Jeff so rightly points out (writing at one point about the incredibly talented Vievee Francis, also an Ecotone contributor)–the writers who succeed write, and often struggle to keep writing. For years, very often, before the publications or awards come, if they come at all. And when the recognition for those persevering writers does come, that’s something worth celebrating.

Today we’re honored to honor writers who are getting, this week, the recognition they’re due after so much hard work. We hope you’ll click through and read something if you’re not familiar with them.

Ecotone contributor Callan Wink’s forthcoming story collection, Dog Run Moon, has gotten some great attention this week in this preview of 2016 story collections from Barnes and Noble. His story, “Off the Track,” was published back in Ecotone 14, and we’re so happy to see Callan’s book coming out these years later–check out the story on our website.

Paul Lisicky’s memoir, The Narrow Door, a story of friendship and art and so many other things, continues to garner praise from various media outlets. To celebrate its release, we’ve made the first chapter, “Volcano,” from our Anniversary issue, available via Ecotone’s site.

Vievee Frances, mentioned in Jeff’s essay, got some other much-deserved attention this week. Her book Forest Primeval is a finalist for the 2016 PEN Open Book Award. You can read one of her poems from the book on Ecotone‘s site here.

You all know what champions we are of Edith Pearlman’s work, having published Binocular Vision in 2011. We’re thrilled to see that her new collection of stories, Honeydew, made the Story Prize long list on Saturday.

The Virginia Festival of the Book, recognizing authors and books for twelve years now,  announced this year’s events, including a panel with Lookout author Matthew Neill Null called “Haunted Souls and Public Hangings.” See the full lineup of panels and activities here.

And the NEA announced its fall Literature Fellows–we’re so proud to see Ecotone contributors Vedran Husic and David Philip Mullins on the list.

Whether you’re feeling recognized or not, whether you’re waiting for some props or writing in a secret quiet space, we hope the reading and writing are bringing you great joy and satisfaction this week. We know it can be hard. Trust us. Keep fighting to say what you need to say, and we hope to see your work soon.

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!

It’s a festival weekend, folks! Though we’re disappointed we won’t be at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, we hope that everyone who is going will stop by John F. Blair’s booth to check out our titles and to meet Matthew Neill Null, or find him on the panel “Whiskey-Bent and Gallows-Bound: Novels of Turn-of-the-Century West Virginia” (what a mouthful!). Speaking of mouthfuls, have some hot chicken for us while you’re there, will you? Maybe one of the many Ecotone contributors in attendance will join you. Keep an eye out for Rick Bragg, Ansel Elkins, Rebecca Gayle Howell, Lauren Groff, Ron Rash, David Shields, Claire Vaye Watkins, and Benjamin Percy. We also highly recommend a stop at Parnassus, where co-owner Ann Patchett is hosting a special welcome for those Friday morning visitors who stop in on their way downtown to the Festival!

Our festival of literary news includes lots of great goings-on this week. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution named Matthew Neill Null’s Honey from the Lion one of twelve best Southern books to read this fall! “Beyond the high-profile returns of veterans like Mary Karr or Mary Gaitskill, the season brings engrossing new work . . . Here’s a peek at 12 of fall’s legends and future MVPs.”

Ecotone contributor Clare Beams has this great post, “Literary Teachers and Their Lessons,” on the Ploughshares blog, and Lauren Groff wrote about her inspiration, Virginia Woolf, in the Atlantic.

We’re excited about two new books by Ecotone contributors. Comic artist Melanie K. Gillman’s Nonbinary is reviewed at Women Write About Comics. And Paul Lisicky’s new memoir coming out from Graywolf, The Narrow Door, got this great review from Kirkus. An excerpt of the book appeared in Ecotone 19, our anniversary issue.

If you’re looking to be an Ecotone contributor, we’re open to submissions again, as of October 1. Why not send us something?

We hope your coming weekend is filled with the festival spirit, in your heart or in your books. Enjoy the festival of falling leaves this weekend too, if your in a place where that happens. Thanks for celebrating with us!

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!