It’s hard to believe that just two weeks ago we were celebrating Writers’ Week and helping our sister magazine, Ecotone, launch the fall Sustenance issue with a farm-to-table supper in partnership with Feast Down East. The delicious meal was served under a full moon and glowing lights in the Kenan Hall courtyard. Thanks again to contributors Alison Hawthorne Deming and Randall Kenan, as well as Leslie Hossfeld and Stefan Hartmann of Black River Organic Farm, for speaking. If you missed it, you can enjoy a taste of the evening in this album, courtesy of UNCW’s Will Page.
The new Sustenance issue of Ecotone is now on newsstands and available via the website, but don’t forget to pick a copy of the Spring/Summer 2014 issue, featuring a story by Lookout’s next author, Matthew Neill Null, while you’re at it.
Can’t seem to find your computer’s mouse to order a book? You might be in good company with the owners of these messy desks. Our distributor, John F. Blair, is hosting a messiest desk contest to honor the company’s founder, who had the most cluttered desk of them all. Head to their Facebook page to vote.
Speaking of contests, the National Book Foundation announced its 2014 awards this week. Congrats to all of the winners!
In Lookout news, author of River Bend Chronicle and Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study fellow, Ben Miller, read from his manuscript in progress this week. You can find a recent essay in New England Review.
Astoria to Zion and Ecotone contributor Ron Rash has a new collection out, Something Rich and Strange, which compiles thirty of his finest stories from previous collections.
Brock Clarke, who recently visited UNCW for Writers’ Week, penned a humorous op-ed titled “Do it For Utica” for the New York Times, which urges, “Citizens of Utica, of Watertown, of Glens Falls, of Solvay, of Hornell, please contact Spies Travel immediately. Tell them you’ve had enough of upstate New York. Tell them you can’t take another winter. Tell them that you’ll have sex in Denmark, or Paris or Rome. Tell them they can have you and your children, forever.” (But it sounds like some people didn’t get the joke.)
Brad Watson’s haunting story “Eykelboom” appears in this week’s New Yorker along with an accompanying interview.
Last but not least, Edith Pearlman’s forthcoming collection Honeydew continues to garner advance praise, this week with a starred review from Publishers Weekly: “Pearlman offers this affecting collection that periscopes into small lives, expanding them with stunning subtlety.” If you don’t know her work, get a head start with Binocular Vision, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Honeydew comes out in January.
May your weekend be warmed with good literature!