In this week’s Roundup, we’ve got some fantastic contributor news, and a bunch of celebrity photos from AWP. By celebrity, of course, I mean our contributors and editors and students–all celebrities to us!
First up is Honey from the Lion author Matthew Neill Null, who won the 2016 Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize, awarded by the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Matt’s getting a fellowship that includes a stipend and a yearlong residency in Rome. Past recipients of the prestigious award include Ralph Ellison, A.R. Ammons, Cormac McCarthy, Anne Sexton, Junot Díaz, Anthony Doerr, Sigrid Nunez, Randall Kenan, and Lorrie Moore, among others–a true celebrity lineup. We’re so happy for Matt!
And here’s Matt looking Rome-bound with our publisher and art director, Emily Louise Smith at the AWP booth.
You might have heard some buzz from us in the past couple weeks about Lookout’s newest author, Clare Beams. We announced her cover a couple of weeks ago, and if you squint in this picture, you can see the galley there on the table. We’re so excited to share her fantastic collection of short stories, We Show What We Have Learned, with you in October.
Before we launch into the full slate of photos, some reading you should check out around the web: Ecotone contributor John Jeremiah Sullivan profiles “Shuffle Along,” one of the first successful all-black musicals, and the painful history of black performance in America. Ecotone contributor Claire Vaye Watkins has an essay up at LitHub about returning to her desert hometown and reflecting on what it means to run away from where you came from. And Lookout author Ben Miller also has an essay up on LitHub about the greatest writers’ group to come out of Davenport, Iowa.
Have I mentioned how much we love our contributors and the students who work on our imprints through UNCW’s MFA program? Man, we do. Here are some photos to help share that love. Behold, AWP booth photos from Lynn Thompson, Jamie Poissant, J.P. Grasser, and Leslie Wheeler.
And here are our staff: running, goofing, overhearing, eating, and partying (thanks to folks at the PEN Center for the party shots!).
We hope your AWP was as filled with inspiration, connection, and celebrity sightings as ours was. We’ll see you next year in DC and back here next week for another Roundup!