the blog of Ecotone magazine and Lookout Books
“The Junction” by David Means on Recommended Reading
Head over to Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading to read David Means’s “The Junction” in its entirety. This stunning story first appeared in the pages of Ecotone and now has a new home in Astoria to Zion: Twenty-Six Stories of Risk and Abandon from Ecotone’s First Decade.
This week only, use the promo code “recommended” to pick up a copy for just $12: http://www.lookout.org/AstoriatoZion.html.
Fair warning: shameless self-promotion ahead for our two Astoria to Zion launch events in NYC and Boston next week. You won’t want to miss these!
We’ll be at the Center for Fiction in New York on April 7 at 7 p.m., with contributors David Means, Maggie Shipstead, and Douglas Watson, who will read from their terrific stories in the anthology.
The post-reading Q&A will focus on how technology affects writing and literature—and the short story in particular. How important is the concept of place in an age when our physical location is largely irrelevant as long as we’re within cord’s length of a power source and range of Wi-Fi? Are digital resources essential to conduct and organize research? How do Twitter and Facebook influence our thinking and writing processes?
Continue ReadingThis week we’ve got a bevy of interesting articles. Let’s start with two things we love from our Pinterest account: pooches and print. What font is your dog?
Lorem Ipsum is typically used as placeholder text, but this article presents an interesting translation, and suggests several other placeholder options with a sense of humor.
Continue Reading
“As he heaves down through the weeds with a plate in his hand and a smear of jelly on his lips we watch him and stay silent, stay calm, and listen now to that high Middle Western bitterness in his voice as he talks about the pie cherries and the wonderfully flaky crust and the way he found it steaming on the sill, waiting for him as he’d expected. Our bellies are roaring. Not a full meal in days. Just a can of bean yesterday-while we wait out the next train, the Chicago-Detroit most likely, tomorrow around ten. He talks about how the man of the house was inside listening to a radio show, clearly visible through the front parlor window, with a shotgun at his side, the shadow of it poking up alongside his chair. Same son of a bitch who chased me out of there a while back, he explains. ”
Excerpted from “The Junction” from Astoria to Zion: Twenty-Six Stories of Risk and Abandon from Ecotone’s First Decade. Copyright © 2014 by University of North Carolina Wilmington. Used by permission of Lookout Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
