Content Tagged ‘honey from the lion’

As the holidays approach, so does the time to curl up with beautiful and necessary books like Honey from the Lion, Matthew Neil Null’s debut novel from Lookout Books. The book, about a rebellion at a logging company in the West Virginia Alleghenies, is both lyrical and suspenseful, an elegy to the ecological devastation and human tragedy behind the Gilded Age.

Our solstice gift to you is an annotated soundscape for the book, expertly produced by folklorist, writer, media producer, and Ecotone contributor Emily Hilliard. Listen to the sounds of crows, trains, and fiddles and imagine yourself right into the world of Honey from the Lion.

0:00 Environmental sounds: Crows, great blue herons, steam trains, crosscut saw, axes.

An overture to situate us in place aurally.

1:22 “On Johnny Mitchell’s Train” by Jerry Byrne, recorded by George Gershon Korson at Buck Run, Pennsylvania, 1946. Song from the 1902 Anthracite miner strike. Via the Library of Congress.

The 1902 strike by the United Mine Workers of America in the anthracite coal fields of eastern Pennsylvania was supported by nearly 80 percent of miners in the area, and it would have been fresh in the minds of the timber companies and loggers represented in Honey from the Lion. The character Judge Randolph is said to have studied the strike, fearing the power of unions: “There’s always a copperhead in the woodpile.”

It was an especially exciting week at Lookout HQ with the launch of Clare Beams’s story collection, We Show What We Have Learned, on Tuesday. The Lookout team has been hard at work on this amazing book for quite some time, and it’s been fun to see it getting the attention it so deserves. Here are a few of the special places you can read more about it.

The story “All the Keys to All the Doors” was featured in Electric Literature‘s Recommended Reading this week, with a fantastic introduction from Megan Mayhew Bergman: “Upon reading her, you make it to the third or fourth paragraph and realize this is not the restrained narrative you expected, that there is a cutting strangeness and profundity afoot.”

Clare got a bunch of love in Pittsburgh, the town she calls home, including this interview in the Pittsburgh City Paper, this review in the Pittsburgh Tribune, and a packed release party at the White Whale Bookstore.

And if you haven’t heard by now, she also got love from O, The Oprah Magazine, where it was featured as one of “10 Titles to Pick Up Now.”

This coming week, Wilmington will host its own special launch party for Clare as part of Writers’ Week on Monday night. To read more about it–and the other fabulous writers coming to Wilmington including Mei Fong, Maurice Manning, and Chinelo Okparanta–check out this article from Encore.

Speaking of hometown love, Wilmington’s Salt Magazine did a fabulous profile on Lookout and Honey from the Lion, saying, “The care and adoration lavished on a Lookout book is obvious…. French flaps, beautiful graphic design, and tailored page layouts are the hallmarks of a book that someone cares about…. At Lookout, each book radiates that level of care.” And Parnassus Books created this roundup of “Small Presses: Little Gems With Big Impact,” calling out Lookout books by Clare Beams, Edith Pearlman, and Matthew Neill Null. (Thanks, you guys!)

There’s good news for other Lookout authors, too! Matthew Neill Null’s novel, Honey from the Lion, has been named a fiction finalist in the 2016 Massachusetts Book Awards from the Massachusetts Center for the Book, and has sold to Albin Michel for publication in France in 2018. Oui oui!

And Ben Miller, author of the memoir River Bend Chronicle, accepted the Cornell College Leadership & Service Award for “contributions to American literature.” Ben’s acceptance speech is funny and inspiring, and we’re so happy for him.

And there are book launches in the world of Ecotone contributors to boot! Melissa Range’s new poetry collection, Scriptorium, hit the shelves this month. Chosen by Tracy K. Smith for the 2015 National Poetry Series, it’s now available from Beacon Press.

Issue 21 contributor Safiya Sinclair’s book of poetry, Cannibal, which came out last month, got a shout out on Lenny: “Her stanzas will revive you and leave you transformed.”

This is the post that nearly launched a thousand books. We hope your reading all the great new literature you can handle–thanks for checking out ours!

Hi, folks! It’s been a little while since we’ve posted a News Roundup. We were busy, we confess, enjoying the last days of summer before school started up again. But now we’re back in the thick of it, and since we have some catching up to do, we’re christening this post the Back to the Future Roundup. With the aid of a literary-minded DeLorean, we’re going to time travel through various points of recent interest.

Let’s begin with Clare Beams, the author of Lookout’s forthcoming story collection, We Show What We Have Learned. One of the stories was featured on Kenyon Review Online, so you can get yourself a taste before October 25 when the book comes out. The whole collection is great, of course, but don’t take our word for it! It was featured on LitHub’s “Great Booksellers Fall 2016 Preview” this very week! And Steph Opitz, the book review editor for Marie Claire, talked it up on a recent episode of The Lit Up Show. “In every story, it feels like something is lurking right around you, but you never really get to it…. It’s creepy and the writing is so beautiful … you feel angry and obsessed and intrigued … I just absolutely loved it.” We suggest listening to the the full podcast, since all the recommended books sound incredible.

Now let’s go way back to June, and knowing that a trip so far back can be traumatic, we present this fascinating interview with Ecotone contributor Adrienne Celt with writer Esmé Weijun Wang on “The Inheritance of Trauma.” Adrienne says, “Because my paternal grandparents lived in Munich (after WWII, Poland was occupied by the USSR, so many loyal nationalists chose to leave, and my grandparents went to Munich to work for Radio Free Europe), I didn’t know them well, and the stories about them always felt distant to me—I wanted to know more.” Which sounds like something Marty McFly might have said about his parents…before he almost made out with his mom.

Also in June, Lookout Author Matthew Neill Null sat in the hot seat with the Millions, to talk some of his favorite writers, West Virginia stories, and–coincidentally?–“living in a world with no future.” Matt also had a new story in the Harvard Review over the summer. The story contains a scene Matt cut from his novel with Lookout, Honey from the Lion, about an elk with a toothsome liver “bigger than a baby.” We’re glad he found a place for that line, in the future.

And we’re thrilled for fellow Lookout author Ben Miller, who received a research grant from the Schlesinger Library that will send him back to the future (or Harvard) in 2017.

We’re thrilled for Matt, who accepted the Joseph Brodsky Rome prize at a ceremony in NYC last week. The American Academy in Rome awarded prizes to thirty-one winners this year in fields including literature, architecture, and design. The winners receive a six- to eleven- month residency at the academy, located in a 17th-century villa in the heart of Rome. Below are photos from the program, including Matt’s lovely citation. “Matthew Neill Null has set himself the heroic task of describing the earth’s fallen beauty by chronicling his native West Virginia. The task is Faulknerian but he has the back for it…”

Huge congrats to Matt. See the other winners here.

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!

The 2016 Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference (AWP) is coming up fast, and Lookout Books, Ecotone, Chautauqua, and the UNCW MFA program are gearing up to celebrate books and writing in sunny California. For those of you who will be joining us in Los Angeles, we’ve got a fun contest to promote Lookout’s debut novel, Honey from the Lion, by Matthew Neill Null. In this lyrical and suspenseful novel, a turn-of-the-century logging company decimates ten thousand acres of virgin forest in the West Virginia Alleghenies—and transforms a brotherhood of timber wolves into revolutionaries.

Enter to win the entire Lookout Books catalog, including a signed copy of Honey from the Lion, and a swag bag! The contest is simple. Hop on Instagram, find the historical photo below in our feed @lookoutbooksuncw, and caption it by commenting on it.

This photo, along with others from Roy B. Clarkson’s Tumult on the Mountains—a history of lumbering in West Virginia—inspired Null’s novel and our staff in creating a series of digital broadsides you can see here. We hope this photograph will inspire your captions too.

The Rules

• Follow Lookout Books on Instagram @lookoutbooksuncw.
• Comment on the photo with your best caption.
• Stop by book fair tables 919/921 at 10:45 on Friday, April 1, before Matthew Neill Null’s 11 a.m. signing, for the announcement of the winning captions.

The Prize

One grand prize winner, chosen by Null, will receive the Lookout Books catalog, including a signed copy of Honey from the Lion, bookmarks, bumper stickers, and more. Three runners up will receive a Lookout title of their choice.

Matthew Neill Null’s Honey from the Lion was published in September, and his story collection, Alleghany Front, is forthcoming from Sarabande Books in May. Null will be signing Honey from the Lion at the UNCW, Lookout, and Ecotone tables on Friday, April 1, from 11 to 12, and we can’t wait to see you—and your captions—there.

This week we’re rounding up the Ecotone and Lookout haps (that’s California-style talk for “events”) at next week’s AWP conference in L.A. We, like, totally hope you’ll come see us at tables 919 and 921 in the bookfair!

Stay tuned to the blog this week for details about promotions we’ll be running, including a caption contest related to Honey from the Lion (the winner will receive the ENTIRE Lookout catalog!) and how using #overheardatawp in honor of Ecotone‘s sound issue can score you some schwag.

Speaking of Honey from the Lion, you’ll find author Matthew Neill Null signing books twice in the bookfair: on Thursday at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center table (1254) from 10 to 11, and at our table (919) on Friday from 11 to 12. Come get a book signed!

And if you’re up for a party, please come have a drink and a chat with us on Thursday from 5:30-7:30 as we mingle with our friends at the Common, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Young Literati of The Library Foundation of Los Angeles, and Santa Monica Review. 

Here’s what some of our other friends are up to:

This panel features a nice taste of the two “great Jamies” of our Anniversary issue :
The New South: A Reading in Three Genres. (Devin Latham,  Dr. David Jamie Poissant,  Adam Vines,  Carrie Jerrell,  Jamie Quatro) With Faulkner’s South paved into history, what defines Southern literature today? Do contemporary Southern writers still make use of old tropes like familial loyalty, racial tension, and heavy religion set in a humid landscape of live oaks and wisteria? Does the urban and suburban South require new settings and themes? This reading features five Southern writers reading fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that illuminates and redefines Southern literature today. Thurs at 9 am: Room 406 AB, LA Convention Center, Meeting Room Level

Here’s a place-based and co-starring issue 20 contributor Toni Jensen:
Rewriting the Iconic West: Native and Latino Writers on Crafting Change. (Toni Jensen,  Stephen Graham Jones,  Tim Hernandez,  Erika Wurth,  Ito Romo) From the cowboy on horseback to the detective on the dark city streets, the fictional icons of the West loom both familiar and large. Their stories have the ease of familiarity, but what if the stories you want to tell shift the vantage point? What if your hero is the one shot by the cowboy, the man turning the corner to avoid the detective? A diverse set of writers discusses strategies for telling the West’s iconic stories through a wide range of viewpoints and in diverse cultural contexts. Thurs. at 10:30: Room 402 AB, LA Convention Center, Meeting Room Level

Another place-based panel, this one featuring Ecotone all-star Alison Deming and one-time contributor, the legendary Mark Doty:
The Tattooed Desert: A Tribute to and Reading from Richard Shelton, Hosted by the University of Arizona Poetry Center. (Alison Deming,  Mark Doty,  Ken Lamberton,  Naomi Shihab Nye,  Richard Shelton) This panel/reading celebrates the life of poet, writer, teacher, and literary citizen Richard Shelton. Shelton’s 12 collections of poetry include The Tattooed Desert, Selected Poems: 1969–1981, and The Last Person to Hear Your Voice. A critical influence in the 20th-century American literary landscape and a quintessential voice of the American Southwest, Shelton’s work as an educator perseveres, particularly in the Arizona prison-writing program he launched in 1974 that continues today. Thurs. at 10:30: Room 502 B, LA Convention Center, Meeting Room Level

This one has Ecotone‘s editor Anna Lena and contributor Annie Finch:
From Tetrameter to Terza Rima: Prosody as a Catalyst for Discovery in the Workshop. (Anna Lena Phillips,  Kim Addonizio,  Annie Finch,  Timothy Steele) Formal poetics can enliven workshops and offer students access to a rich set of traditions, replete with potential for new work. As teachers and authors of guides to poetic craft, the panelists have introduced students to formal prosody in college courses and in community settings. How can craft guides be used to encourage experimentation with meter, fixed forms, and procedural work? Their titles offer a wide range of strategies; they will discuss these as well as other possibilities. Thurs at 1:30: Room 409 AB, LA Convention Center, Meeting Room Level

This one has Ecotone contributor Camille Dungy:
Genre-Crossing and Poetic Truth: Lyric Nonfictions, Reported Poems. (Tess Taylor ,  Camille Dungy ,  Robert Polito,  Tom Sleigh,  Brian Turner ) This panel examines the places where genres collide and inform one another. What happens when the poet takes up the memoirist’s work, the reporter’s notebook, the essayist’s pen? What do poets learn about poetry by pushing its boundaries? By what means does documentary poetry emerge, and what can poets teach documentarians? Five skilled practitioners of both poetry and nonfiction explore the productive sites where genres overlap. Thurs. at 3: Room 518, LA Convention Center, Meeting Room Level

So, no contributors here, but this one’s right up our alley!:
The New Nature Writing. (Sarah Gilman,  Meera Subramanian,  Christine Woodside,  Elizabeth Rush,  Laura Pritchett) What is the impact of climate change on contemporary literature and creative nonfiction in particular? How do you write creatively about climate change? And how can we engage new audiences about a deeply polemic issue? Through a sustained discussion of craft, best practices, and theory, this panel explores the ways in which climate change has destabilized and redefined our literary interaction with nature. Thurs. at 3: Gold Salon 4, JW Marriott LA, 1st Floor

We’ve got a hat trick in this one! Ansel, Rebecca, and David are all Ecotone contributors:
The Music Issue: Poetry’s Root Influence (Hosted by the Oxford American). (Ansel Elkins ,  Ada Limon,  Don Share,  Rebecca Gayle Howell,  David Kirby) Roots music represents a diversity of styles ranging from Tejano to gospel to blues and beyond—sound work from the crossroads of place, family, and culture. Poetry, too, has an Americana tradition, a divergent verse that sings the multitudes of our fly-over selves. The Oxford American presents a conversation about musical influence that moves through the global into the local and returns us to the origins of poetry: the beat, the breath. Friday at 9: Room 502 B, LA Convention Center, Meeting Room Level

This panel features folks from UNCW’s graduate program–Jamie Mortara, former Lookout intern, and Corinne Manning, former Pub Lab staff:
Reimagining Literary Spaces. Maisha Z. Johnson (Black Girl Dangerous, Silk Road,various), Jayy Dodd (The Offing), Zinzi Clemmons (Apogee Journal), Jamie J. Mortara (Voicemail Poems), Nancy Jooyoun Kim (various, The James Franco Review)Literary journals must go beyond stating a commitment to inclusivity and diversity. To change the literary landscape and make public more work by POC, LGBTQ, women,working class and differently abled communities, journals must reimagine the traditional structure of submissions or even the role of literary spaces. Editors will share their experience of how they re-visioned journals or differently approached the editing process Friday at 1:30, Gold Salon 2 in the Marriott on the 1st Floor

Two Ecotone contributors in this remembrance:
Remembering Claudia Emerson. (Emilia Phillips,  Jill McCorkle,  Alan Shapiro,  Kathleen Graber) Claudia Emerson’s death in late 2014 grieved her friends and her readers. This event features panelists remembering her spirit and her work and inviting audience members to participate by also reading her poems so that her single voice resonates through a chorus of witnesses. The panelists focus on her posthumous books, The Opposite House and The Impossible Bottle. Friday at 1:30: Room 403 B, LA Convention Center, Meeting Room Level

This one place-based AND stars two Ecotone contributors:
The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide. (Christopher Cokinos,  Eric Magrane) More than 50 writers respond to the stunning biodiversity of one of the world’s most important deserts. From serious to comic, postmodern to narrative, this community produced an anthology as varied as the desert itself. Editors and contributors will do brief readings, followed by a discussion of the processes behind creating a unique book that combines, for the first time, anthologizing creative work with (playful) natural history descriptions and illustrations found in traditional field guide. Saturday at noon: Robert Muroff Bookfair Stage, LA Convention Center, Exhibit Hall Level One

We hope to see you at one of these events or at the bookfair table or totally soaking in some sun waiting in line outside of a taco truck. Travel safe to L.A.!

This is our first Roundup post of the new year, so we thought we’d focus on beginnings today. Hopefully your 2016 is off to a fantastic, resolution-killing start! Here’s what some Lookout authors have been up to this year.

Matthew Neill Null, Lookout’s debut novelist, has another new book forthcoming this year. His story collection, Allegheny Front (from Sarabande Books), made The Millions’ list of most anticipated 2016 books, and it included a mention of Honey from the Lion to boot. Matt also recently had a piece on the Paris Review daily about the novels of Henry de Motherlant. Though out of fashion now, Matt argues that they’re the perfect books for our confused age. If you’re looking to begin again with something tried-and-true in 2016, this may be the place to start.

Steve Almond has just been named the Jack Kerouac Writer-in-Residence at UMass Lowell for 2016. Steve says, “I love more than anything the chance to spread the gospel of literature on a campus with such a rich tradition.” Those students are lucky to have him this year.

Clare Beams, Lookout’s newest family member (more on that soon!), puts 2016 in perspective with a look at some literary beginnings on the Ploughshares blog. About the new year Clare says, “The newness it represents feels invisible to me, no matter the countdowns and music and noisemakers piled on it—a threshold in the air, a line that’s there because we say it is. I’m always so aware of being my same old self, beneath the party hat, behind the confetti.” But the six novel beginnings she looks at are ones you can really get behind.

Here’s to all sorts of new beginnings in the year ahead, literary and otherwise. We hope your week is filled with all the newness, novelty, and fresh starts you’re up for.

Honey from the Lion tours the land from whence it came this week! If you’re in the great state of West Virginia, consider joining Matt at any of the following events. Full details are on his website.

3 p.m., Sunday, January 17, 2016, HUNTINGTON, WV, Empire Books & News

6 p.m., Monday, January 18, 2016, CHARLESTON, WV, Kanawha County Public Library

noon, Tuesday, January 19, 2016, WHEELING, WV, Lunch with Books, Ohio County Public Library

6 p.m., Tuesday, January 19, 2016, MORGANTOWN, WV, Black Bear Reading Series

Happy holidays from the North Carolina coast, where we’re enjoying the climatic ecotone that is a long Southern autumn (and fretting about climate change). We can’t wait to share the second issue of our Ecotone’s tenth-anniversary year—our first ever to focus on sound. It will include new fiction from Toni Jensen and Brian Doyle, among others, and an essay on earthquake and glacier sounds from longtime Ecotone contributor Kate Miles. There are several special features—including a set of found photographs of musicians from the past century, curated by Sarah Bryan, and an essay on the revitalization of letterpress printing in Cherokee.

We’re also showcasing three Southern musicians talking about their favorite songs—bluegrass pioneer Alice Gerrard; songster and banjo player Dom Flemons, formerly of the Carolina Chocolate Drops; and poet and SugarQube Records founder Shirlette Ammons. There’s an essay about Detroit’s decline and opera music; a story that transports the reader to a grand home in Pakistan; and a sweet poem based on a popular children’s app. And we’ve lined up lots more stellar poetry: from Katy Didden, Sandra McPherson, and many more, with everything from poems about music to poems that engage with the music of meter and form.

Like the sound of this issue? If you subscribe or renew by December 15, you’ll be sure to get it! You’ll receive two issues, a full year, of Ecotone for $16.95—or two years for $29.95. If you’d like to give Ecotone as a gift (and it’s a great one, not that we’re biased), between now and the new year you can get a subscription for yourself and one for a friend, all for $25.

And one last possibility: you can subscribe to Ecotone and receive the new novel from Lookout Books, Matthew Neill Null’s Honey from the Lion, for $25. Read what Jayne Anne Phillips has called “one of the most assured debuts of the year”—or share it with a friend. If you order by December 15, your subscription will begin with the Sound issue, and we’ll send the book out before the holidays.

Best wishes from all of us at Ecotone. Hope you get to read lots this winter!