Content Tagged ‘John Rybicki’

Happy Halloween! For this week’s Roundup, we’ve compiled all the spookiest literary news in honor of this sugar-filled holiday, as well as an introduction to Lookout’s next author, Matthew Neill Null!

Still undecided on your costume for tonight? Be inspired by this infographic courtesy of Electric Literature. (Although, come to think of it, Sontag’s teddy bear suit might prove a little difficult to pull off at the last minute.)

Handing out candy to the tykes? The Washington Post’s Joe Heim revisits an interview with Lookout author Steve Almond about this book Candyfreak—“a must-have hymnal for anyone who worships confection in all its forms”—and finds out what your go-to candy really says about your personality. The results are more frightening than you think!

The folks over at Uproxx suggest ditching the candy entirely and handing out comic books instead. May we suggest books for every holiday?

No one writes love poems like the incomparable poet John Rybicki, author of When All the World Is Old. Today only, we’re offering John’s collection for $10. Just enter LOVE as the promotional code on the payment methods screen.

Why Everything Is a Poem

There’s my ashen girl in the stands
with a scarf over her soft to steel-wool head.
She’s there like some buoy next to a friend
she calls sister, who has been riding
a separate current now for years.

It has been too much for too long and we know it
is time to take hold of the lightning and let it kill her,
or fill her—doctor or angel or nurse—
like some new balloon and set her glancing
across the rooftops with her dancing slippers.

Lookout is proud to announce that poet and Lookout author John Rybicki will be heading out on a North Carolina tour this coming week. The tour, made possible with generous support from the North Carolina Arts Council, will include stops at oncology centers, a library, and a bookstore.

Planning this tour for John has been such a pleasure, and we are so excited about creating some new platforms for him to read his incredible work and to share his powerful messages of grief, hope, and healing.

(For the full tour details, including venue addresses, please go to http://www.lookout.org/Rybickireadings.html.)

Above: Tour kits sent to reading venues

On the evening of Sunday, April 7, John will be a guest on “That Cancer Show,” which airs from 8 – 9 p.m. on WPTF 680 AM in Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill and WSJS 600 AM in the Greensboro-Winston Salem-High Point area. You can listen to the program on the “That Cancer Show” website: http://www.cancersupport4u.org/that-cancer-showtrade.html. “That Cancer Show” is a program from Cornucopia Cancer Support Center in Durham.

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Lookout Books is getting excited about AWP. We hope you’ll stop by our table at the Bookfair, and that you’ll attend The Debut Voices of Lookout Books, which is happening this Friday at 1:30 p.m. This reading will be the first time all four Lookout authors are in the same place, and the event will be followed by a book-signing at our Bookfair table. You’ll be able to grab signed copies of all our Lookout titles. We’re also excited about unveiling the limited edition chapbook that we printed in-house to commemorate the Debut Voices event.

We did a blog post about creating glyphs for the chapbook (read it here). Now we’re going to share how we designed the interior of the chapbook, which features complete stories from our three prose authors’ Lookout titles and two poems from our Lookout poet . Here’s a look into the process of designing and printing the book:

As the interior designer, I met with the interns doing cover design and together we decided on a trim size of 6” x 6”. Then I got to work on designing a page layout, asking for feedback as we worked.

1. An early version, with handwritten feedback. We needed to feature the author name more prominently, to group the name and title differently, and to give the text more room to breathe with some larger margins.

To celebrate all our authors reading together for the firs time, we’ve been working on a limited edition booklet to feature work from the four Lookout authors, called Debut Voices of Lookout Books. (Come see them, Friday 1:30PM and then to the book signing after at table A6/A7.) We wanted to design a unique glyph to represent a component of each author’s work and would be used on the covers and interiors of the chapbook.

We read the stories and poems and picked elements from each that spoke to us. Then we studied images of each element, and, using the pen tool in Photoshop, recreated their lines and curves, filling them in with the tone and emotion of the stories. Here is what we came up with.

New drafts of the covers for the limited-edition Debut Voices of Lookout Books, featuring the writing of all four Lookout authors. Come check out the final product at AWP!

from When All the World is Old, from Lookout Books

Type treatment by Eric Tran, Lookout intern

Write them a beautiful line, like John Rybicki. (Hey, it won’t cost you anything!)

(Type treatment by Lookout intern Eric Tran)