Content Tagged ‘Rick Bass’

Friends, spring is springing here in coastal Carolina, and along with it: Ecotone and Lookout writers are in full bloom, sprouting up all over the internet with fabulous projects, opening their leafy arms for literary embraces. Are we getting carried away with this metaphor? See what they’re up to and I think you’ll agree that it should have gone on much longer.

Before we start, we’d like to share some pictures of Ecotone and Lookout in the wild, to add some spring color to this post. Look! It’s Ecotone poetry editor Stephanie Trott, who found a rare Issue 3 at Powell’s Books in Portland. And, farther down, Matthew Neill Null finds himself in some great company at Housing Works Bookstore in NYC.

Okay, first up, Ecotone contributor Rick Bass has a new story collection out. Here he is talking about the art of the short story on NPR. And Smith Henderson reviews the collection for the NYTBR here, saying, “One long proposal of chemical magic, the fantastic origin of the very color blue, and Bass has situated us at the intersection of science and another kind of terrestrial alchemy.”

Speaking of magic, Ecotone contributor and soon-to-be Lookout author (more on that very soon!) Clare Beams is talking about magic over on the Ploughshares blog. “I turned some kind of corner as a writer when I started letting inexplicable things happen in my fiction,” she says. And we can’t wait to show you exactly what she means!

Speaking of inexplicable things, if you’re up for hearing about “Haunted Souls and Public Hangings”–and we hope you are–join Lookout author Matthew Neill Null at the Virginia Festival of the Book this weekend. He’s giving a talk with Glenn Taylor at the New Dominion Bookshop in Charlottesville (404 E. Main Street) at 12 p.m., Saturday, March 19.

Speaking of Main Street, are everyday problems getting you down? Do you need some hilarious, practical, and sensitive advice? You’ve probably heard Lookout author Steve Almond on the Dear Sugar podcast with Cheryl Strayed, but you might not know that he does a regular advice column for Cognoscenti called “Heavy Meddle,” where he tackles all sorts of advice from “My In-Laws Are On The Warpath Over Our Baby’s Name” to “It’s Been 2 Years Since My Wedding and I Still Haven’t Sent ‘Thank You’ Cards” to “I Don’t Know How to Live Without My Dying Cat.” Sad, surreal, and totally helpful.

Speaking of music (I’m referring, ahem, to the “heavy metal” inference above), Ecotone contributor Dom Flemons has a fantastic piece about Thomas A. Dorsey, the inventor of modern gospel music, in the Oxford American. “He wrote songs like a bluesman because he was a bluesman. And he taught choirs to sing that way: calling to God, guided by the musical structure of the blues.”

Speaking of public transportation (okay, we weren’t, but grant me one rough transition, okay?) Ecotone contributor Brock Clarke has a great story online at the Kenyon Review called “The Bus.” It’s a wild and totally entertaining ride!

And last but not least, and bringing it back to spring flowers!: The winner of the 2016 Rose Post Creative Nonfiction contest has been announced! Karen Smith Linehan won for her essay “Magnolia grandiflora.” Final judge Kate Sweeney says of the essay, “There is a sense here that every phrase and every word is chosen with great intent, and taken together, the work conveys the magnitude of this tree in a voice that is, like the tree itself, both quiet and commanding.” The contest is hosted by the North Carolina Writers’ Network and administered by UNCW’s creative writing department. She’ll receive a $1,000 prize. We can’t wait to read it–congrats, Karen!

We hope your week is filled with growing things both tangible and not. Enjoy the coming spring, and we’ll see you at the next Roundup!

design by Lookout intern Justin Klose

Before relocating to North Carolina for graduate school this past summer, I lived for eight years in New York City. The city offered some of the world’s finest food and culture—four-star meals at Daniel, La Traviata at the Metropolitan Opera House—but the one thing not readily accessible was natural beauty, though I tried hard to seek it out. My go-to spot was a small, nondescript bench at the peak of Fort Tryon Park, one of Manhattan’s highest points, where I could see the Hudson River laid plain. But as anybody in New York can tell you, nothing in the Big Apple comes easy, and enjoying the view was no exception. There were all manner of distractions to contend with: the endless noise of buses and trucks rumbling along the Henry Hudson Parkway a hundred feet below, the bleating of car horns, the smog roiling up from factory furnaces on the other side of the river bank. And yet if I sat there long enough, eventually the world would grow quiet, and I’d notice the elm tree branches overhead perfectly framing my view of the river.

“The Blue Tree” by Rick Bass in Lookout’s recent anthology Astoria to Zion: Twenty-Six Stories of Risk and Abandon asks how we hold just such a moment. In it, the main character, Wilson, struggles in nature as much as he enjoys it, and grapples with the impermanence of youth. The story begins with him, his wife, Belinda, and their two daughters, arriving at their cabin in the woods the day before Christmas Eve. Tradition dictates that Wilson cut their tree that night; he wants everything—as in years past—in place for a restful Christmas Eve. Against Belinda’s better judgment, Wilson packs his daughters in the Subaru and heads north in the falling snow, deeper into the forest, where the best trees can be found. They get stuck, of course, just as his wife had predicted.

Even though we’re now several weeks removed from AWP, I find myself mentioning Rick Bass and Stellarondo to anyone who will listen. Don’t get me wrong—I went to several inspiring panels, including A Shapeless Flame: The Nature of Poetry and Desire, and I especially enjoyed The Sun’s fortieth anniversary reading. But Rick Bass and Stellarondo presented something wholly different.

image from prx.org

Because this was my first time experiencing AWP, and in an effort to narrow my choices, I gave myself the task of attempting to visit panels and readings of writers included in Lookout’s new anthology, Astoria to Zion: Twenty-Six Stories of Risk and Abandon from Ecotone’s First Decade. I hoped this mission might help me more easily navigate the conference of 550 events and more than 2,000 presenters.

Which explains how I ended up sitting on the front row for this amazing collaboration of literature and music. I was introduced to the project when gathering items for Lookout’s weekly Lit News Roundup, and I had to hear it for myself.

We’re back at it, and there’s plenty of author news to share this week.

Steve Almond helped heat up Valentine’s Day weekend along with authors John Papernick and Lana Fox at Harvard Book Store’s 50 Shades of Night: A Night of Erotica to Make You Blush.

Andrew Tonkovichdiscusses Mormonist Lit and Scientology, and gives a shout out to fellow Ecotone contributor Shawn Vestal’s short story “Winter Elders.”

A few rare snow days in Wilmington allowed us to catch up on reading this week. We’re back at it today, though, and it’s time to follow that author.

• Aspen Times Weekly reviewed Brad Watson’s story collection Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives. “As all great writing should do, this series evokes a certain empathy for each of his characters and reminds us all that there is much more occurring underneath the surface with any one person than might be evident.”

In an attempt to keep track of Lookout’s first four prolific authors—Edith Pearlman, Steve Almond, John Rybicki, and Ben Miller—as well as the contributors to Astoria to Zion: Twenty-Six Stories of Risk and Abandon from Ecotone’s First Decade, we’re beginning a new weekly roundup department, featuring author news. We at Lookout and Ecotone are awfully proud of our growing family, and we hope you’ll show these authors some love by clicking through. Enjoy our first roundup.

• Karen E. Bender writes “The Emotional Power of Verbs” for the New York Times.
• The Express Tribune’s Nuzhat Saadia Siddiqi praises Maggie Shipstead’s book Seating Arrangements, saying that “the book under review steers so far away from the average chick lit bestseller that you’ll be left with a grin on your face and satisfaction over time well spent.
• Steve Almond offers advice to readers on Cognoscenti’s Heavy Meddle blog.
• Aspen Public Radio featured Ben Fountain and Rick Bass in their weekly show, First Draft, which “highlights the voices of writers as they discuss their work, their craft and the literary arts.”

Though the Astoria to Zion release date isn’t until March, we thought we’d get in the giving spirit a little early. What better way to introduce readers to the best of Ecotone than a taste from each story? Every Monday over the next several months, we’ll post the first paragraph from a featured story in the collection. So look for the series every Monday and be sure to check our blog for additional updates.

From “The Blue Tree” by Rick Bass

“It’s the afternoon of the day before Christmas Eve, and still there is no tree. Somehow this week has just slipped away. It’s taken them forever to get packed and ready for the trip to their cabin in the woods, but finally Wilson has issued the proclamation to his wife and daughters that it’s time to relax and start enjoying the holidays, damn it. After twenty years, he’s lost his job as a road-construction engineer, and though he knows, intellectually, that he’s foolish to be brooding on it at a time of year when his priorities should be reordered, he can’t help it, he’s still a little tense. Belinda’s not working, she’s been focusing on being at home as much as possible while their girls, Stephanie and Lucy, are young. Wilson never thought he would be out of work. He thought work always existed, like air. You breathed, you worked.”

—Rick Bass

Excerpted from “The Blue Tree” 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.