Content Tagged ‘siba’

We’re taking the long view in this week’s Roundup, folks. We hope you’re in for the long haul, because–long story short–we’re going to take a long, hard look at some good news. This post will be filled with long-ing.

Up first? Some long lists! We’re thrilled for Lookout author Matthew Neill Null, whose debut novel, Honey from the Lion, made the long list for the Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize in the “Prince of Tides Literary Prize” category, where he is joined by Ecotone contributors Ron Rash and Karen E. Bender. The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance renamed their book awards this year after Mr. Conroy. Wanda Jewell, SIBA’s Executive Director, said, “We have long wanted a sexier more marketable name for our book awards, and nothing is sexier than Mr. Conroy!” We’re resurrecting a photo of Matt with Mr. Conroy himself–signing over a copy of Honey.

The 2016 Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award long list has also been announced–with a prize of £30,000, it’s the world’s richest prize for a single short story. Lookout author Edith Pearlman made the list for her story “Unbeschert,” and Ecotone and Astoria to Zion contributor Maggie Shipstead did as well, for her story “Backcountry.” They are joined by ten other writers from six different countries.

Ecotone received a nice write-up from Wilmington’s own Star News this week thanks to our inclusion in BuzzFeed’s long list of literary journals that will help you read better. We mentioned that in our last Roundup, but we plan on having a long memory about it.

Indiana Review has a great interview with Ecotone contributor Matthew Gavin Frank who spent fifteen long years inadvertently research his book, The Mad Feast. “I’ve had a lot of strange food-related jobs—ice cream truck driver in Chicago, edible grasshopper trapper in Oaxaca, Mexico, wine cantina floor-mopper in Barolo, Italy.” Matt will have you longing for a copy, and for any word on his new book on pigeons and their role in global diamond smuggling, which he describes as “something like Blood Diamonds bumping-and-grinding with the Audubon Field Guides.”

And last but not least, we hear Ecotone contributor G.C. Waldrep has long-poem-turned-book coming out from BOA Editions called Testament. In defiance of our theme, the reviewer over at the Ploughshares blog says,  “The most concise reference point that occurs to me… is that Waldrep is the closest American poetry comes to Geoffrey Hill, in the music of his language, the range of his erudition, the integrity of his intellect, and the honesty of his doubt.”

That’s the long and short of it this week. Thanks for reading, and we hope to see you next time. In the meantime, so long!

This fall the Lookout team headed to the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Discovery Show to talk up our titles and to highlight our debut novel, Honey from the Lion, to hundreds of smart and enthusiastic bibliophiles. After allowing them first dibs on all the galleys (of course!), we couldn’t help nabbing a few for ourselves. In this special SIBA edition of What We’re Reading, Lookout staff members share the new books that caught their eye.

I’m reading Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, which just came out (October 20) from Harper Perennial. I listen to the podcast and enjoy the part-Lovecraft, part-Scooby Doo, and part-psychological thriller world that they’ve created. Books are easier for me to digest than podcasts, because I’m a visual learner. So I’m excited to see how I interact with Night Vale as a reader rather than as a listener.

—Megan Ellis, MFA candidate and Lookout intern

While wandering the trade show floor, I was able to get my hands on a galley of Girl Through Glass by Sari Wilson, due out in January 2016 from Harper. I met Sari at the AWP conference last spring, so I was thrilled to find her new novel about a young ballerina coming of age in 1970s NYC. Sari was a Provincetown Fine Arts Center fellow, keeping good company with Lookout’s novelist, Matthew Neill Null, who now coordinates the writing program there. “She’s one of ours,” Matt said when he saw me holding the book. Girl Through Glass no doubt marks the beginning of her bright career.

—Bethany Tap, MFA candidate and Lookout intern

I first read about Only the Animals by Ceridwen Dover (FSG) on Kirkus’ list of books that shouldn’t be overlooked this fall, full as it is of new books from literary heavy hitters. The description of the book’s ten stories—each told from an animal’s point of view, during human conflict, spanning the last century, and connected somehow to a writer—was so strange, so audacious, that it rose above the other books on the list and took up lodging in my head. In a lesser writer’s hands, the stories could feel gimmicky, sentimental, overwrought. But the reviews I read said otherwise, and I wanted to see the concept pulled off. When I noticed its stunning cover at SIBA, it absolutely sealed the deal. I wasn’t going home without it.

—Beth Staples, Associate Editor of Lookout Books

In mid-September, Lookout Books and author Matthew Neill Null went to the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) conference, held in Raleigh, NC. There, we had the privilege of meeting and talking to many booksellers from across the South. At the conference, one of our staffers sat down and chatted with Kimberly Daniels Taws, owner of the Country Bookshop in Southern Pines, NC. Earlier in the week, Matthew Neill Null had led a workshop on writing historical fiction at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities as part of his North Carolina tour, and the Country Bookshop sponsored a book signing after the event. We had such a good time meeting Kimberly, hearing about her store, and then taking a trip to see it, so we were grateful to sit down with her again at SIBA to get all of the official details about books, Southern Pines, and quarkbeasts.

The Country Bookshop was founded in 1953, and when Kimberly bought the store in 2010, she resurrected the original logo, which she found in newspaper ads. She also shared with us how successful Honey from the Lion has been at the Country Bookshop, hopping right into the top spot for paperback fiction sales after our visit.

Name a book you bought for its cover.

Dry by Augusten Burroughs. It’s dry, but it’s dripping wet. It’s fabulous, just so well done.

What are some of the qualities that make the Country Bookshop unique?

Probably the town. Southern Pines is a hidden gem of a town. A lot of places try to recreate what our town is organically. It has guitar shop and a cheese shop, a wine shop, a bike shop, a knitting shop, an art gallery, two coffee shops, a great independent theatre, an ice cream shop, tons of women’s dress shops, and a toy shop. There are great restaurants, all within the two blocks of our cute downtown. It’s walkable. And the North Carolina Literary Hall of fame is there in Weymouth.

If you could adopt any fictional animal, which one would you choose and why?

Like a snuffalufagus? I read this book, The Last Dragon Slayer by Jasper Fforde. I needed something different. This girl, she was an orphan and became an indentured slave to this house of wizardry. And she has a quarkbeast. So, a quarkbeast.

What book are you recommending most to customers right now?

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff.

It changes the way you look at things. Like how you and I could be sitting here but we would have totally different experiences. It hammers down on that kind of different experience and it is mind-blowing.

What songs are on your store’s playlist?  

Funny enough I do not regulate the music. It’s based on mood and whoever gets there first. The Pandora stations we are listening to are Jimmy Buffett and Macy Gray. I usually put on Tedeschi Trucks. And jazz. We like to keep it varied.

What do you see as the Country Bookshop’s role in the community?

We are one of the oldest consistent storefronts. So the continuity and the stability as the town has evolved is something greater than the shop. Our goal is really to make our town a literary destination. There are stories: F. Scott Fitzgerald used to come here on the train, and townspeople would have to help him stumble his way up to Weymouth from the station. As locals, we all know those stories, but if somebody is coming through the town, they are not going to know it and they would never see your town as the place where these stories happen. So to make that accessible, I think is one goal and then to advertise our town as this destination is our job.

Lightning Round:

Coffee or tea? coffee

Hard cover or paperback? hardcover. And let me preface that with an autographed first-edition hardcover.

Vowel or consonant? vowel

Highlight or underline? underline

Bookmark or dog-ear? dog-ear. I’ve worked for a long time with older people and their books, and one of my favorite things is how books have been used.

Train or plane? plane

Cake or pie? pie

Mountains or sea? sea

Dog or cat?  dog

It’s been a big book awards week, no? Hearty congratulations to all the authors on the National Book Awards longlists, but especially to Lookout’s debut author Edith Pearlman, of whom we’re forever fans. (A toast to her editor and Lookout’s co-founder, Ben George, as well!) We’re also thrilled to see books by members of our hometown team selected–congrats are in order for Wilmingtonians Karen E. Bender and Michael White. And two Ecotone contributors to boot: Lauren Groff (whose beautiful story “Abundance” appears in our Ecotone anthology, Astoria to Zion) and Patrick Phillips. Hooray, all of you!

Around the net, we saw Camille T. Dungy featured on Poets.org’s Poem-a-Day and Claire Vaye Watkins’s story “Wasteland, Wasteland, Wasteland” as Kenyon Review’s story of the week.

Our debut novelist, Matthew Neill Null (seen here signing a book for beloved author Pat Conroy) has been super busy this week touring all around North and South Carolina–supported by grant funding from South Arts–including visits to the Hawbridge school in Saxapahaw where he faced down 320 elementary and high school students, and the Weymouth Center in Southern Pines where he talked about writing historical fiction. Thanks so much to the bookstores that hosted and supported Matt this week, the best of the best around the Carolinas: Scuppernog, Malaprop’s, Flyleaf, the Country Bookshop, Fiction Addiction, Hub City, and Main Street Books. We’re so grateful to have fantastic and gracious stores to send our writers to.

We’re also thrilled that Kirkus Reviews included Honey from the Lion in Nine Books You Shouldn’t Overlook, and loved to hear Matt over the airwaves on The State of Things. He was a little hoarse, but understandably so after this crazy week.

Matt and staff from Lookout are headed this weekend to the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance trade show in Raleigh, and can’t wait to meet and talk with owners from some of our favorite bookstores in the South. We hope, as ours will be, your weekends are filled with lots of books and scavenger hunts!