Nidhi Ajay of La Femme Absurd, a conversational newsletter, interviewed Managing Editor Kate Gale recently!
Check out the insights that Kate provides about publishing and its past, present, and future, and sign up for the La Femme Absurd newsletter if you enjoyed the conversation!
Deputy Director Tobi Harper and Red Hen author Lily Hoang (Underneath, 2021) were featured and interviewed in this Los Angeles Times article about the future of book publishing during this pandemic!
Many thanks to Dorany Pineda for the interview! Check out the full article below!
The Libertines trial was announced at 8 a.m. Eastern. By the time Jane’s alarm went off at 4 p.m. Pacific, the media was consumed with it. Drivers stranded with Jane on the freeway killed the time by calling in to “Share Your Five O’clock Drive with Clive” and speculating. Who was the defendant? Would the FBI catch the Vanguard in the act this time? As always, what people seemed most interested in was if it would be the last one, the one where the terrorists were finally unmasked, the great mystery of their identities solved. No one ever described the end of the Vanguard as an end to crime or terror.
The Rumpus Book Club chats with Cai Emmons about her new novel, Sinking Islands (Red Hen Press, September 2021), how writing sequel is and isn’t different from writing a standalone novel, the research involved in writing about climate change, and the importance of teaching as a way of changing perspectives.
Indie presses are releasing some of the best LGBTQ books you could ask for.
Words like lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer describe how people fall in love, present their gender, live on the margins, and find creative paths. LGBTQ is a big category, including diverse individuals and all the unique lives they lead. There are a lot of great books that address these topics.
Jeff Alessandrelli-With the Covid-19 pandemic, there have obviously been dozens of books that haven’t received the shine they might have under normal circumstances. One new release that I hope gets all the attention and more is Thea Prieto’s novella From the Caves, winner of the Red Hen Press Novella Award. From the Caves exists in an ethereal place, one indebted to myth but also the very real environmental catastrophe that we are currently immersed in. Prieto’s debut volume is shadowed by fire and darkness, but within that veiling there yet exists hope, a certain hope. Below Prieto discusses the centrality of storytelling to all swathes of humanity and how, after some fits and starts, From the Caves came to be. A highly recommended first book.
Read Prieto’s article here!
‘The south is a living breathing thing in this book. it’s a personality.’
Really excited to have American poet, Khalisa Rae, join me for series two, episode two!
Welcome to The Zibby Awards, a celebration of the often overlooked parts of a book and the team behind it.
See all the nominations here!
Joan Nockels Wilson gives a brief reading of her new memoir, coming out in November, for her MFA Program at University of Alaska.
“Barbara, my childhood piano teacher
played Chopin like he was whispering
into her hands, all us kids from the building
had our Saturday morning lessons, apartment 6C,
our giddy fingers trotting in the key of G,
lifting high for Mozart, metronome ticking
as her coffee brewed, her sandy-haired husband
at the wooden breakfast table,”
Red Hen Press is honored to be included on the Reedsy list of Best Writing Contests of 2021! Reedsy is a leading creative hub for the literary community, and is a fantastic resource for budding writers. Thanks for the acknowledgment, Reedsy!
This is not a spoiler, I promise it isn’t, only just consider for a moment: Say you buy a lottery ticket — have you ever? — say you do, just one time. Say the jackpot is $100 million, and you win! You’re holding a ticket worth a hundred million dollars! What would you do? How would you be? That’s the premise of Buy Me Love, a new novel from Martha Cooley—yes, yes, that Martha Cooley — acclaimed author of two previous works of fiction, The Archivist and Thirty-Three Swoons, and Guesswork, a collection of linked essays, subtitled “A Reckoning With Loss,”which figures in this time, too.
Latin American literature travels frequently in its original form, in translation, and through the presence of writers who don’t stay put. In the U.S., works by Latin American writers make their way to readers mostly in translation. However, there is a growing appreciation for a readership interested in works in Spanish. A new movement is brewing. Its effects can already be seen in the growing number of independent presses dedicated to promoting the work of Latin American writers in the U.S., and in the presence of writers at conferences and readings across the country discussing their work in Spanish.
“Wake up thinking it’s trash day
so I move the cans out to the front
even though it’s pouring. Back in,
make extra strong coffee,
read the story in the paper
about the 400-pound bear they
captured in La Crescenta, he strolled down
the mountain, lured by the scent
of meatballs from Costco,”
On today’s show, we welcome two Oregon-based writers — Suzy Vitello and Cai Emmons — who have published recent novels, speculative fiction, focused on climate change, its effects on the environment and those of us living under these conditions. Suzy’s book FAUTLAND from Portland’s Ooligan Press, and Cai’s book SINKING ISLANDS from Red Hen Press, while not sparing us the devastation caused by climate change, have a common theme of resilience in the face of disaster, and our need for human connection no matter the circumstances.
