Yes! I often Frankenstein stories, in part due to my inefficient drafting method. I tend to write and write and write and follow tangents without worrying too much about characters or plot. When I’ve written all I can, I organize what I have and see what emerges. That’s how I end up with big chunks of story that don’t fit together but function as independent pieces. The story “Beware the Undertoad” was originally part of a novel I’ve been struggling to write for about 10 years that shuttles between a character’s past and present until the past begins to intrude upon the present in unsettling and damaging ways….
News & Review Type: News
SmokeLong Quarterly hosted an interview with Lara Ehrlich!
HIGH SKIES author Tracy Daugherty at the Portland Book Festival!
Corvallis-based writer Tracy Daugherty shares a selection from his new novella, High Skies, in this reading filmed at the Portland Art Museum.
Catch this reading on Literary Arts’ Instagram Stories on November 19th, or stream it anytime at PDXBookFest.org.
Lit Hub has added Lara Ehrlich’s Animal Wife to a list of most notable short story collections this year!
“My mother said girls have to take care of themselves. That’s how we avoid turning into sea foam and falling down wells. That’s how we escape hunters and kings who chop and carve and snip and steal.” These sentences, coming in the middle of the first story of Lara Ehrlich’s stunning debut collection Animal Wife, set the tone for what is to follow, as her characters assert their agency under oppressive conditions and in a world that is often fantastical. These stories, and Ehrlich, are remarkable, and the collection is a standout in a season full of amazing new releases. –Corinne Segal, Lit Hub senior editor
Chelsea Catherine featured in a local website for her opinion on Queer Lit!
There’s nothing quite like witness the emergence of cicadas from their 17-year slumber. Of course it’s rather the noise you won’t soon forget. My senior year of high school cicadas emerged in CT and their cacophonous buzzing felt like a fitting farewell ahead of my move to Florida. A new novel from St. Petersburg resident Chelsea Catherine will bring the elusive insects to shelves in the Sunshine City, and across the country.
Summer of the Cicadas is about a West Virginian town where a brood of Magicicadas emerges for the first time in seventeen years. The cicadas damage crops and trees and swarm locals. Jessica, a former cop whose entire family was killed in a car crash two years earlier, is deputized during the crisis.
Deborah A. Lott featured in Southern California News Group’s “Lit Up”
Deborah A. Lott, author of DON’T GO CRAZY WITHOUT ME was featured in Southern California News Group’s “Lit Up: your guide to books, writers and the literary life of SoCal.” This premium books supplement ran in 11 different newspapers across Southern California this past summer!
Interview Q&A with Kristen Millares Young in VOL. 1 Brooklyn
You evoke the landscape of Neah Bay incredibly well here; I’ve never been, but I felt a tactile sense of the place. How did you first become familiar with it?
Fifteen years ago, I began driving out to Neah Bay, which is just over four hours west of where I live. Like Claudia, I often took the ferry for the sheer beauty of being on a boat, but most Makah tribal members prefer to “drive around” as they call it; after leaving Neah Bay on 112 and taking a left on 101 just west of Port Angeles, they follow that highway eastward before heading south near Dabob Bay, the lower 48’s only fjord, carved by a glacier along whose belly coursed an ancient river whose length became the Hood Canal. But I digress.
Mary Odden (Mostly Water) is featured in Alaska Magazine this month!
Boreal Books / Red Hen author, Mary Odden (Mostly Water: Reflections Rural and North, June 2020) is featured in the November 2020 issue of
Alaska Magazine. Her article, “Once More to the Woodpile,” is a meditation on firewood, wildfires, and life in a changing northern forest.
Here is a sneak peek.
Kristen Millares Young article in The Rumpus!
As editor of SEISMIC:Seattle, City of Literature, I asked artists and storytellers to reflect on what it means for Seattle to be a City of Literature. While celebrating Seattle’s inclusion in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, this collection is not a commemoration. It is a call to action. How can literary culture influence social change? SEISMIC is a living portrait of a city we love too much to lose.
If I had to tell you why Seattle is a literary city, I would say it is because I was able to become myself here. I learned how to inhabit my mind in this place. To hold space for your own story can be a revolutionary act. This moment—stewarding truths that need to be told and retold—is the culmination of my literary life.
Virtual Book Launch/Reading with Ellen Meeropol Dec. 3rd!
Join Writers in Progress on December 3rd for a Virtual reading + book launch with three authors, including one Red Hen author Ellen Meeropol!
“Ellen Meeropol gorgeous novel is a must read…” an exclusive interview with Ellen Meeropol!
“even if I’m still skeptical that the 1960s qualify as historical fiction! A story of sibling love and tensions set against a backdrop of protests of the Vietnam war.”
Listen to the rest of the interview here!
Keith Flynn featured on Poetry at the Dalí
Join us on YouTube for this special streaming installment of our Poetry at The Dalí series.
Poetry at The Dalí is an ongoing series hosted by St. Petersburg Poet Laureate, Helen Wallace. Occurring on the second Thursday of each month through May 2020, each evening will feature Wallace joined by selected poets. Following the presentation, there will be an audience Q&A.
Watch the video here!
Another Podcast features Jen Risher this week about her book! Recap the Whole Women Power Wealth Show Pod
Listen to Jennifer Risher talk about wealth and her book in the Lindsay Simond’s Consulting Podcast!
When it comes to money-related issues, mum’s the word. Talking about wealth right now couldn’t be more charged. Did you know that 8 out of 10 people who are wealthy grew up in middle class or poor neighborhoods?! I didn’t. Have you ever felt bad for the rich? I have. Why? They are human just like everyone else!
There’s a lot of stigma around the issue. This is why I am delighted to talk today with Jennifer Risher, author of the book We Need to Talk: A Memoir About Wealth and initiator of the social giving movement encouraging giving during COVID-19 called #HalfMyDAF. This effort called for spending (donating) the $120 Billion parked into Donor Advised Funds NOW.
Subduction recommended by High Country News!
One of the books I read this year and loved (and keep recommending!) is Kristen Millares Young’s Subduction, set on the Makah Reservation in Neah Bay, Washington. The story follows two characters: Claudia, an anthropologist who has spent the last few years conducting fieldwork among the Makah, and Peter, the son of one of her cultural correspondents. There is a lot of interesting tension surrounding major themes of family, community and belonging — Peter has…..
Rebecca McClanahan Interview with Laraine Herring
I met Rebecca McClanahan on Facebook. I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting her in person. I saw the cover of her new memoir in essays: In the Key of New York City, and because I’m starting to get braver at reaching out to people I want to know, I messaged her and asked for an ARC [Advanced Readers Copy]. We started chatting and found out that we had more than New York City in common (my mother was born in Brooklyn and New York figures prominently in my life), but we also had colon cancer in common. I devoured the ARC of the book in one night. I could imagine myself with her in her apartment trying to capture a squirrel that had gotten in the house two days before the Towers fell. I was with her during her surgery. I walked the streets with her in the aftermath of 9/11. She brings a poet’s eye to the essay. Each piece weaves seamlessly into the next, creating a tapestry of experiences that together form the arc of a woman searching for home.
Continue reading here.