June 4, 2018 by augurybooks

Announcing Our 2019 Titles

Augury Books is delighted to announce our 2019 titles! Congratulations to t’ai freedom ford whose poetry collection & more black, chosen from our January Open Reading Period, will be published in the spring, and Arisa White, whose hybrid-memoir Who’s Your Daddy? will be published in the fall.

This year we received over 550 submissions during our open reading period and were thrilled to discover so many manuscripts of great promise. We commend the many talented authors who sent us their work and are grateful for the opportunity to read their manuscripts!

About the author:

t’ai freedom ford is a New York City high school English teacher and Cave Canem Fellow. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in The African American Review, Apogee, Bomb Magazine, Calyx, Drunken Boat, Electric Literature, Gulf Coast, Kweli, Tin House, Obsidian, Poetry and others. Her work has also been featured in several anthologies including The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop and Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color. Winner of the 2015 To the Lighthouse Poetry Prize, her first poetry collection, how to get over is available from Red Hen Press. t’ai lives and loves in Brooklyn where she is an editor at No, Dear Magazine.

About the book:

From the author: & more black is a collection of what ford calls “Black-ass sonnets” that take their cues from Wanda Coleman’s American Sonnets. For ford, the word “American” conjures the spirit of her ancestors. In that way, the poems are rebellious, outspoken and, as she says, “take no shit.” They investigate Black art, Black bodies, Black sexuality, and Black language, unapologetically and with a capital B.

About the author:

Cave Canem graduate fellow Arisa White is the author of Post Pardon, Hurrah’s Nest, A Penny Saved and Black Pearl. Her book You’re the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened was nominated for the 29th Lambda Literary Award and the chapbook “Fishing Walking” & Other Bedtime Stories for My Wife won the inaugural Per Diem Poetry Prize. As the creator of the Beautiful Things Project, Arisa curates cultural events and artistic collaborations that center narratives of queer and trans people of color. She serves on the board of directors for Nomadic Press and is an assistant professor at Colby College. arisawhite.com

About the book:

Arisa White’s Who’s Your Daddy?, a hybrid memoir combining poetry and creative nonfiction, is a meditation on paternal absences, intergenerational trauma, and toxic masculinity. Who’s Your Daddy? asks us to consider how the relationships we are born into can govern us, even through absence, and shape the dynamics we find and forge as we grow. White lyrically moves across distance and time, from Brooklyn to California to Guyana. Her book enacts rituals that plumb the interior reaches of the heart to assemble disconnected and estranged parts into something whole, tender, and strong.

October 28, 2015 by augurybooks

Word Up Reading with Joe Pan

On Saturday, November 7th from 6:00 pm-8:00 pm, Word Up Community Bookshop in Washington Heights will host a reading of seven city poets. Among the featured poets is Joe Pan, whose poetry collection Hiccups we published this past October.

Word Up describes itself as a “multilingual, general-interest community bookstore and arts space … committed to preserving and building a neighborhood in which all residents help each other to live better informed and more expressive lives, using books as an instrument of reciprocal education and exchange, empowering not only themselves, but their community.” Word Up is run by volunteers and hosts literary readings, film screenings, concerts, community meetings, workshops, and reading groups with the goal of bolstering the creative community in upper Manhattan.

See the reading’s Facebook event to learn more about Pan, the bookstore, and the six other featured poets.

Hiccups is available through Small Press Distribution online.

More of Joe Pan:

Joe Pan’s website

February 3, 2015 by augurybooks

Maureen Alsop Featured in Touch the Donkey

An image from “The Flowers Personified” by J.J. Grandville, courtesy of the Public Domain Review

Poet Maureen Alsop (Mantic, Augury Books, 2013) has recently been featured in the fourth issue of Touch the Donkey, an online poetry magazine produced through above/ground press. Her poetry is presented among poets such as Laura Mullen and Lisa Jarnot.

To learn more about Touch the Donkey‘s latest issue, visit their site!

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Maureen Alsop’s MANTIC

December 4, 2014 by augurybooks

Carey McHugh Featured in Tin House

An image from “The Flowers Personified” by J.J Grandville, courtesy of The Public Domain Review

Poet Carey McHugh was recently published in Tin House’s latest issue. Her poem, “Diagram of Select Cuts,” is featured amongst poets such as Dorothea Lasky, Richard Siken, and Deborah Landau. McHugh will be publishing her new manuscript, American Gramophone, with Augury in the spring.

For more information on Tin House’s latest issue, head over to their site!

October 3, 2014 by augurybooks

Frances Justine Post Interviewed in Print-Oriented Bastards

Photo by Dave Bledsoe, FreeVerse Photography

We are excited to acknowledge that Pennsylvania-based journal Print-Oriented Bastards has recently interviewed Frances Justine Post (BEAST, Augury Books, 2014). The interview, conducted by Ines Pujos, POB’s senior editor, covers questions of process, environmental influence, and the overall aesthetics of BEAST.

Post: ‘Self-Portrait as Beast’ was the first self-portrait poem I’d ever written. Though it was new to me, there is a long tradition of self-portrait poems (Lucie Brock-Broido and John Ashbery come to mind). I found myself most drawn to writing ‘Self Portrait as…’ poems. Rather than writing straight-up self-portrait poems about my actual self, I started treating them as almost-persona poems. In these poems, I’m not really trying to speak in the voice of someone else. I am still the speaker; I just try on different skins for a little while.”

The whole of the interview, as well as the rest of issue 4, can be read online!

September 17, 2014 by augurybooks

Maureen Alsop's "Snow Amulet, Superscription" at Poetry Storehouse; New Work Online

Photo by Dave Bledsoe, FreeVerse Photography

“Snow Amulet, Superscription,” from Maureen Alsop’s most recent collection, Later, Knives & Trees (Negative Capability Press, 2014), has been adapted to video at Poetry Storehouse by fellow poet Nic Sebastian. Poetry Storehouse acts as a database of poetry offered up by authors to be collaboratively “remixed.” Past texts, including more of Alsop’s work, have been recreated through audio and video, and are available to listen/view at Poetry Storehouse’s site.

In addition, Alsop will be reading at Your Impossible Voice’s launch party for their fifth issue at Alley Cat Books in San Francisco. Featured readers include Aaron Shurin, Gillian Conoley, Marianne Villanueva, Rachel Nagelberg, and Laia García Sánchez. Head over to YIP for more info.

For more information on Later, Knives & Trees, head over to Negative Capability Press.

More of Alsop’s recent work can be read at Arcadia University’s Marathon Literary Review and New Michigan Press’s Diagram.

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Maureen Alsop’s MANTIC

September 3, 2014 by augurybooks

Bruce Covey on "What’s New in Poetry?"

Bruce Covey doing introductions at a “What’s New in Poetry?” reading

Bruce Covey, publisher and editor at Coconut Books, recently announced the closing of “What’s New in Poetry?,” a reading series organized by Covey at Emory University in Atlanta. The series ran for 12 years, co-hosted by Coconut Magazine’s senior editor, Gina Meyers, from 2011-2014, and brought over 300 new and emerging poets to students at the university. Covey recently shed some light on the beginning and end of an expansive venture in contemporary poetry.

Nick: What drove you to start ‘What’s New in Poetry?’

Bruce: At the time, I was teaching Creative Writing at Emory, and the Program brought only 1-2 poets per year to campus, all of whom were recognized and widely lauded figures. More than once my students told me about the distance they felt from these readers–they couldn’t imagine what had to happen for them to get from point A (where they were at the moment) to point B (e.g., winning a Pulitzer Prize). Also at the time there wasn’t much of an independent reading scene in Atlanta–a pretty established slam series, but not much else. I wanted to start a series that focused on writers with 0-2 books that took place in the Emory residence halls–bringing poetry to the students on their own terms and in their own homes. In addition to these younger writers, I wanted to feature more established small press and experimental writers, so students could be exposed to a wide range of aesthetics (the Creative Writing department as a whole tended to favor very traditional poets). In every case, I asked writers to hang around after the readings just to talk with students. Pretty soon after that, the series started to draw poets from the Atlanta community. And not long after that our audience expanded to 70-100 per event.

N: Is there a reading that sticks out in your mind, for whatever reason, as remarkable? A particular poet? A moment?

B: Honestly, I really loved all of our readers and readings–I love poetry readings, and everyone has been wonderful. But meeting Ron Padgett for the first time was wonderful. He was one of the first two poets (along with Ted Berrigan) I’d read and liked (in high school). It’s the most nervous I’d been before a reading, but Ron was incredibly nice and gave an incredible reading–totally humble and funny and powerful as his work always is. But we’ve had a lot of terrific moments.

N: Do you think the closing of the series will be a blow to the poetry community at Emory? In Atlanta?

B: I guess so? I mean, Atlanta has some great and relatively recent reading series that have already and will continue to bring awesome poets to town. And I’m not sure how much we remained on Emory’s radar after I stopped teaching & after Harmony Neal and Molly Brodak left as fellows–even though the series took place on campus, we didn’t draw many students over the past two years. The gap we leave is probably one of volume (we brought more than 70 readers last year) and the fact that we could pay each reader–something I was always proud of. That said, I’m not worried about poetry thriving in Atlanta–it will continue to do so, and I’ll still be around with Coconut and other things.

The final events in the series are listed on Facebook. A large portion of “What’s New in Poetry?” readings can be listened to and downloaded for free via iTunes. Links to this material and a full archive of the series’ past events can be found at the Emory Poetry Council webpage.

Also, Coconut Magazine’s submission period is currently open! Head over to their site for more details.

June 18, 2014 by augurybooks

Halfway Through: Augury Books’ Reading Period Still Open for Poetry and Prose Full-Length Manuscripts

Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

We are a little over halfway through our reading period, which is still OPEN through July 31, 2014. We accept full-length manuscripts in the categories of Poetry and Prose. The new Prose category includes Short Fiction Collections and Creative Nonfiction Manuscripts.

See our Submissions Page for length requirements and other guidelines, or find out everything you need to know (including our discounted book specials for those submitting!) on our third-party submissions manager, Submittable, where you can also submit your manuscript.

We can’t wait to read your work and find out who the authors of our 2015 books will be. Thanks to all of you in advance for sharing your work with us, and thanks to those who have already submitted their work this summer!

If you would like to know more about our aesthetic to see if your work might be a good fit for Augury, visit the Books and Orders page to see what works are already in our catalogue.

Don’t forget to Like us on Facebook and Follow this Blog (link in bottom corner) for continued updates about the rest of the reading period and information about our next publication and finalists!

May 24, 2014 by augurybooks

PICS: Augury’s Frances Justine Post Reads at Brazos Bookstore

This week, Augury author Frances Justine Post (author of BEAST, 2014) read at Brazos Bookstore in Houston with Elizabeth Lyons, David Tomas Martinez, and Karyna McGlynn. Thanks for everyone who came out. Enjoy the pics!

Karyna McGlynn, author of “I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl” (Sarabande Books), reads at Brazos.

David Tomas Martinez, author of “Hustle” (Sarabande Books) reads at Brazos.

Books from the readers at Brazos Bookstore

Elizabeth Lyons reads at Brazos Bookstore

PICS from Federal Dust and Cabin/Fire’s Joint Reading

Two Baltimore reading series, Federal Dust and Cabin/Fire, joined forces earlier this month to throw “Federal Fire,” their first joint reading and cook-out. Hosted by Justin Sirois and Matthew Zingg, the reading featured Michelle Dove, Mark Cugini, Eric Nelson and Adam Wilson.

There were well-crafted words. There were hot dogs. There were marshmallows, a fire pit and a giant Mother’s Day card. A good time was had by all—see the pics below!

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Follow Cabin/Fire’s Blog

Augury Books’ reading period is open — Submit your manuscript!