Augury Books Welcomes Our New Assistant Editor and Summer Intern

Augury Books is happy to announce that Nicolas Amara and Rhett Jones will be joining the press this summer as assistant editor and summer intern, respectively.

Nicolas Amara is a student at the New School for Liberal Arts where he is pursuing a degree in Literary Studies: Writing, with a focus in fiction. He has published poetry in Bards Annual (Local Gems Press) and issues 2 and 3 of Eleven and a Half, where he was previously a production manager (Eugene Lang College). An eastern Long Island native, he now resides in lower Manhattan, working with Augury and Bookforum. He looks forward to working on the press’s editorial board.

Rhett Jones is a current law student at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, but she is originally from Boulder, Colorado. Rhett was an English and Government double major at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania, and the editor of her high school’s literary magazine. She plans to work in publishing and entertainment law after she graduates. Meanwhile, Augury Books’ reading period is still open — Submit your manuscript!

Audio Interview with Halina Duraj, Author of THE FAMILY CANNON

Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

Halina Duraj, recent 2014 O.Henry Prize recipient and author of the new THE FAMILY CANNON (Augury Books, 2014), sat down with Maureen Cavanaugh from San Diego’s local NPR affiliate KPBS to discuss many topics explored in Duraj’s book—among them the immigrant experience, the interplay between the tragic and the humorous, “the idea of questions,” and the origin of the cannon.

“I think that immigrant stories have so many similarities…. This sense of parents wanting something better for their kids, parents sacrificing for their kids. And also, that love sometimes looks like fear or discipline, but it always comes from this parents’ sense of wanting their kids to fit in in this world that [even] they don’t quite fit in. So I think there are similarities across cultures, and that in many ways the immigrant experience kind of transcends those particular places that the immigrants came from.” —Halina Duraj interview with Maureen Cavanaugh on KPBS

Listen to the whole interview here.

LAST CHANCE: Sign up for a writing and yoga retreat led by Halina Duraj

More on THE FAMILY CANNON

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

Fiction Writers Review on Halina Duraj’s ‘The Family Cannon’

Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

The Fiction Writers Review has posted a lovely piece by Matthew Batt on Halina Duraj’s THE FAMILY CANNON (available here). Read an excerpt:

The miracle of this book, calling to mind Anthony Doerr’s recent Memory Wall, is that Duraj manages to distill the historical, cultural, familial, and interpersonal experience of love, memory, and pain in ten crystalline short stories that form a family portrait covering nearly a century, resonating both before its beginning and well beyond its end. ….

What binds it is the fierce and loyal will of the one who knows she has to keep weaving these stray bits of stick and story and trash and grass back together to make us who we are—family.”

Read the whole review here.

But there’s more! Head out to La Jolla tomorrow to see Halina Duraj (recent recipient of a 2014 O.Henry Award) read at D.G. Wills Books: Saturday, May 10, 7 p.m.

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Order THE FAMILY CANNON on Amazon

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

PICS: Augury at AWP 2014

This year’s AWP offsite reading, Augury Books and Friends in Seattle, was a resounding success. We had a wonderful night of wine, snacks, readings, and socializing at the stunning Noble Gas Neon Company venue. Thank you so much to everyone who came out to attend the reading.

Special thanks to Lia Hall and Cedar Mannan for providing the space, as well as our 12 incredible Augury and guest readers, Maureen Alsop (Mantic), Halina Duraj (The Family Cannon), Alison Espach, Lia Hall, Lauren Hunter, Cynthia Lowen, Karyna McGlynn, Patrick Moran (The Book of Lost Things), Frances Justine Post (Beast), Alicia Jo Rabins, Camille Rankine, and Diana Spechler.

Welcoming the Crowd

Phoebe Rusch Helps Augury Editor Kate Angus Set Up

Augury and Friends Settle In

Patrick Moran and Camille Rankine Read for Augury Books and Friends Offsite, AWP 2014

Alison Espach Reads for Augury Books and Friends Offsite, AWP 2014

Camille Rankine Reads for Augury Books and Friends Offsite, AWP 2014

Cynthia Lowen Reads for Augury Books and Friends Offsite, AWP 2014

Diana Spechler Reads for Augury Books and Friends Offsite, AWP 2014

Halina Duraj Reads for Augury Books and Friends Offsite, AWP 2014

Frances Justine Post Reads for Augury Books and Friends Offsite, AWP 2014

Karyna McGlynn Reads for Augury Books and Friends Offsite, AWP 2014

Lauren Hunter Waits to Read at Augury Books and Friends Offsite, AWP 2014

Lia Hall Reads for Augury Books and Friends Offsite, AWP 2014

Maureen Alsop Reads for Augury Books and Friends Offsite, AWP 2014

Patrick Moran Reads for Augury Books and Friends Offsite, AWP 2014

Alicia Jo Rabins Reads for Augury Books and Friends Offsite, AWP 2014

Our readers for the Augury Books & Friends Offsite AWP Reading

We’re so excited for the upcoming Augury Books & Friends offsite AWP reading/shindig in Seattle. We have a great list of readers (see below), each of whom will read briefly and then we will make new friends and maybe even fall in love during the post-reading mingling. The reading will be at Noble Neon, 3130 Airport Way S this Friday, February 28th from 7:30 until we all feel like going back to our hotels.  If you’ll be in Seattle, please join us!

Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

Our readers (in alphabetical order) will be:

Maureen Alsop, author of MANTIC (Augury Books, 2012), has new poems appearing at Watershed Review, Citron Review and ditch.

Halina Duraj‘s stories have appeared in The Sun, The Harvard Review, FictionWitness, and other journals. She has an MA in creative writing from the University of California, Davis, and a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Utah. In 2012, she was a writer-in-residence at Hedgebrook, a women’s writing retreat on Whidbey Island, WA. She teaches at the University of San Diego, where she also directs the Lindsay J. Cropper Center for Creative Writing. She is the author of THE FAMILY CANNON (Augury Books, 2014), now available.

Alison Espach is the author of The Adults, a New York Times Editor’s Choice, a Wall Street Journal Top 10 Novel of the Year, and a “Barnes and Nobel Discover Great Writers” pick. Her other writing can be found in McSweeney’s, Five Chapters, Salon, The Daily Beast, Glamour, Writer’s Digest and other journals. Her short story “Someone’s Uncle” is available as an e-book through Scribner.

Lia Hall writes in neon. She co-founded Noble Neon illuminating words and shapes with noble gases. She teaches yoga and lives in the Old Rainier Brewery in Seattle. She received her MFA in Poetry at the New School in 2009.

Lauren Hunter is from North Carolina and lives in Brooklyn. She received her MFA in poetry from The New School and works with the team at Telephone Books as their Managing Editor. Lauren is the co-founder/curator of the Electric Pumas, a reading series/revolution in New York City. Her chapbook, My Own Fires, was released by Brothel Books in 2011.

Cynthia Lowen is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and poet, and author of The Cloud That Contained the Lightning, winner of the 2012 National Poetry Series selected by Nikky Finney. Cynthia is the recipient of the 2013 Women Authoring Change Fellowship from William Morris Entertainment, the DuPont-Columbia University Awards for Excellence in Journalism, and the Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize, as well as residencies to The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Hedgebrook, and Yaddo, among others. Cynthia is also the producer and writer of BULLY, a feature documentary film following five kids and families through “a year in the life” of America’s bullying crisis, which was released in theaters worldwide by The Weinstein Company. She lives in New York City.

Karyna McGlynn is the author of I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl, winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize from Sarabande Books, as well as two chapbooks. Her poems have recently appeared in Ploughshares, The Literary Review, Seattle Review, West Branch, Subtropics, and The Academy of American Poet’s Poem-A-Day. Karyna received her MFA from the University of Michigan, and is currently a PhD candidate in Literature & Creative Writing at the University of Houston. She is the Managing Editor of Gulf Coast and coordinator for the Houston Indie Book Fest and Gulf Coast Reading Series.

Patrick Moran is a 1995 graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He is the author of four books of poetry, Tell A Pitiful Story, (MWPH, 2011), Doppelgangster (Main Street Rag Press, 2012), THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS, (Augury Books 2012), Rumors of Organized Crime, Poems & Plays’ 2013 Tennessee Chapbook Prize winner. He is also the author of “The Ampersand: Casual Vortex or Engraver’s Shortcut,” which appeared in the 2013 September issue of The Writer’s Chronicle. His poems and translations have appeared in many journals including the New Republic, The Antioch Review, The Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review and The Boston Review. He is currently an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.  His lives in Fort Atkinson, WI with his wife, the painter Bethann Moran, and their three children.

Frances Justine Post is the recipient of the “Discovery” / Boston Review Poetry Prize, the Inprint Paul Verlaine Poetry Prize, and the Amy Award from Poets & Writers. Her poems have appeared in American Letters & CommentaryBoston Review, Denver QuarterlyThe Kenyon Review Online, The Massachusetts ReviewPleiadesWestern Humanities Review, and others. Originally from Sullivan’s Island, SC, she received her MFA from Columbia University and is currently earning her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Houston, where she is poetry editor for Gulf Coast Magazine. She is the author of BEAST (Augury Books, 2014), now available.

Alicia Jo Rabins is a poet and musician currently based in Portland, OR. Her work appears in American Poetry Review, 6×6, Boston Review, Court Green, Ploughshares and The Collagist.  She tours internationally with her band, Girls in Trouble, a song cycle about the complicated lives of Biblical women, and has performed fiddle music across Central America and Kuwait. Residencies and scholarships include Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets

Camille Rankine is the author of Slow Dance with Trip Wire, selected by Cornelius Eady for the Poetry Society of America’s 2010 New York Chapbook Fellowship. The recipient of a 2010 “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize, her poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including American Poet, The Baffler, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, Octopus, Paper Darts, and  Tin House. She was selected for a MacDowell Colony Fellowship in 2013, and was named an Honorary Cave Canem Fellow in 2012. She is Assistant Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Manhattanville College, Editorial Director of The Manhattanville Review, and lives in New York City.

Diana Spechler is the author of the novels Who by Fire (Harper Perennial, 2008) and Skinny (Harper Perennial, 2011). Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, Salon, O The Oprah Magazine, CNN Living, Paris Review, GQ, Esquire, Glimmer Train Stories, and Southern Review, among other publications; as well as in a number of anthologies, including, most recently, Sex Matters: The Sexuality and Society Reader (W.W. Norton, 2013) and True Tales of Lust and Love (Counterpoint/Soft Skull, 2014). She is the recipient of an MFA degree from the University of Montana, a Steinbeck Fellowship from San Jose State University, a LABA Fellowship from the 14th Street Y, residencies from the Anderson Center and Portsmouth Abbey School, and a fellowship from the Sozopol Fiction Seminars. She is also a six-time Moth StorySLAM winner whose stories have been featured on The Moth podcast and The Moth Radio Hour.

A story by Diana Spechler

We’re happy to continue presenting work from our readers at the upcoming Augury Books & Friends offsite AWP reading/shindig in Seattle. The reading will be at Noble Neon, 3130 Airport Way S on Friday, February 28th from 7:30 until we all feel like going back to our hotels. If you’ll be in Seattle, please join us! In the meantime, here’s a story by Diana Spechler

Diana Spechler is the author of the novels Who by Fire (Harper Perennial, 2008) and Skinny (Harper Perennial, 2011). Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, Salon, O The Oprah Magazine, CNN Living, Paris Review, GQ, Esquire, Glimmer Train Stories, and Southern Review, among other publications; as well as in a number of anthologies, including, most recently, Sex Matters: The Sexuality and Society Reader (W.W. Norton, 2013) and True Tales of Lust and Love (Counterpoint/Soft Skull, 2014). She is the recipient of an MFA degree from the University of Montana, a Steinbeck Fellowship from San Jose State University, a LABA Fellowship from the 14th Street Y, residencies from the Anderson Center and Portsmouth Abbey School, and a fellowship from the Sozopol Fiction Seminars. She is also a six-time Moth StorySLAM winner whose stories have been featured on The Moth podcast and The Moth Radio Hour.