PHOTO RECAP: Randall Horton’s Hook Release Event

On Friday, November 20th, Augury joined forces with African Voices Magazine to host a night in celebration of the launch of Randall Horton’s Hook. The event featured many special guests and close friends of Horton, who read from their own work, shared anecdotes, and ultimately all expressed a collective feeling of joy for what Hook has become. Our dear friend Dave Bledsoe is credited with all of these photos.

Julia Judge, Mike Miller, Kimberly Steele, Randall Horton, Kate Angus, Nicolas Amara, Carolyn Butts, and Ian Lloyd.

 

Randall Horton signing copies of Hook.

 

The crowd at African Voices’ Upper West Side space.

 

Nkosi Nkululeko.

 

Tyehimba Jess.

 

Sally Ann Hard.

 

Hettie Jones.

 

Becky Thompson

 

Linda Perez.

 

Randall Horton reading from Hook.

 

 

Randall Horton and Linda Perez.

 

Hook.

Randall Horton’s author page.

Trainless Magazine Now Accepting Submissions!

Trainless Magazine is now accepting submissions! Trainless Magazine focuses on travel and the unique ways of learning about a country through athleticism, extended stays, and cross-cultural relationships. See trainlessmagazine.com for more details.

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Augury Books’ spring/summer 2015 reading period is now open for submissions in poetry and prose. For guidelines and general information, please visit our submissions page.

Randall Horton Featured in 2015 PEN World Voices Anthology

Carleton Watkins’ Among The Tree Tops Calaveras Grove (1829), courtesy of the Public Domain Review

We would like to congratulate Randall Horton on having an excerpt from Hook: A Memoir through Letters featured in the 2015 PEN World Voices Online Anthology. Hook is forthcoming from Augury Books in 2015. The PEN collection is comprised of prose, poetry, and dramatic writing from the participants of this year’s World Voices Festival. Among the other authors included are Nathalie Handal, Zoe Pilger, and Cormac James.

PEN’s World Voices Festival, running from May 4th to the 10th, celebrates literature from all over the globe. This year’s theme, On Africa, strives to make heard the voices of contemporary African artists.

The full PWV Anthology can be read online here. New writings are added weekly.

More on Randall Horton

CLMP Firecracker Reading, Featuring Finalist Halina Duraj’s ‘The Family Cannon’

Space Colony Art from the 1970s, courtesy of the Public Domain Review

The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses  (CLMP) is holding a reading this Sunday afternoon, featuring the finalists for their new Firecracker Awards, including Halina Duraj for The Family Cannon (Augury Books, 2014).

The reading will take place from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.,  during the 16th Annual Lit Mag Fair at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe. Other finalists and publishers include, Bonnie Friedman (Etruscan Press), Vikas K. Menon and Dan Goldman (Rattapallax), Jesse Lonergan (NBM Publishing), Hubert & Kerascoet (NBM Publishing), Eric Hobbs and Noel Tuazon (NBM Publishing).

Winners of the Firecracker Award will be announced on May 27th at powerHouse Arena in DUMBO, Brooklyn.

Join Augury Books at Housing Works on Sunday as editor Kate Angus reads from The Family Cannon.

More on THE FAMILY CANNON

PEN World Voices Festival 2015 Announced

A.J. Bormeester’s Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula (1684), courtesy of the Public Domain Review

The dates and theme for the 11th annual PEN World Voices Festival have recently been announced. From May 4th through May 10th, 100 writers from various countries will come together in NYC to celebrate literature “On Africa.” The 2015 program, co-curated by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, seeks to make heard the voices of contemporary African artists. Among the writers being featured are Teju Cole, Edwidge Danticat, Mona Eltahawy, and Alain Mabanckou.

PEN is an international organization dedicated to protecting free expression for writers and expanding a worldwide literary community. Each Spring, they hold their World Voices Festival, chaired by Salman Rushdie, to exhibit the works of writers cross-culturally and to “celebrate the written word.” To learn about or get involved with PEN, explore their website.

Finalists For Lambda Literary Awards Announced

From Baude Cordier’s “Belle, bonne, sage” (1350-1400), courtesy of the Public Domain Review

The finalists for the 27th annual Lambda Literary Awards have been announced. The Lambda Literary Awards honor the best LBGTQ literature of the year in 24 categories, including fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Among the nominees for 2015 is Augury friend Shelly Oria. Other noteworthy finalists include Ana Castillo, Tom Spanbauer, Danez Smith, Lenelle Moïse, and La JohnJoseph. The winners will be declared at the awards ceremony on Monday, June 1st in New York City.

For the complete list of finalists and their works, visit the Lambda Literary Awards website.

"Pick-Your-Price" Sale at Brooklyn Arts Press

From Snowflakes: a Chapter from the Book of Nature (1863), courtesy of the Public Domain Review

Effective until March 7th, Brooklyn Arts Press is holding a “Pick-Your-Price” sale on Noah Eli Gordon‘s The Word Kingdom in the Word KingdomThis deal allows book buyers to purchase one copy of Gordon’s book at the price of their choosing (plus $5 for shipping). Brooklyn Arts Press is an independent publishing house dedicated to publishing the poetry, fiction, and nonfiction of upcoming artists. Joe Pan, their managing editor and publisher, has a collection of poetry forthcoming from Augury in 2015.

For more on the “Pick-Your-Price” sale, visit their site.

Suzanne Guillette on Perspective in Memoir

Suzanne Guillette. Photo by Wah-Ming Chang

A year ago this month, friend of Augury Suzanne Guillette (Much to Your Chagrin: A Memoir of Embarassment, Atria Books, 2009) published an essay on memoir in Tin House. Dealing with the roles of perspective and content, Guillette navigates personal experiences which help us to rethink whether or not plot needs to be “memoir-worthy.”

Though Rushdie and Auster may have gone on the record with other reasons for stepping out of the first-person memoir convention, other motivations were probably also at work: not only does crafted distance in memoir inure the writer against calls (internal and otherwise) of self-importance, but it also sets us further adrift in a dreamlike state, allowing the intersection of present consciousness with past events to be, indeed, a very trippy place.  Quieting the memoir-worthy debate, writers can go granular, entering a uniquely conjured, not to mention lived, world.”

We think this essay is worth a revisit. Read the rest of it here.

Diana Spechler Wins Baltimore Review Creative Nonfiction Contest

Diana Spechler, photo by Lyndsey Belle Tyler

Our friend Diana Spechler (Skinny, Harper Perennial, 2011) recently won the Baltimore Review’s “How To” contest, a creative nonfiction contest whose winners are published in full online. Spechler’s piece, “How to Love a Telemarketer,” deals with a familiar but vivid portrait of teenage naivete:

On the days he doesn’t call, wither like a neglected plant. Stay silent, curled on the Salvation Army couch with your new friends. Take sullen bong hits. When he calls, feel watered back to life. On days when you know you’ll see him that night, smile so much, you’ll need Burt’s Bees lip balm, and pay people compliments that land in a unique way because you mean them. You mean them. You have enough love in your heart for all the world.

You are starting to gather intel: There was some muddying of things, a girl he loved fiercely who left him, a father who died while he watched, a dropping out of college in Oregon, a getaway to Colorado. He never sits down to tell you the whole story; he feeds you tiny pellets, plant snacks.

Practice telemarketer telepathy: Sit across from him on your bed and with as much force as you can muster, send the message I love you from your brain into his so he’ll boomerang it back to you. Remind yourself that telepathy takes time.”

Read a short bio of Spechler below, then head over to the Baltimore Review to read it in full!

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Diana Spechler is the author of the novels Who by Fire and Skinny. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, GQ, Esquire, Glimmer Train Stories, The Paris Review Daily, Slate, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. A seven-time Moth StorySLAM winner, she has been featured on The Moth Radio Hour, The Moth podcast, and NPR. She teaches writing in New York City and for Stanford University’s Online Writer’s Studio. Learn more at www.dianaspechler.com.

Submissions Open Four More Days

Photo by Dave Bledsoe, FreeVerse Photography

Our reading period is still open until July 31st, 11:59 PM. Submissions of fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry are all welcome. For guidelines and more information, head over to the submissions page. If you’re already familiar with our guidelines, don’t wait! Click the button below to be redirected to Submittable. We look forward to reading your work!

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