Big Other‘s recent blog post entitled “Most Anticipated Small Press Books of 2016” features three Augury names among a body of work recently published by independent presses. Arisa White‘s you’re the most beautiful thing that happened, Sara Schaff‘s Say Something Nice About Me, and Augury Editor Kate Angus’ So Late to the Party were all mentioned on the list.
Head over to Big Other to read about these and many other titles to look for this year.
Small Press Distribution recently released their January-March 2016 Bestseller List, with Randall Horton’s Hook taking the #1 spot among many great small presses.
Hook can be purchased through Small Press Distribution via Amazon.
Xavier Review, of Xavier University in New Orleans, is currently accepting submissions for forthcoming issues. All submissions are welcomed, but the magazine has historically devoted itself to discovering writers interested in the American South, New Orleans, the Gulf and Caribbean sphere, African American culture, ethnography, and religion. Recent issues include work from Rodney Jones, Salgado Maranhão, Laurie Filipelli, A. Loudermilk, Julia Story, Gregory Lawless, and others. All submissions, comments, and questions should be sent to Ralph Adamo at radamo@xula.edu.
On Monday, April 11, 2016, join Augury Books for a launch of Alicia Jo Rabins‘ Divinity School at Unnameable Books in Prospect Heights. The event will begin at 7pm, featuring readings by Rabins as well as Augury authors Joe Pan, Frances Justine Post, and Augury’s founding editor, Kate Angus. All are invited for a night in celebration of literature and good company. See the Facebook event for more information.
Alicia Jo Rabins is a poet, composer, musician, and Torah scholar. She was born in Oregon and grew up in Baltimore and New York City. Alicia’s poems appear in Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, 6×6, The Boston Review, and elsewhere. She teaches ancient Jewish texts to children and adults and performs internationally as a violinist and singer. Alicia lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband, daughter, and son.
Joe Pan is the author of two collections of poetry, Hiccups (Augury Books) and Autobiomythography & Gallery (BAP). He is the publisher and managing editor of Brooklyn Arts Press, serves as the poetry editor for the arts magazine Hyperallergic and small press editor for Boog City, and is the founder of the services-oriented activist group Brooklyn Artists Helping. His piece “Ode to the MQ-9 Reaper,” a hybrid work about drones, was excerpted and praised in The New York Times. In 2015 Joe participated in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Process Space artist residency program on Governors Island. Joe attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, grew up along the Space Coast of Florida, and now lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
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 & Commentary, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, The Kenyon Review Online, The Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, Western Humanities Review, and others. Originally from Sullivan’s Island, SC, she received her MFA from Columbia University and her PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Houston. She lives in the Hudson Valley of NY.
Kate Angus is a founding editor of Augury Books. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in a number of literary journals and anthologies, including Indiana Review, Subtropics, Court Green, Verse Daily, The Awl, The Rumpus, Best New Poets 2 and Best New Poets 2014. She is a recipient of the “Orlando” prize from the A Room of Her Own Foundation, as well as Southeastern Review’s Narrative Nonfiction prize and American Literary Review’s award for Creative Nonfiction. A former Writer in Residence at Interlochen Arts Academy, she has also received residencies from the Writer’s Room at the Betsy Hotel in South Beach, the Wildfjords trail in Westfjords, Iceland, and the BAU Institute in Otranto, Italy. She is a Creative Writing Advisory Board Member for the Mayapple Center for Arts and Humanities and a Guest Literary Arts Curator for the nonprofit arts organization Pen and Brush, where she curates the “Pen and Brush Presents…” reading series. Her collection, So Late to the Party, is forthcoming in Spring 2016 from Negative Capability Press.
You didn’t need to understand the intricacies of a relationship to feel the weight of those final words.
A project by Isabella Giancarlo, “Eat Your Heart Out” has been getting a lot of attention this week—and for good reason. On her website, Giancarlo describes the project as “…a series of words remembered from break-ups reimagined as something sweet.” We spoke with Giancarlo recently about her fascinating and tender medium.
What was the catalyst for “Eat Your Heart Out”? Had it been a long time in the works or was it created on a whim?
For me, a loss of appetite typically accompanies the end of a relationship. This is always particularly distressing, as I’m a voracious eater and cook. After a break-up last spring, seven words sat with me that I couldn’t shake. I thought about ways to reclaim that phrase. How could I sweeten words that initially took my appetite away?
I asked friends for their heartbreak quotes and felt those familiar pangs. You didn’t need to understand the intricacies of a relationship to feel the weight of those final words. I’ve taken the last few months to collect my favorite quotes, decide which desserts would best accompany each quote, and finalize my aesthetic vision.
The incorporation of prose onto pastries is an interesting medium. What would you like the viewer to glean when seeing bittersweet messages superimposed on something comforting?
I hope the project says: Go ahead. Gorge. Engage with the uncomfortable, sticky feelings of a broken heart that are so often dismissed as self-indulgent.
Are these musings all your own, or are they a collection from friends and strangers?
Quotes came from my own experiences, those of close friends and, now, I’ve received a flurry from strangers via the submission form on my website. It’s been humbling to have people willing to share their vulnerable parts and it has made the process feel even more intimate and collaborative.
Do you hope to expand “Eat Your Heart Out” and/or do you have other projects planned?
I’m flirting with the idea of doing large-scale prints and/or a small book. I will definitely continue taking submissions and baking for the project, as well as experimenting with GIFs.
To submit your own quote from a breakup, head over to Giancarlo’s submission form. You just might end up becoming her new muse.
Gold Line Press recently shared their 2015 selections for both the poetry and fiction chapbook competitions. Among the group of finalists was Sara Schaff, with her chapbook Incomplete Like Her.
Incomplete Like Her features two short stories–”When I Was Young and Swam to Cuba” and “Marie and Parker Threw a Party”–both of which appear in Say Something Nice About Me, Schaff’s forthcoming short story collection which we will publish later this fall.
Head over to Gold Press to read about the other finalists of both poetry and prose.
In November of last year, we interviewed Lisbeth Redfield, the Literary Arts Manager of Pen and Brush, about the organization’s venture into publishing. Back in October, for the launch of their new imprint, they published two e-books—one, a book of prose; the other, a debut poetry collection by Lauren Amalia Redding. This Thursday, February 11th from 7:00-9:00 PM, come see their idea put into fruition with a conversation between Redding and Augury Editor Kate Angus, who helped curate P&B’s literary endeavor.
For more information about the event and P&B’s mission, head over to their website.
Lauren Amalia Redding is an artist and poet living and working in Astoria, Queens, New York. She received her B.A. from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and her M.F.A. from the New York Academy of Art in New York, New York. She has exhibited her artwork from Chicago and New York to Tokyo, with pieces in private collections in the United States, Europe, and Australia. Redding has also been featured as one of “Today’s Masters: Artists Making Their Mark” by Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. In October 2015, she will be an artist in residence at the Florence School of Fine Arts in Florence, Italy, housed in Giorgio Vasari’s old studio. Though Redding works primarily as a visual artist, she first expressed herself by writing, and has been writing in secret for ten years. This is the first time any of her poetry has been published.
Garo‘s apropos slogan, “Work that connects people to the land and each other”, did just that with their feature of “Diatomaceous Earth” by Augury’s forthcoming author Sara Schaff last Friday.
“Diatomaceous Earth” is from Schaff’s short story collection, Say Something Nice About Me, our prose selection for 2016 which we will publish this fall.
Like much of Schaff’s prose, “Diatomaceous Earth” is a haunting, naturalistic tale, heavy on dialogue, showcasing the many forms intimacy between two people can take.
After combing through online chat rooms devoted to households plagued by indoor ants, Ella, Stephen, and I finally settled on a remedy that sounded feasible and only mildly dangerous: diatomaceous earth, a powdery, porous substance that occurs naturally, is safe near food preparation, but illegal to sell in Ann Arbor. I purchased a bottle online.
When it arrived, days after my afternoon with Ella and Stephen, Gerry was downstairs with me. He thought we should celebrate me being done with all my papers. Also, he felt hopeful about getting the job in Dearborn. “The interview went great. They responded well to my enthusiasm.”
Gerry’s enthusiasm. My secret, gloomy future. I guess that’s why he and I had ended up in bed again, which is where we were when I heard the mail delivered. I put on a robe to go outside, and when I returned to the bedroom, I held out the package to Gerry. “I’m being proactive about my ant problem, see?”
Together, we laid the trail of diatomaceous earth: behind the toaster, leading from and to the hole Ella had spotted. “That’s where they’re coming from,” I told Gerry. “They’ll come out, gather the powder on their little bodies, and without realizing it, take it back with them to their nest.”
“And then?”
I shuddered, in spite of my new conviction. “Eventually, they all dry out, become little husks of their former selves.”
Sara Schaff’s fiction has appeared in FiveChapters, Southern Indiana Review, Carve Magazine, and elsewhere. A graduate of Brown University and the MFA program at the University of Michigan, she has taught in China, Colombia, and Northern Ireland, where she also studied storytelling. Sara is a visiting assistant professor of creative writing at Oberlin College. Find links to her work at saraschaff.com.
More of Sara Schaff:
**Below is an excerpt from prose finalist Ellen Winter, which, due to a glitch in technology and spam folders on our end, we’re getting to you a few weeks late. We hope you’ll take a second to read and enjoy Ellen’s prose as you did our other finalists.**
“The Little Mission” from Wee Hours and Other Stories
Ellen Winter’s short stories have appeared in a number of magazines including Fiction, New Letters, The Antioch Review, and Brain, Child. Her first collection, The Price You Pay: Stories, was a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Award, and went on to be published by Southern Methodist University Press. A second collection is being circulated, and there are a couple of novels in the works. Awards include fellowships from the Arizona Commission on the Arts and Bread Loaf. She lives with her husband and three children in Livingston, MT, where she makes a living as a housekeeper.
Due to this weekend’s blizzard and unstable travel conditions, we’re sad to report that tomorrow’s Alicia Jo Rabins/Augury Family reading at Unnameable Books has been moved tentatively to Monday, April 11 at 7 pm. Follow the Facebook event for updates and information and we hope we’ll be seeing you there in April!