Alicia Jo Rabins DIVINITY SCHOOL Launch

unnameable

This coming Tuesday, January 26th at 7 PM, Unnameable Books in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn will host a night of reading and celebration by and for various Augury authors as well as a launch for Alicia Jo Rabins‘ Divinity School. Among the authors present will be Joe Pan, Frances Justine Post, and Augury’s founding editor Kate Angus. Join us for what will surely be a night of wonderful prose and great company.

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.

Frances Justine Post Reviewed in Denver Quarterly

Augury’s own Frances Justine Post is featured in issue 50.1 of Denver Quarterly. We published Post’s Beast in 2014 and Fox Frazier-Foley gives her musings on the text in this month’s review.

Frazier-Foley latches onto an overriding theme of Beast: the idea of the juxtaposing bestiality and civility in us all and how these parts interact to form a whole.

“…these poems provide an illuminating oscillation between brutality and vulnerability. What does it mean to be a beast, or to be human? Where, and why, might overlaps occur between/among these identities? Post explores the frightful possibilities through rich, lyrical language, melding the mythic tradition of human-animal hybrid consciousness with fraught, postmodern edges of ‘glowing emergency.’”

To see the connections between Post’s work and Ovid’s, and to read meditations on writers from Roland Barthes to Percival Everett to Joan Didion, subscribe to the Denver Quarterly here.

Beast is available for purchase through Small Press Distribution online.

More of Post:

Frances Justine Post’s website

Frances Justine Post on Twitter (@FrancesJPost)

BEAST Wins WLT Book Award for Poetry

Frances Justine Post‘s BEAST (Augury Books, 2014) has been selected as this year’s Poetry Winner at the Writer’s League of Texas Book Awards! Formerly known as the Violet Crown Book Awards, the contest recognizes outstanding work published by writers based in Texas.

Founded in 1981, the WLT focuses on providing information, support and sharing among writers. WLT also offers free programming in libraries and local schools across the state.

For a full list of winners and finalists, see the WLT’s site.

More on BEAST

Augury’s Reading Period Is Open for Prose and Poetry May 1 – July 31, 2015:

Submit now via Submittable, and thank you for your interest in Augury Books!

Sabotage Review on Frances Justine Post’s BEAST

An image from “Flowers and Pictures of the Holy Land” by Boulos Meo, courtesy of The Public Domain Review

We are excited to acknowledge the recent review of Frances Justine Post (BEAST, Augury Books, 2014) on Sabotage Review. The review, written by Cecelia Bennet, discusses the ‘multifaceted self,’ focusing on the sense of danger and power struggles within BEAST.

“These features are integral to the collection as a whole, and serve only to emphasise the wildly fragmented self that it portrays. In Beast, Frances Justine Post’s poems tell a story from every conceivable angle. To do this, she presents us with a series of surprising self-portraits: ‘Self-Portrait as a Witch’ exists alongside ‘Self-Portrait as Maelstorm’, ‘Self-Portrait in the Shadow of a Volcano’, ‘Self-Portrait in the Body of a Whale’, and even ‘Self-Portrait as the Crumbs You Dropped’. The face of the narrative changes constantly. Read together the poems create a sense of a wider story of torn hearts, conflicting reactions, bitter struggle. In this sense, the collection is very well put together: by encouraging us to fill in the gaps and interact with the book as a whole, Post draws her readers through an intensely intimate journey.”
Read the whole review here.
More on BEAST

Find it new from seller Augury Books

 

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!

BEAST Examined in The Boston Review

Frances Justine Post’s Beast (Augury Books, 2014) has received a micro-review in the latest edition of The Boston Review. Kay Cosgrove, poetry editor at Gulf Coastcommented on Beast‘s aesthetic approach and thematic development:

Frances Justine Post’s Beast (Augury Books, 2014) has received a micro-review in the latest edition of The Boston Review. Kay Cosgrove, poetry editor at Gulf Coast, commented on Beast‘s aesthetic approach and thematic development:

Though the collection’s narrative arc is familiar… the phrasing Post uses to convey it is dazzling, dangerous, visceral, and new… The poems dismantle the binaries of you and me, then and now, self and other, and singular and plural as they investigate, almost obsessively, how experience uproots and shapes us.”

The September/October issue is now available on newsstands. Additionally, each article from the current issue will soon be available to read online. Check back at The Boston Review’s site for updates.

UPDATE: The review is now online here.

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More on BEAST

PICS: Augury Books at the 2014 New York City Poetry Festival

On Saturday, July 26, Frances Justine Post (Beast, 2014) and B.C. Edwards (To Mend Small Children, 2012) read on behalf of Augury Books at the  4th annual New York City Poetry Festival, put on by the Poetry Society of New York. The festival took place on Governors Island, and featured three stages with over 250 poets reading their work. Check out some photos here:

Augury Books moved stages. Photo: Nicolas Amara

B.C. Edwards reads from his new book, ‘From the Standard Cyclopedia of Recipes’ (Black Lawrence Press, 2014). Photo: Dave Bledsoe, FreeVerse Photography

Frances Justine Post reads from ‘Beast’ (Augury Books, 2013). Photo: Dave Bledsoe, FreeVerse Photography

Thanks to everyone who came out to the reading!

More on BEAST by Frances Justine Post

More on TO MEND SMALL CHILDREN by B. C. Edwards

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

PICS: Frances Justine Post + Others Read at Poets House Showcase

Wednesday, July 23rd, Frances Justine Post (Beast, Augury Books, 2013) read at Poets House with fellow poets Emily Abendroth, Brett Fletcher Lauer, and Wendy S. Walters, as part of the 22nd Annual Poets House Showcase series coordinated by Stephen Motika. The reading series accompanies an annual exhibit at Poets House of every poetry and poetry-related text published in the United States each year. See some photos from the night below.

Left to right: Wendy S. Walters’ ‘Troy, Michigan’ (Futurepoem Books, 2014); Frances Justine Post’s ‘Beast’ (Augury Books, 2013); Brett Fletcher Lauer’s ‘A Hotel in Belgium’ (Four Way Books, 2014); Not pictured: Emily Abendroth’s ‘] Exclosures [‘ (Ahsahta Press, 2014). Photo: Nicolas Amara

Stephen Motika. Photo: Nicolas Amara

Emily Abendroth. Photo: Nicolas Amara

Brett Fletcher Lauer. Photo: Nicolas Amara

Frances Justine Post. Photo: Nicolas Amara

Wendy S. Walters. Photo: Nicolas Amara

Poets House, located in Battery Park City, is a poetry library, writing space, and venue, free and open to the public, that houses 60,000 volumes of poetry. Poetry workshops and readings are regularly held, and the building features an open floor with space for writers to browse books or create their own work. A full recording of Wednesday night’s reading is available to stream on the Poets House website—head over and listen!

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

This Weekend: 2014 New York Poetry Festival on Governors Island

New York City Poetry Festival

The fourth annual New York City Poetry Festival on Governors Island is almost here!

Augury Books will be reading on the White Horse Stage at 4pm on Saturday, July 26, with Frances Justine Post (BEAST, 2014) and B. C. Edwards (TO MEND SMALL CHILDREN, 2012). Admission to the festival is FREE, so there’s absolutely no reason to miss out!

The NYCPF is put on by the Poetry Society of New York and features a worldclass lineup including Mark Doty, Matthea Harvey, and Joyelle McSweeney, along with over 250 poets on three stages. The festivities will take place on both Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 6pm. Come for the readings, performances, Vendor’s Village (where you can discover new poetry as well as your old favorites), artists, craftsmen, and food trucks!

Check out the press release for more info, or visit the festival’s website for more information.

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

Frances Justine Post to Read at Poets House on Wed, July 23

Frances Justine Post

On Wednesday evening, Frances Justine Post (BEAST, 2014) will be reading at Poets House in NYC as part of the Showcase Reading Series. Joining Post are poets Brett Fletcher LauerEmily Abendroth, and Wendy S. Walters.

The event will take place in association with the Annual Poets House Showcase, a remarkable initiative to collect and exhibit to the public, free of charge, every book of poetry published each year, making the Poets House stock among the most comprehensive open-stacks collections in the country.

So go for the reading, stay for the books—or vice-versa—on Wednesday, July 23, 7pm, at Ten River Terrace (at Murray Street) / New York, NY  10282.

Learn more about the Poets House showcase and other readings this week in the New Yorker.

Post will also be reading with Augury at the New York Poetry Festival on Saturday. Stay tuned for more information on the festival and readers later this week.

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