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.

Book Cover Debut: Randall Horton’s ‘Hook’

Hook cover

Original Cover Art by Michael Miller

Augury Books is excited to join Randall Horton and designer Michael Miller in unveiling the cover art for the upcoming Hook (2015).

Hook: A Memoir is a gripping story of transformation. Without excuse or indulgence, author and educator Randall Horton explores his downward spiral from unassuming Howard University undergraduate to homeless drug addict, international cocaine smuggler, and incarcerated felon—before showing us the redemptive role that writing and literature played in helping him reclaim his life. The multilayered narrative bridges past and present through both the vivid portrayal of Horton’s singular experiences and his correspondence in letters with the anonymous Lxxxx, a Latina woman awaiting trial. Hook explores race and social construction in America, the forgotten lives within the prison industrial complex, and the resilience of the human spirit.

Read author bio and praise for Hook.

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!

Upcoming Readings by ‘Hook’ Author Randall Horton

Photo: Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Augury is excited to announce some upcoming readings from Randall Horton, author of Hook, forthcoming from Augury Books in 2015.

 

June 12th, 6-8pm: 

CUNY School of Professional Studies

Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education, Urban and Labor Studies

25 West 43rd Street, New York, NY.

 

June 13th, 1pm:

Worker Writers Summer School on Governor’s Island

Building #20A in Nolan Park.

 

June 16th, 8pm:

Over the Eight

594 Union Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

 

In addition to these readings, Horton will be reading with Meg Kearney and Anne-Marie Oomen on Saturday, July 11 at 7:30 pm. This will include readings from Hook: A Memoir, as well as his poetry collection Pitch Dark Anarchy. Readings will be held in the Founder’s Room of Pine Manor College, 400 Heath Street, Chestnut Hill, and are free and open to the public.

Check out an excerpt from Hook on our blog.

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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 on Poetry Society of America

Image from James C. Watson’s A Popular Treatise on Comets, courtesy of the Public Domain Review

Randall Horton‘s poem “When Winter is a Transitional State” was recently featured on the Poetry Society of America‘s website. The Poetry Society of America is the oldest poetry organization in the country, and its mission is to foster an interest in poetry and to support poets nationwide. Horton discussed his thoughts on the poem:

I wanted to explore what an unconventional love looks like. To most of the outside world, this kind of love would seem abnormal. I worked within the freedom and constraint of the couplet form, going for the duality of thought within the speaker’s mind.”

To read the full poem and Horton’s commentary, click here.

Horton’s second memoir is forthcoming from Augury Books in 2015.

More on Randall Horton

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.