PICS: Halina Duraj Reads at the Federal Dust Reading Series

Halina Duraj (The Family Cannon, Augury Books, 2014) read at the Federal Dust Reading Series on August 1st. The reading took place at Litmore in Baltimore, Maryland. Litmore aims to provide a space for writers, readers and audiences to come together for workshops, readings, and support. The space provides daily and monthly writing studios, houses a free access community poetry library, and also sells vintage clothes (as pictured!).

Authors featured during this event included Eric Nelson, Alicia Puglionesi, and Michael B. Tager. Thanks to poet Matthew Zingg for putting together the series! For more details, check out the Federal Dust site.

Halina Duraj reads from The Family Cannon

 

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Halina Duraj at the Federal Dust Reading Series

Halina Duraj, author of The Family Cannon (Augury Books, 2014), will be reading at the Federal Dust Reading Series on August 1st. Hosted by Matthew Zingg, the event will take place at Litmore in Baltimore, Maryland. Authors featured during this event include Eric NelsonAlicia Puglionesi, and Michael B. Tager. For more details, see the reading series’ site!

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Only one more day left in our open reading period for poetry and prose!

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

Pics: Graywolf, Tender Buttons, etc., Honored at CLMP Firecracker Awards

Dessert after the awards. A burger-shaped cake!

On Wednesday, CLMP announced the winners for this year’s Firecracker Awards at the powerHouse Arena in Brooklyn. Augury Books was honored to attend, alongside Firecracker fiction nominee Halina Duraj for The Family Cannon.

Graywolf Press took home the fiction prize for Song of the Shank by Jeffery Renard Allen. Other winners included Tender Buttons Press in the poetry category for Bernadette Mayer’s Sonnets, originally published in 1989; NBM Publishing for the graphic novel Beauty, written by Hubert and illustrated by husband and wife team Kerascoët; and Sourcebooks for Patty Blount’s Some Boys in the young adult category.

Find out more about the Firecracker Awards and the winning titles at CLMP. More pics below!

Many thanks to CLMP, powerHouse, and Halina Duraj.

Also, remember that Augury’s reading period is open through July 31. Submit here!

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Attendees mingle before awards are announced

Getting seated before the announcements

 

‘The Family Cannon’ Receives Eric Hoffer Award for Cover Art

Congratulations to Dave Bledsoe and Daniel Estrella, recipients of the 2015 Eric Hoffer da Vinci Eye award for exceptional cover art for The Family Cannon (author Halina Duraj, Augury Books, 2014).

Other winners include Tina Freeman and Morgan Northrop for Artist Spaces (University of LA at Lafayette Press) and Teresa Jordan for Years of Living Virtuously (Weekends Off) (Counterpoint Press).

To view the complete lists of winners for 2015, visit the Eric Hoffer website.

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Halina Duraj’s The Family Cannon Nominated for CLMP Firecracker Award

From E. Weiß’s Bilderatlas der Sternenwelt (1888), courtesy of the Public Domain Review

The Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) released the nominees for their new Firecracker Awards. Inspired by the Firecracker Alternative Book Awards, CLMP’s awards strive to honor and support literary works from independent publishers and self-published writers.

The finalists are divided into six categories: creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, young adult, graphic novels, and literary magazines. Among them is Augury author Halina Duraj for her book of short stories, The Family Cannon. Other finalists across categories include Jeffery Renard AllenMartha Baillie, Bonnie Friedman, Allen Crawford, and Ransom Riggs, as well as several literary magazines, including 6 x 6, A Public Space, and Mosaic. Tin House, Graywolf Press, Ahsahta Press, and Tender Buttons Press are all among the publishers that have titles shortlisted. The winners in each group will be announced on May 27th at powerHouse Arena in DUMBO.

To see the complete shortlists for the Firecracker Awards, view CLMP’s press release.

For more about Halina Duraj and The Family Cannon, click here.

Halina Duraj on "The Family Cannon" at The Story Prize Blog

19th century ice skating

Detail from “Le Vrai Patineur” (The True Skater) by Jean Garcin. Courtesy of The Public Domain Review

The Story Prize, founded in 2004 by Julie Lindsey and Larry Dark, annually highlights collections of short stories published in the U.S. Halina Duraj, as part of a contributor series, recently had the opportunity to talk appropriation in regards to The Family Cannon (Augury Books, 2014) on TSP’s blog. She speaks briefly about how the writing process becomes unconsciously driven, taking things directly from casual experience.

Maybe somebody had asked me what I was working on, and I said something about neighbors, and my friend told the anecdote about two neighbors sharing a property line on some land in Colorado. One neighbor was so angry about something the other neighbor had done that he situated a cannon, a real, working cannon, in his yard and aimed it at the offending neighbor’s house. I remembered laughing, and thinking about the anecdote’s resonance with my own story. But by the time I’d sat down to work on the story a few days later, I’d completely forgotten my friend’s anecdote—I’d forgotten that my friend had told it, and I’d forgotten that it ever existed outside of my own brain.”

Read the full post here. The Story Prize is currently accepting submissions of books published (or forthcoming) between July and December. See their website for more details and guidelines.

 

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Halina Duraj’s THE FAMILY CANNON Featured in Rain Taxi Review of Books

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Rain Taxi #74, cover art by Caroline Kent

 

Rain Taxi Review of Books is a Minneapolis-based quarterly review of literary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. We are excited to announce a rave review of Halina Duraj’s The Family Cannon, written by Benjamin Woodard, in their current issue for Spring. Woodard acknowledges the central emotional ties of the collection:

Spun through the eyes of Magda, the daughter of Polish immigrants, these linked narratives bob between the familiar—growing old, betrayal, angst—and those unique to Magda’s lineage—accounts of Holocaust survival, fear of Nazis, summers overseas—creating a slim volume that nevertheless provides strong emotional resonance.”

To purchase a copy, head here. Rain Taxi also publishes a quarterly online edition—entirely different from the print edition—available free of charge on their website. Happy reading!

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

The Salt Lake Tribune Talks to Halina Duraj About THE FAMILY CANNON

Halina Duraj, author of THE FAMILY CANNON

Halina Duraj’s THE FAMILY CANNON (Augury Books, 2014) was recently featured in the Salt Lake Tribune, along with four other new books with Utah-related storylines and themes. The Tribune writes of Duraj:

“While living in Utah, Duraj says her writing was influenced by the drama of the desert landscape and local landmarks, such as the Oquirrh Mountains, which for a time she thought were named for the color ochre. ‘All that subtly influenced the way I was writing, which became more spare,’ she says. Her stories are carefully observed, never overexplained, while the language is both playful and precise. The collection’s final story, ‘The Company She Keeps,’ is searingly honest and particularly heartbreaking.”

See the full article here.

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Halina Duraj's "The Family Cannon" Reviewed in Quarterly West

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“Time in The Family Cannon,” by Shena McAuliffe, from Quarterly West issue 82

Quarterly West is a literary journal put together by the PhD writing program at the University of Utah. The most recent issue houses a review of Halina Duraj’s The Family Cannon (Augury, 2014) by Shena McAuliffe, who has detailed time and possession of memory in Duraj’s book graphically (chronology pictured above). McAuliffe relishes the emotional weight that Duraj’s stories hold:

“At the end of each story, I had to take a break before moving on to the next—a break from the disappointed desires, the steadfast self-sacrificing mother, the madness and the ghosts, the struggle to remember, to say things just as they should be said. In the end, what is most striking about Duraj’s book is how it moved me; it exhausted me in the way that a good story should.”

Alongside McAuliffe’s review in the summer issue is a creative nonfiction piece by Augury editor Kate Angus. Read both and learn more about the journal at the Quarterly West website.

 

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