TBR: Luminous Crown by Jane Satterfield

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

We don’t expect an elevator pitch from a poet, but can you tell us about your work in 2-3 sentences?

You’re right: poetry collections tend to weave many threads together, but I’ll give it a shot! At its core, Luminous Crown is a direct response to the climate crisis and a lyric chronicle of its effects on the human and natural world. The book moves through poems of elegy for species facing extinction or habitat loss to poems of encounter with creatures real or cryptid who populate our local landscapes and appear in art, folklore, or legend, to poems of enchantment that seek healing or renewal. Ultimately, the book celebrates the wonders of our living world and, I hope, asks readers to consider all that’s at stake for the future.

Which poem/s did you most enjoy writing? Why? And which poem/s gave you the most trouble, and why?

Hands down, the most enjoyable poems were those reflecting on animal observation or surprise encounters, like “Fox” which pays tribute to the scrappy urban interlopers, or the more speculative “Joining the Crows” where the poem’s narrator recalls her misguided attempts to become one of “nature’s real clean-up crew.”

It’s important to me to honor the animal other—not just to use them as metaphors or emblems of emotion. Developing a stronger scientific underpinning meant reading lot, particularly nonfiction about the natural world, the lives of birds, mycorrhizal networks, insect emergence, and so on, which I loved. But the price of deepening ecological awareness is coming face-to-face with a host of human-generated harms and frightening predictions. This was the case with a poem like “Dragonfly or Drone?” which braids together facts and folklore about dragonflies with info from experiments on their potential use for package deliveries, military surveillance, and more. Most poems required a lot of rewriting to create a balance in terms of tone—it’s all too easy to tip into preachiness, sentimentality, or doomerism when facing down dark subjects.

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

This book was built on the environmental and social justice aspects of my last collection, The Badass Brontës. The connections between our historical eras seemed less distant than I once would have imagined; Emily, Charlotte, and Anne’s love of animals was such an inspiration, and the backdrop of botanizing in their novels inspired poems about my own ecotone. It took me a while to figure out I was writing two separate books. I had my share of rejections and also good fortune placing individual poems in journals I admire. It was still a was a delightful surprise that this book—unlike any of my others—found a home on its first round of submission flights. Truly, you just never know!

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

I love Susan Orlean’s advice about the importance of being curious. It’s the winding trail that leads you to explore other work and is a return path to your own projects, formed and as yet unimagined.

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

I’ve enjoyed the challenges of writing ekphrastic poems; works like Kiki Smith’s sculpture, Selkie, or Brueghel’s Big Fish Eat Little Fish opened doors into memory and added a powerful dimension to the collection. Kim Krans’ Wild Unknown Tarot was a new discovery and cool source of uncanny inspiration.

How did you find the title of your book?

The title and title poem found me in the form of stand of trees outside my studio and a firefly rinsed out from my hair the morning after a night walk with my spouse during our residency at VCCA: once I was luminous!

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book?        

Greens, woody herbs, and mushrooms. But also: cake! Some of the poems were drafted during the pandemic lockdown. When neighbors need help, cake is reliably good cheer. Dorie Greenspan’s French Yogurt Cake and Melissa Clark’s Crumb Cake are pantry-friendly and never disappoint. (Recipes below)

 

*****

 

MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://janesatterfield.org

 

MORE ABOUT THIS PUBLISHER: https://wordworksbooks.org

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK: https://wordworksbooks.org/product/luminous-crown/

 

READ A POEM FROM THIS BOOK, “Luminous Crown”:  https://aboutplacejournal.org/article/luminous-crown/

 

 ***** 

FRENCH YOGURT CAKE

Dorie Greenspan

 

Adapted from Baking From My Home to Yours

 

Makes 8 servings

 

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup ground almonds (or, if you’d prefer, omit the almonds and use another 1/2 cup all-purpose flour)

2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder

Pinch of salt

1 cup sugar

Finely grated zest of 1 lemon

1/2 cup plain whole milk yogurt

3 large eggs

1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/2 cup flavorless oil, such as canola or safflower

1/2 cup lemon marmalade, strained, for glazing the top

1 teaspoon water, for glazing the top 

 

Getting ready:  Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Generously butter an 8 1/2-x-4 1/2-inch loaf pan, place the pan on a lined baking sheet (page 000) and set aside.  Whisk together the flour, ground almonds, if you’re using them, baking powder and salt and keep nearby as well.

 

Put the sugar and zest in a medium bowl and, working with your fingertips, rub the zest into the sugar until the sugar is moist and aromatic.  Add the yogurt, eggs and vanilla to the bowl and whisk vigorously until the mixture is very well blended.  Still whisking, stir in the dry ingredients, then switch to a large rubber spatula and fold in the oil.  You’ll have a thick, smooth batter with a slight sheen.  Scrape the batter into the pan and smooth the top.

 

Slide the baking sheet into the oven and bake 35 to 40 minutes for the round cake or 50 to 55 minutes, or until the cake begins to come away from the sides of the pan; it will be golden brown and a knife inserted into the center of the cake will come out clean.  Transfer the pan to a rack, cool for 5 minutes, then run a blunt knife between the cake and the sides of the pan.  Unmold and cool to room temperature right-side up.  

 

To make the glaze:  Put the marmalade in a small pot or a microwave-safe bowl, stir in the teaspoon of water and heat (on the range or in the microwave oven) until the jelly is hot and liquefied.  Using a pastry brush, gently brush the cake with the glaze.  

 

Serving:  In France, this cake is usually served with a little sweetened crème fraiche, but it lends itself to other toppings as well.  Fresh soft fruit, like sliced peaches or plums, is a natural with this as is berries with a touch of sugar.  And, because the cake is plain and just a little tangy from the yogurt, it pairs happily with lemon cream, curd or mousse and is delicious with chocolate mousse or chocolate sauce.

 

Storing: Wrapped well, you can keep the cake at room temperature for at least 4 days and, like many pound cakes, it will be better one day later than it was the day it was made.  If you do not glaze the cake, you can wrap it airtight and freeze it for up to 2 months; glazed it’s best not to freeze the cake.

 

*****

 

Crumb Cake

Of all the social distancing sweets a person could bake, cake seems to be the one you’d want to share the most.

Crumb cake is an exception. More of a snack or breakfast than a showy dessert, a homey crumb cake doesn’t need the “oohs” and “aahs” of any guests. At the ready whenever the urge for brown sugar and butter hits, it’s the kind of thing a small family can devour in a few days, and a single person can freeze in slices. (Wrap each one up separately and store them in a container in the freezer; a slice will thaw in under an hour on the counter.)

Crumb cakes are also very adaptable. You probably have all the ingredients in your pantry. To make one, butter an eight- or nine-inch pan (square or round, it doesn’t matter).

First, prepare the topping. In a bowl, mix together four tablespoons melted butter, a quarter-cup each flour and rolled oats, a half-cup brown sugar, a half-teaspoon salt and a teaspoon of cinnamon or other spices. I used cinnamon, allspice, and cardamom and loved the combination. If you don’t have oats, use more flour or chopped nuts.

Now, whip up the cake batter. Using an electric mixer, beat a half-cup (one stick) of softened butter with a half-cup granulated sugar. Add two eggs and two-thirds cup fermented milk product (sour cream, yogurt, buttermilk, crème fraîche, milk acidified with a tablespoon of lemon juice, nondairy yogurt, whatever you’ve got). Beat in two teaspoons vanilla extract, one teaspoon baking powder, a quarter teaspoon baking soda, a half-teaspoon salt, 1 1/2 cups flour until smooth. If you want to, you can fold in a teaspoon grated lemon or orange zest, and a half-cup fruit (fresh, frozen and thawed, or canned). I used fresh blueberries, but another favorite is canned chopped pineapple. Spoon batter into the pan, scatter the crumb mixture over the top. Bake for 45 to 55 minutes, until the top springs back when lightly pressed.

Let it cool completely before you dive in. It will be gone before you know it.

~via Seattle Times, March 26, 2020

Link: https://www.seattletimes.com/life/food-drink/five-adaptable-recipes-all-from-your-pantry/

 

 

TBR: But For Fortune by Erin Miller Reid

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books. 

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 The novel follows a medical student from rural Kentucky, Corinth Eaton, who longs to become a successful, compassionate doctor despite her struggle with debilitating anxiety and depression. After a consequential mistake, Corinth is suspended from University Hospital and assigned to work a month at the off-site state psychiatric hospital, the same facility where her grandmother was a patient for decades. It’s there that she discovers her grandmother’s old chart and begins the journey to piece together her family’s fractured past and understand the fate she has inherited.

 

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why? And, which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

 But For Fortune has roots in my own family history. The grandmother in the novel, Mary Esther, spent most of her adult life in the state psychiatric hospital just as my own grandmother did, while I later worked in that same hospital as a medical student much like Corinth in the book. This novel is fiction though, so I didn’t want the characters to be carbon copies of my grandmother and me. As a writer, fiction provides me with the freedom to get at the truth of a story without having to uphold the truths of reality.

I had an easier time creating Mary Esther’s character because, in the beginning, she was less familiar to me. I never knew my own grandmother as a well, able-bodied person, a person who wasn’t addled by years of outdated psychiatric treatments. She was never able to relay stories of her youth or motherhood or how she’d felt as a patient in a state hospital. That lack of knowledge gave me free rein to create a fictional character with her own hopes, dreams, preferences, fears, doubts, and life experiences without the overwhelming influence of a non-fictional individual.

Corinth, however, was a much harder character to develop. As a medical student in the early 2000s myself, it was more difficult to distance my own character traits from hers. Like Corinth, I battled low self-confidence and uncertainty during those formative years, and I wanted to reflect those struggles in Corinth’s character without simply reflecting who I was twenty years ago. I wanted a character that was without a doubt not me, so that I could create space to write as honestly as possible. I intentionally imbued Corinth with character traits that were different from my own, and forced her to make choices I never would have made in order to distance her from the influence of my own personality.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

The biggest lows for me as a writer are rejections, which I received a slew of in my quest to find an agent. Naturally, there are only nos, and lots of them, before receiving the long-awaited yes. A handful of those rejections, the kindest ones, came as politely curt emails. However, most were no reply at all. The non-answer of silence stung and made the eight-month process of querying agents demoralizing. My high occurred when my novel was chosen from the slush pile (it does happen!) by literary agent, Heather Carr. Another high was my experience working with both her and my editor, Margaret Kelly. Their editorial recommendations were top notch, and they were the best cheerleaders, offering incredible moral support to me as a first-time author.

  

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Pay attention. A writer’s job is to notice, to see connections in the world that others might not, to observe details, to listen closely to the cadence of natural conversation, to closely observe the habits and mannerisms of the people around us. I once had a teacher, poet Nickole Brown, who asked the class to observe an apple for ten minutes. We looked at every detail—the varied shades and texture of its skin, its shape, its weight. We were invited to taste it too. She asked us to smell the base of the apple, that part of the fruit with the strongest scent, the spot where it had grown from the tree’s aromatic flower, something none of us had ever done. Nickole’s exercise was a lesson in mindful attention. Writers need to view the world with eyes that are both curious and discerning. We must pay attention, which is even more important now in the distracted age of screens and smartphones. We need to collect the particulars and idiosyncrasies that color the world so we can tell a story with details that will hook and enchant our readers and hopefully offer them a fresh perspective.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

Throughout the book, both characters trudge through multiple downtrodden moments. They suffer periods of depression and experience heartbreaking betrayal, but, despite not planning it during my pre-write, both women also manage to find moments of agency. As I wrote, I realized that the human character, whether fictional or not, always strives toward self-preservation, empowerment, and hope.

 

 How did you find the title of your book?

 

My novel, But For Fortune, stems from the idea that each person, given a different set of circumstances, whether familial support, socioeconomic status, or place of birth, could lead a very different life. The novel explores the idea that despite our best efforts, any number of variables might upend good intentions.

 

My dad was a fan of 1960s folk music, and one of his favorite singers was Joan Baez. As a kid, I remember listening to her version of Phil Ochs’s song, “There But For Fortune,” on the dashboard tape deck while my dad drove me to and from church and school, on errands, and on family road trips. The song taught me at an early age that nothing in life can be taken for granted. The lyrics reminded me that it’s by luck I didn’t live in a war-torn country or that I wasn’t the person sleeping in an alley in the rain. The song’s refrain There but for fortune, go you and I was so formative to my worldview that it inspired the title of my novel and continues to inform a practice of gratitude and empathy.

  

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

A classic Appalachian meal is soup beans and cornbread. Soup beans, essentially pintos cooked with pork for flavoring, can be served with toppings like sliced onions or chow chow, as well as with sides like collard greens and fried potatoes. Personally, I don’t need the add-ons. I prefer my soup beans simple, with only a piece of cornbread crumbled into the thick broth so that it becomes more like a mush than a soup. My favorite cornbread recipe is from a woman who, though we weren’t related by blood, was a grandmother figure to me. I called her Miss Betty. She had the biggest, warmest heart—her home was always open and ready for company, she cleaned the church building in her spare time, she made the tastiest coleslaw and fried chicken, and she greeted me every time with a kiss on my cheek that left a pink imprint of lipstick behind. I was always delighted when I visited her and spotted a round loaf of cornbread on her kitchen counter whether it was still warm from the oven or left over from last night’s dinner. I have a printed recipe of her cornbread recipe, stained from my years of attempts to replicate it. There isn’t much measuring or precision to it: Add enough Mazola corn oil to cover the base of a cast iron skillet. Heat it until you see steam. Mix milk with cornmeal and flour until it looks like gravy, then pour it in the hot skillet. Transfer the skillet to the oven until the cornbread browns on top. I’ve had varying levels of success, but as much as I try, my cornbread never tastes quite as good as Miss Betty’s.

 

(A similar recipe can be found at: https://chunkyinkentucky.com/classic-southern-cornbread/)

  

*****

 

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.erinmillerreid.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:

https://www.kentuckypress.com/9781985904781/but-for-fortune/ 

OR

https://bookshop.org/p/books/but-for-fortune-erin-miller-reid/7da4e552f86f2531?ean=9781985904781&next=t

 

 

 

 

TBR: Tracks in Snow by Thaddeus Rutkowski

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books. 

  

We don’t expect an elevator pitch from a poet, but can you tell us about your work in 2-3 sentences?

 

Tracks in Snow is a collection of lyric poems inspired by my life as a biracial child in northern Appalachia and later as an adult in New York. The poems focus on themes of alienation versus belonging, closeness to nature, parenthood, and aging. Each poem contains telling details—the flapping of a bird’s wing, the sound of a mantra, the smell of charcoal briquettes—and a conceptual twist on the subject.

 

Which poem/s did you most enjoy writing? Why? And which poem/s gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

I most enjoyed writing the poems that have a strong sense of play. I’m aware of the shifting meanings of words, my method is a sort of systematic free association. For example, in the opening poem, “My Mother’s Name,” I look at my mother’s last name, Wang. It’s a surname in both Chinese and Scandinavian. The Chinese Wang can mean “king.” The Scandinavian Wang is derived from the Norse Vang, meaning “meadow.” Then there is the assonant Lang or Liang, which in Norse means “tall.” My mother and I cannot have that name because we are not tall people.

 

I also like to find the unexpected in the predictable. In the poem “Activist,” for example, a couple of young women try to prevent the clearing of trees next to New York’s East River. I learn that one of them usually wears a deer’s head when she protests, but she is not wearing it on this day because she doesn’t want to lose it. The women are detained and put into a police car as “guys in fluorescent vests” approach the trees with chainsaws. But the women aren’t daunted: They “saved four trees.”

 

What was most difficult was writing about loss. This can mean a response to the loss of a person, or it can be a feeling of emptiness or loneliness. When I took on my brother’s passing in a poem titled “Where My Brother Went,” I began with a question from our young daughter: “Where is he now?” I couldn’t answer that question, so I let her answer it. She says, after seeing his ashes scattered in the ocean, “He’s with the whales and dolphins.”

           

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

The main task was assembling the manuscript. I had a week at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts a couple of years ago and used that time to go through a number of poems. I kept the ones that seemed the strongest and put aside the weakest. I ended up with seventy poems, which I arranged in roughly chronological order. I ended up with a more or less unified manuscript.

 

I don’t have an agent, so finding a publisher was like shooting in the dark. I happened to see a submissions call from Finishing Line Press, which had declined an earlier manuscript of mine. I was surprised the publisher accepted this book. That was definitely a high. Then began at least of year of gathering blurbs, photos, and cover art; announcing presales; waiting for proofs; etc.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

My background is in fiction writing (I’ve published five books of prose, three of poetry). My graduate-school teacher John Barth said that you should have a baseline story. You can improvise and riff off that baseline, but you should always come back to the foundation.

 

My own advice is to do as many writing-related things as you can: Take workshops, attend readings, go to conferences, reside at colonies. Do these things in addition to sitting at your desk. If you increase your connections, and your chances, something is bound come through.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

Each poem offered a surprise in the form of a new perception or understanding. The way I came to that result was through trial and error. That’s a simple way of putting it. I have some experience and purpose, and brought those to the process.

 

On a larger scale, the surprise was that all of these individual poems added up to something. What they formed was a picture of lifetime that is not so unusual, but that is filled with lived moments.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

I found the title of the book through childhood memories of identifying animals by the tracks they left in snow. I could recognize the tracks of deer, rabbits, squirrels, birds. . . . That led to a poem, “Tracks in Snow,” on why a squirrel came to my family’s door and left, probably because it couldn’t open the door and find food.

 

The title of this book also follows the title of my previous book of poetry: Tricks of Light. The two titles have the same meter, and “Tricks” and “Tracks” almost rhyme.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

I’ve been making this salad lately, served with garlic bread:

 

Spicy Summer Pasta Salad (from allrecipies.com)

 

Ingredients

2 cups rotelle pasta

¼ cup olive oil

¼ cup red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons chili powder

1 teaspoon dried parsley

1 green bell pepper, chopped

1 red bell pepper, chopped

1 large tomato, chopped

1 cup shredded mozzarella

 

Directions

Step 1

Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain.

Step 2

In a large bowl, whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, chili powder and parsley. Add the peppers and tomatoes and stir to coat. Add the pasta and mozzarella and toss until evenly coated. Chill until ready to serve

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.thaddeusrutkowski.com

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS PUBLISHER: https://finishinglinepress.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK:

https://finishinglinepress.com/product/tracks-in-snow-by-thaddeus-rutkowski/

 

READ A POEM, “A Moment,” FROM THIS BOOK:

https://mantis.stanford.edu/thaddeus-rutkowski

 

 

 

TBR: Good Company by Kate Christensen

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books. 

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

Okay, here are three (it’s very hard to boil it down): A middle-aged, midlist novelist named Julia Heimdahl spends a weekend at a literary festival at Baldwin College, her alma mater, to promote her memoir. She’s on a panel with a fawning, unctuously charming fellow first-time memoirist, a literary biographer named Ellis Blackwell. Her alliance with Ellis threatens her hard-won stability, and excerpts from her memoir interspersed with the present narrative illuminate exactly why he’s particularly dangerous for Julia; simultaneously, she’s forced to reckon with the past as it intersects with the present.

 

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why? And which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

I had the most fun creating Ellis Blackwell. I seem to have a troublesome soft spot for men who hate women—in fact, that is exactly what Good Company is about, my own complicity in misogyny. I enjoy inhabiting the point of view of horrible men because I understand them so deeply, I’ve studied them so closely, the dialogue writes itself. My survival, I thought when I was younger, was predicated on winning their approval. Good Company turns this idea on its head and explodes it.

 

The hardest character for me to write was Lexi/Alex Shapiro, a composite of women I’ve known in my life, women I’ve been deeply attracted to both sexually and emotionally. I think that Alex was complicated for me primarily because of my own largely unexpressed queerness, which has been largely latent all my life. Creating this character meant not only facing the attraction but acknowledging the reasons it has stayed underground: fear; internalized misogyny; and an innate conventionality, a kind of homophobia. Writing about all this made me sad, but it also ultimately felt bracing and clarifying.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

I conceived of this novel in the summer of 2024, when I was teaching in the summer graduate program at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. I had written a story based on a passionate, complicated friendship I’d formed when I was a student there in the 1980s with a woman I call Norah who died when we were in our early 50s, estranged for many years. I chose that story for my faculty reading. The audience’s response was unlike any I’d ever had before after a reading: electric, excited, buzzing. Normally any enthusiasm was muted: this was a roar. They asked, “When is this book coming out?” And I realized over the next few days, thinking about it, that this was in fact part of a book, and that the book was going to play with time and memory and identity.

 

There haven’t been any lows (yet): my editor at HarperCollins, Sara Nelson, bought the manuscript and gave me incredibly helpful edits, and the book’s road to publication has been smooth (so far). But internally, I’ve undergone a long inward reckoning with what I’ve written. Good Company contains many hard truths, many levels of exposure, and a lot of difficult subject matter. It’s a raw, honest book, and it was galvanizing to write—but now that it’s emerging into the world for people to actually read if they want to (and I hope they do want to), I’ve had to overcome my terror and fear. Actually, I haven’t entirely overcome it. But that’s just the price you pay for telling the truth.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

This is something I tell my writing students over and over: you can only write like yourself. Your authentic voice is the only one you have. Banish the anxiety of influence. Don’t try to be someone else, don’t try to be “great.” It won’t work. It never works. Trust your gut, let yourself tell the truth, give yourself permission to write “badly” (meaning authentically), and always remember: no one is watching you.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

I was surprised by how inevitable this novel’s form felt while I was writing it, how necessary, apt, and urgent. Inspired by Heidi Julavits’s brilliant memoir, “The Folded Clock,” I wanted this book to take a structural risk with temporal sleight of hand, simultaneously spanning both a weekend and a lifetime. I wondered if would work and was prepared to fail. But to my surprise, not only did it strike me as right and organic while I was writing it, but this strategy also felt inevitable. Every time I finished a chapter in the novel’s present, the next memoir excerpt presented itself as the obvious next step.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

I chose the title “Good Company” because it’s something a certain kind of man has called me since I was a teenager. I used to see it as a badge of pride: I was good company! That meant I was fun, easygoing, a good sport, smart, sexy, and—most importantly—not a killjoy.

 

But then, when I started getting older and wiser, I saw the term for what it really is: a misogynistic, backhanded compliment that’s actually a means of keeping me under control. The book is about my own complicity for much of my life in trying to please such men, to win them over. And the title is meant to be loud and clear: no more.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book?

 

All the rest of my books are filled with food. Some of them are literal food books. But this one… for the first and only time, no food.

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.katechristensen.net

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://bookshop.org/p/books/good-company-a-novel-kate-christensen/3995fff9ebeeb831?ean=9780063464315&next=t

 

 

 

 

TBR: The Island of Ghost Ships by Jamy Bond

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?  

 

After my sister, Shelby, is killed in a car crash while serving in the Peace Corps, I travel to Mozambique to locate her boyfriend, Idasse, who survived the crash. Together we retrace Shelby’s steps across a landscape of memory and loss. Part memoir, part investigative journey, The Island of Ghost Ships navigates the wreckage of grief through a series of short essays and a central haunting narrative.

 

 

Which essay did you most enjoy writing? Why? Which was the most difficult?

 

Writing about grief is very cathartic for me; it’s a way of processing emotional pain, so I guess I felt that kind of enjoyment while writing every essay in this collection. “Your Broken Hands,” however, was the most difficult to write. It is a letter to my sister’s friend who fell asleep at the wheel. The car accident didn’t just kill my sister, it killed his father, too, and gravely injured his sister. I've felt every emotion toward him from rage to compassion to forgiveness. I know it was devastating for him, and I often wonder how he carried on and where he is today. In that essay, I had to take all of these emotions and funnel them into just a few poignant words. That is the beauty and the challenge of the short form: how to convey enormous things through a single image, sentence, phrase, or word.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication. 

 

Oh gosh, where to start. I began this book about 20 years ago when I was awarded a Fulbright scholar grant to spend a year in Mozambique researching and writing about my sister’s death. Based on just a handful of pages, I ‘d signed with an agent, and she had a high-level editor at Knopf interested in the book. It was a lot of pressure. On top of the pressure, I was still drowning in grief over losing my sister and learning new details every day about the crash that killed her. Every sentence I wrote was painful. When I completed a page I’d get up and jump rope 100 times. I was in excellent shape by the end of it! The Knopf editor passed on the book. My agent sent it to dozens and dozens of publishing houses and they all passed. We’d get glowing letters about how wonderful the writing is, how moving the story, but in the end it was “too hard to sell.” I was devastated. I put the manuscript away for a long time. Then I pulled it out and started cutting huge chunks and reshaping what was left. I asked the amazing Meg Pokrass to help me expand it again, because I was still in this mindset that it had to be longer, but she said, “I think it’s beautiful as it is, just submit it,” So I did and a few months later Finishing Line Press accepted it.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

It comes from Richard Bausch. Read your work out loud. It’s the single most important thing I’ve ever learned about writing. I do it a gazillion times with everything I write. It trains your ear to hear where even the smallest edit (a word, a comma, a period) will improve the clarity, refine the prose, and perfect the lyrical rhythm of your sentences. I do it so much that I can almost recite every one of my pieces from memory.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

There’s one piece, “Shipwrecked,” where time is compressed into a kaleidoscopic reality. I was surprised by how effective this technique can be at capturing both the feeling of my sister being gone forever, and the feeling I often have that she’s come back to me in form of my daughter. Time, of course, is a construct, and emotions know nothing about its passing, especially in the case of grief. Still, the details of an experience can blur and change and give way to new definitions: Here I am walking through a game park in South Africa with my sister, and here I am walking through a field of bluebells in Virginia with my daughter. There are 25 years between those two experiences and yet, they are happening simultaneously.  

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

The book’s title, The Island of Ghost Ships, comes from something my sister said to me when we were visiting Catembe, which is an island in Maputo Bay off the coast of Mozambique. This was before they had built the suspension bridge that now connects the island to Maputo and we had to take a ferry to get there. As we pulled in to dock, we saw the wreckage of a ship and a few small boats in the sand. It was strange to see these abandoned pieces of history glistening there in the bright sun. We invented stories about where these boats had started their journey, who they carried, why they were left there to rot. And my sister said, “Welcome to the Island of Ghost Ships where even decay can be beautiful.”

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

Yes! I’m so happy for this question. Rissois de Camarão is a small cream and shrimp pastry that was brought to Mozambique and Cape Verde from Portugal through colonization. It is so delicious. My sister and I ate loads of them every single day when I was visiting. When I moved there for the Fulbright grant, the Portuguese mother of a friend in my group taught me how to make them.  Here’s the recipe.

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://www.jamybond.com/

 

ORDER THIS BOOK (preorders* are available now, and are VERY helpful to authors and small presses): https://finishinglinepress.com/product/the-island-of-ghost-ships-by-jamy-bond/ *Price discount through 7/10/26

 

READ AN ESSAY INCLUDED IN THIS BOOK, “Your Broken Hands,” originally published as “Prayer for the Living”:  https://pitheadchapel.com/prayer-for-the-living/

 

FIND THE AUTHOR ON SUBSTACK: https://substack.com/@jamy007

TBR: How to Disappear and Why by Kyle Minor

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.  

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

These essays are interested in all varieties of disappearance: Voluntary, involuntary, coerced, professional, intellectual, transcendent, mortal. Ghosts of dead friends, driving Uber after Hollywood work dried up, narcissism in writers, social class and upward mobility, the Polish diplomat Jan Karski who failed to stop the Holocaust, folk art and synesthesia and transcendence, Bernard Moitessier and c. diff. and the sickness that might find its way into our song.

 

Which essay did you most enjoy writing? Why?

 

The real pleasure was writing “Junk Temples,” a novella-length essay-in-digressions toward the end of the book that is intensely interested in the notion of transcendence in art and the idea of how we make temples out of all kinds of things, including junk, and ascribe elevated meaning to them. I got to visit the folk artist Howard Finster’s Paradise Gardens, a couple of acres of his life’s work in junk collage and painting on everything, which is located right across the street from a state prison, and in a neighborhood full of Rottweilers chained to rickety stakes in every other front yard. And I got to spend time in the work of Henry Darger, who left behind one of the largest books ever assembled, which has at its center a phalanx of Charmin-girl angels with penises fighting a Civil War in some kind of troubled heaven. And I got to think about the nature of love and forgetting and music and books alongside Susan Sontag and William Goyen and a lot of poets, all through an overlay of synesthetic color and light.

 

 And which essay gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

The most difficult essay was the one at the end, “The Sickness and the Song,” which is an attempt at a personal reckoning with what art and writing are for, and how narcissism distorts, and what matters in life, even if you are chasing art. I was thinking about an around-the-world boat race in which the Frenchman Bernard Moitessier was in the lead, but he quit because the sailing—the water, the wind, the sky, the fish—had come to matter more than the race.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

I injured my brain a little playing hockey, and for a little while I had some trouble reading. Then I got sad. Then there were some complications with clearing permissions. The book was a little late to press. By then, the world had changed again, and it started to mean new things it hadn’t meant when I wrote it. Maybe it was for the best.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Quit this shit and go to medical school, so you can make enough money to eat.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

I think I might have found a path out of despair and into hope.

 

Who is your ideal reader?

 

You.

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK: http://sarabandebooks.org/

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:  https://shop.skylarkbookshop.com/search?q=how%20to%20disappear%20and%20why

 

READ AN ESSAY FROM THIS BOOK, “The Uber Diaries”:  https://newohioreview.org/2019/10/02/the-uber-diaries/ 

 

 

 

 

 

TBR: Echoes Carry by Serena Agusto-Cox

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.  

 

We don’t expect an elevator pitch from a poet, but can you tell us about your work in 2-3 sentences?

 

Echoes Carry is a collection throughout which familial and ancestral echoes weave through each poem in subtle and stark ways. It raises the question of how much we are influenced by our families and friends, including ancestors or distant relatives we’ve never met face-to-face. Tangentially, it seeks to understand the connections humans have with one another.

 

What boundaries did you break in the writing of this book? Where does that sort of courage come from?

 

I wouldn’t say I’ve broken any boundaries per se, but I wanted to create a collection that could speak to readers, not just academic readers. I wanted my audience to see the possibilities in their own lives and the connections they may have to family, friends, ancestors, without really knowing that their influence has been present since the beginning. It’s something I’ve thought a lot about. The human condition and where we get the impulse to choose one action or feeling over another and how much of that can be nature and how much can be nurtured. Even things that seem unique to us, like writing poems, can be something that our ancestors did before us, and we may never know. The possibilities are endless.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

The high is seeing a print copy in a box that you open at your house with your child videotaping the unboxing. Yes, I did this social media craze. Why? Because I want to share that joy, if not with the internet world, at least with my child. Definitely a fun moment: videotaping goofy mom. The lows are the length of time between when you’ve finally got the manuscript where you want it and you send it out over and over and over ad nauseum to places that reject it. You have to put your energy into another creative project or that process will depress you.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

I think Billy Collins once said, “Write the poem only you can write.” That’s probably the best advice you can have with regard to poetry. But I’ve also taken Stephen King’s advice to heart about manuscripts. In On Writing, he mentioned that manuscripts should have a period of rest in a drawer. I believe he says six weeks, but sometimes, my poetry manuscripts have needed far longer than six weeks.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

It wasn’t the writing that surprised me or the collection of poems or the ordering of poems. What surprised me was the fun I had creating a book cover on Canva. Yes, I had help with the design, but the vision is all mine. I loved that creative part of the process. It was unexpected. Thinking about all the possibilities suggested by others and by the publisher, but knowing what I wanted to see and then being able to create it was the biggest surprise.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

The title of the book is a modification of a line in one of the poems. I’ll leave that mystery for readers to uncover.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

Food is everywhere in this book, and you might find part of a recipe in the collection.

 

*****

 

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://savvyverseandwit.com/

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS PUBLISHER:
Here's the publisher's website: https://www.beltwayeditions.com/new-releases/echoes-carry

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://amzn.to/4kBoBsM or https://bookshop.org/p/books/echoes-carry-serena-agusto-cox/e70f1a6b6a9abb6f?ean=9781957372204&next=t

 

READ THIS AUTHOR’S SUBSTACK: https://savvyverseandwit.substack.com/