Celebrate Small Press Month with APRIL

Seattle’s annual springtime celebration of independent literature is again upon us, offering a stupefying assortment of small press things to do.  Last year’s festivities included a veggie potluck and reading at Pilot Books, a chapbook making workshop at Scenic Drive Factory, and an evening of live poetry from Copper Canyon Press, among other activities.  This year, though the name may be different (SPF has become APRIL: Authors, Publishers, and Readers of Independent Literature), the calendar is just as jam-packed. Yessir, the sun is out, the air is warm, and a rose by any other name most certainly smells as sweet… Take a look!

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Friday, March 23: HOARSE Issue 6 Release Party: UNDERCOVER, at the Electric Tea Garden, Doors at 6:30 p.m., show at 7:30 p.m.

The 6th release of HOARSE will be filled with surprises, disguises, and song.

Event to include select readings from the latest issue and local bands including LAKE, Blue Light Curtain, and Tenderfoot rocking some top-secret cover songs. There are no visible signs for the Electric Tea Garden (they are, literally, undercover, and the secret backdoor entrance is located on 14th Ave. The space is small and may fill up, so show up early in your best trench coat. Entry for this event is $5 at the door—cash only. Issue 6 will be available for $9.

Saturday, March 24: [PANK] Invasion, at Kaleidoscope Vision, 7 p.m.

APRIL is proud to work with [PANK], recently lauded as one of the ten best literary magazines in the country by the New York Times Magazine, on a reading bonanza. Poetry and prose from Erik Evenson, Jeffrey Morgan, M. Bartley Seigel, Summer Robinson, Gregory Laynor, Morris Stegosaurus w/ Fiddleback, & friends.

Sunday, March 25: Chapbook-making workshop at ZAPP (the Richard Hugo House), 2 p.m.

Enjoy a crafty/bookish Sunday at one of the city’s finest repositories of all things DIY. Led by Amber Nelson, of Alice Blue Review, learn how to bind your own chapbooks, and get inspiration from decades of handmade literature.

Monday, March 26: A Poet, a Playwright and a Drag Queen, 8 p.m. in the Sorrento Hotel’s Fireside Room

A competitive storytelling event with an emphatic twist. Author Debra Di Blasi (Drought), playwright Mallery Avidon, and the incomparable Jackie Hell receive a secret theme, which they’ll use to create an original, 7-10 minute piece. A jury of three randomly selected audience members will select the winner, who will receive a sash, a cash prize, and probably something covered in gold spray paint. Tickets are $7 at the door—cash only.

Tuesday, March 27: Paper and Words at Cullom Gallery, 7 p.m.

A reading curated by Pilot Books’ Summer Robinson, featuring original books arts curated by Sharon Alexander. Heather Folsom, author of Philosophie Thinly Clothed and other books, will read. Artists Martine Workman, Garek Druss, Jesse Lortz and Alexander will have work on display.

Wednesday, March 28: A Jello Horse at the Hedreen Gallery, 8 p.m.

An evening of music, multimedia and a reading from Seattle’s own Matthew Simmons.

Matthew Simmons is the author of A Jello Horse. He is the editor of interviews at Hobart Literary Journal and is a regular contributor to HTMLGiant. In addition to the reading, there will be a screening of the short film “Powder House (2011),” written by Molly Gallentine and directed by Brandon Covey, and musical performance by Levi Fuller, who makes and compiles music – often inspired by books – in Seattle, Washington.

Thursday, March 29: Readings from Ryan Call and Chelsea Martin, 8 p.m. at Porchlight Coffee and Records

A night of readings from two of independent literature’s brightest young talents. Ryan Call is the author of The Weather Stations. His stories appear in Mid-American Review, New York Tyrant, Conjunctions, Annalemma, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award. He teaches English and coaches cross-country at a high school in Houston.

Chelsea Martin is the author of Everything Was Fine Until Whatever and the forthcoming Kramer Sutra. She contributes to HTMLGiant and runs Universal Error.

Friday, March 30: Seattle LitCrawl, starting 7:30 p.m. at Bluebird Microcreamery and Brewery on Pike, with further locations TBA.

An evening of readings scattered throughout Capitol Hill, featuring Stacey Levine, Doug Nufer, Paulette Gaudet, Diana Salier, Kate Lebo, Jamey Braden von Mooter, Greg Bem, Sarah Galvin and Ed Skoog. Organized in collaboration with Seattle’s PageBoy Magazine.

Saturday, March 31 — Recto Verso: an Independent Press Expo, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. at the Richard Hugo House

Dozens of the finest small presses from the Northwest and beyond converge on the epicenter of Seattle’s literary world for a one-of-a-kind book fair. Book-buyers’ best chance to see a bevy of small press books rarely seen on bookstore shelves. The first twenty people get a free APRIL tote bag. Readings throughout the day in the Hugo House Theater. The Hugo House bar will be open.

Closing Party, 8 p.m. at Vermillion Art Gallery and Bar

Come close out APRIL with fine drink and hobnobbing. No readings—just good folks, plenty of booze, and maybe some embarrassing pictures projected on the wall.

Check out APRIL‘s calendar for more info.

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Cheryl Strayed Gets Wild on Thursday, March 22nd at 7 pm

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Great anticipation is in the air for this visit by Portland writer Cheryl Strayed. The author of an award-winning novel, Torch, a few years ago, she is here now with Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (Knopf), a captivating, inspiring memoir of her solo trek down the Pacific Coast Trail as a young woman—impulsively, as some form of response to immense calamity that had befallen her. “While reading Cheryl Strayed’s stunning book about her arduous solo journey along the Pacific Crest Trail, I kept asking myself—what would I do if I were stripped of everything—money, job, community, even family and love? Thoreau once said, ‘In wildness is the preservation of the world.’ For Strayed, it is clear that in wildness was the preservation of her soul. She reminds us, in her lyrical and courageous memoir Wild, of what it means to be fully alive, even in the face of catastrophe, physical and psychic hardship and loss.” – Mira Bartok. “This is a beautifully made, utterly realized book.” – Pam Houston.

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If you can’t make it to the reading, give us a call at (206) 624-6600 to reserve your autographed copy today.

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Spring Booknotes from our Staff – Memoir and Essay

The Lifespan of a Fact
by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal (Norton)

Is it acceptable for a writer of non-fiction to alter the facts of an article in order to make it more readable? After an essay written by John D’Agata had been accepted for publication by The Believer magazine, it was handed over to one of their fact checkers, Jim Fingal. This book is the correspondence between the two men over a period of seven years. It includes the original essay plus their correspondence, which is often terse, passive-aggressive, and amusing. The book itself is short (a mere 123 pages) and worthy of long table-pounding, fist-pumping discussions on the ethics of journalism. -Jillian

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The Guardians: An Elegy
by Sarah Manguso (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

The life of Harris—close friend to writer and poet Sarah Manguso—could read like so many faceless deaths of the mentally ill: after years of suffering from schizophrenic breakdowns for much of his adult life, Harris finally surrendered in a violent, public way. In The Guardians, Manguso pulls her beloved friend from the obscurity of “an unidentified white man” with this personal and moving elegy. Writing with the distinct gifts of a poet, she introduces us to her friend as she knew him and illustrates the oftentimes inadequate ways we have of expressing love and the “insufficiency of explanation.” -Molly

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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
by Jeanette Winterson (Grove)

Winterson’s semi-autobiographical novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, told the story of a young girl’s abusive childhood dominated by a fanatical, Pentecostal, adoptive mother with a special fondness for the Apocalypse. This memoir, written twenty-seven years later, fleshes out the details of those harrowing early years and leads us through the breakdowns and breakthroughs of the second chapter of her life. In her boldest stroke, Winterson, determined to vanquish the ever present shadow of her early abandonment, embarks on a quest to find her birth mother. This is a gripping, fierce, and deeply moving memoir of a woman in search of her own truth. -Laurie

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The Mountain and the Fathers
by Joe Wilkins (Counterpoint)

Joe Wilkins grew up in a water-starved stretch of eastern Montana known as the Big Dry. With his new book, he returns to the unforgiving landscape of his youth in a series of wistful vignettes culled from vivid, often violent childhood memories.  The Mountain and the Fathers is a wonderfully rendered portrait of starkly beautiful rural life and a haunting search for what it means to be a man in the American West. Wilkins is a poet; his eye for detail is clear and he writes with the narrative grace of high lonesome prairie wind. -Matthew

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Booknotes, the newsletter of The Elliott Bay Book Company, is written entirely by bookstore staff. It represents a sampling of recently published books that we have enjoyed reading. We appreciate every opportunity to assist in finding books to meet your interests.

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Spring Booknotes from our Staff – Fiction

By Blood
by Ellen Ullman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

In 1970s San Francisco, a neurotic middle-aged professor rents a small office as he awaits investigation for improper behavior. Discovering he can hear conversations from the psychiatrist’s office next door, he becomes obsessed with one particular patient, a young lesbian, adopted, and anguished about finding her real mother. He decides to become involved researching her possible history, falsifying papers, perpetuating the belief that she was born a Jew and relinquished at the end of the war by a woman now living in Israel. Intense and compelling, this psychological drama, haunted by stories of the Holocaust, is as atmospheric as the foggy, eccentric city in which it is set. -Erica

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Drifting House
by Krys Lee (Viking)

Postwar era Koreans and Korean Americans, living in the old country and the new, reinvent themselves in surprising ways in the face of loss, catastrophe, love, and changing families in Krys Lee’s debut short story collection, Drifting House. Alternately spooky, touching, realistic, and fantastical, Lee’s work invites readers to re-examine preconceptions of home, affection, return, and belonging, reflecting on the reach of mothers and motherland as family members move on, die, and are reborn. -Karen

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The Loss Library and Other Unfinished Stories
by Ivan Vladislavic
illus. by Sunandini Banerjee (Seagull Books)

From its base in Calcutta, India, Seagull Books has been winning increased notice for its beautiful books and commitment to literary excellence. The publication of South African writer Ivan Vladislavic’s new book stands out for reasons above and beyond; these linked pieces ruminate on stories and books, primarily on pieces not written–abandoned, set aside, let go. How the loss of these unwritten worlds is to be comprehended is made manifest in exquisite form here, with both Vladislavic’s elegiac writing and brilliant collages by designer Sunandini Banerjee. A book for those who love books–real, physical books–and where they take us. -Rick

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The Mirage
by Matt Ruff (HarperCollins)

Imagine that the United States is not a superpower but an antagonistic rogue state. Seattle author Matt Ruff takes you on an intense and brilliantly plotted journey into this new reality, a fun-house mirror world in which the United Arab States wield the political and military might, and the US is an occupied terror state responsible for the destruction of the Tigris and Euphrates World Trade Towers on 11/9/2001. A war on terror rages, and Christianity, not Islam is the religion shrouded in suspicion. Ruff has forged a mind-bending portrait of a world gripped by fear where nothing is as it seems. -Casey S.

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Booknotes, the newsletter of The Elliott Bay Book Company, is written entirely by bookstore staff. It represents a sampling of recently published books that we have enjoyed reading. We appreciate every opportunity to assist in finding books to meet your interests.

Read Full Post »