Lookout Books

a haven for books that matter

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A New Blog

You may have noticed recently that Lookout’s blog has been including news from our sister magazine, Ecotone. We’ve been working hard behind the scenes to develop a new blog to feature our family of publications, contributors, and authors, and we’ve gotten a jump start here. In August, coinciding with the launch of the magazine’s tenth-anniversary issue, Ecotone will move to a new virtual home, and the Lookout + Ecotone blog will be born. We’re excited to welcome you to the new site and blog. Stay tuned!

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What We’re Reading: The AWP Edition

The annual AWP conference, held this year April 8–11 in Minneapolis, featured more than 700 exhibitors, making it the nation’s largest pop-up bookstore for independent literary presses and magazines. In this edition of What We’re Reading, four savvy Lookout staffers pick the books that caught their attention this year. (Read on, and you just might detect a pattern: compelling cover + dynamic author reading + good story behind the book = sale.)

A Girl is a Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride

I was first intrigued by Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-formed Thing because of the title. Then I saw the cover, and my curiosity increased. Then I heard the story behind the story: McBride, at twenty-seven, had written this daring, difficult, Joycean novel in just six months, and spent the next nine years searching for a publisher. Then I passed the Coffee House Press table and saw it again—the wonderful title and alluring cover now representing a glowing success of art over industry—and opened to the first sentence, which is, of course: “For you.” —Anna Coe

 Hum by Jamaal May 

Friends had suggested Hum to me, but like with most books, I’d not gotten around to reading it. Then, I attended a panel on poetic extremes and emotion—love and ecstasy, violence and agony, a poet’s favorite things—because Nick Flynn and Tarfia Faizullah were on it, and I’d waited a long time to hear them read. Though I didn’t know when I arrived that Jamaal May was also on this panel, two lines into his first poem, I was hooked. He was such a dynamic reader and compelling speaker that, after the panel, I immediately headed to the Alice James Books booth to buy Hum. (I was not the only person who did this.) I started reading it on the plane home, and I’ve been thinking about it all week. —Katie Prince

The lovely Kate McMullen models our AWP bounty.

Minnow by James E. McTeer II 

I made a point of checking out the Hub City Writers Project table, since the organization is cool and innovative—with a bookshop and press attached. I’d read some of the early reviews for Minnow, including Ben Fountain’s blurb, in which he called it “a gorgeous fever dream of a novel.” That description, plus the stunning cover design, were enough to convince me buy it just in time for summer. —Bethany Tap

 Man V. Nature by Diane Cook 

My first event of AWP featured David James Poissant, Claire Vaye Watkins, Diane Cook, Ethan Rutherford, and Ben Stroud (many of whom are also Ecotone contributors), reading from their debut story collections. Each excerpt was wonderful—often both comical and poignant. Diane Cook‘s story “It’s Coming,” from which she read, is not only funny, but also dark and strange. Her deadpan delivery of it and her advice to “follow the weird” when writing sent me directly to the Harper Perennial booth to pick up a copy. The stories in Man V. Nature are full of subtle turns and masterful craft. I can’t wait to dig into the rest of the collection. —Kate McMullen

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Seven Questions with Quail Ridge Books

This week on our virtual road trip, we’re visiting Quail Ridge Books just up the road in Raleigh, NC. Since 1984, Quail Ridge has served readers across the Triangle and beyond with its thoughtful selection of books, author events, and book clubs, as well as a sumptuous rack of literary magazines! Their knowledgeable and friendly staff is always eager to help customers.

Helen Stewart, who generously answered our questions, has been the floor manager at Quail Ridge Books & Music for an impressive twenty years. As she reminded us, “What other job would have given me the chance to meet Jimmy Carter, Madeleine Albright, Rick Atkinson, Rick Bragg, and Pat Conroy!”

Quail Ridge’s author portrait gallery, a.k.a. their famous bathroom

What are some of the qualities that make Quail Ridge unique?

We have been in business for thirty-one years. We have a big atlas case of award-winning books with current and past winners of all major book awards—Pulitzer, Nobel, NBA, Edgar, etc. It's near the front of the store. We keep the current winners as well as the past winners in stock. And we have a fireplace! And big comfortable chairs!

Is there an anecdote that captures the spirit of the store?

Just a few weeks ago we had a couple get engaged here in the store. He came early and put a beautiful engagement ring in a copy of Pride & Prejudice that he bought and put back on the shelf. Then the couple came in together so she could get a copy of her favorite book, Pride & Prejudice. When she opened the book, she saw the ring and screamed with delight. We were all excited. We gave them a wedding planner and wished them well. They said they chose our bookstore because they wanted an interesting store with a lot of history! 

What book are you recommending most to customers right now?

I am going to start recommending The Wright Brothers by David McCullough, which is out this May. It has everything that history lovers want—a great personal story against the backdrop of history. McCullough even describes the books the brothers had in their house. Wilbur and Orville wrote to the Smithsonian Institute and got information on birds and flight. I absolutely love it.

What has been your best event in the store, and what made it successful? 

Jimmy Carter when he came for An Hour Before Daylight, his memoir about growing up. We had two thousand people that night! It was successful because he’s a former president, and also it was a really good book.

If you could open a bookstore anywhere in the world, where would it be?

Carmel, California—my mother-in-law lived there and we got to visit a lot.

If you could change one thing about a classic work of literature, what would it be?

Heathcliff and Cathy would live happily ever after.

What do you see as Quail Ridge’s role in the community?

To promote good books and to host good authors—from Pulitzer winners to high school writing contest winners.

Lightning Round

Coffee or tea?  tea

Hard cover or paperback? hard cover

Vowel or consonant? consonant

Highlight or underline? highlight

Bookmark or dog-ear? Bookmark!

Train or plane?  plane

Cake or pie? cake

Mountains or sea?  sea

Dog or cat?  dog

Thanks to Helen for answering our Seven Questions, and stay tuned for the next stop on our indie bookstore road trip.

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Lit News Roundup

We’re back from a fantastic week in Minneapolis for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs annual conference. Thanks to everyone who took our books home with you and subscribed to Ecotone. We especially enjoyed meeting readers at our Thursday evening mingle and talking with you during the panel discussions throughout the conference. 

Now that all 12,000+ of us have dispersed, we’re excited to continue the conversations virtually, and the Literary Hub, launched April 8, is the perfect gathering place. The featured daily content includes interviews with authors and cover designers, among others; and this week Ecotone 15 contributor Megan Mayhew Bergman and Musings editor Mary Laura Philpott discuss Southerners with a dark(ish) hearts, work ethic, and the fertile ground for storytelling between history and literature.

In other contributor news, Chantel Acevedo, whose story “Strange and Lovely” can be found in Ecotone 17, has a new novel, The Distant Marvels, out from Europa Editions. The Miami Herald offers this praise: “Toward the end of the novel, a character declares, ‘One day, you’ll look upon this moment, and all you have suffered in this war as a series of distant marvels, and it will only hurt a little to remember them.’ In The Distant Marvels, however, traumatic memories aren’t distant at all but resurface like long-buried shards of glass whose sharp edges never dull.“

After being surrounded by thousands of books and magazines at the AWP book fair this weekend, we’re excited to see these improbable libraries overcoming geographic, economic, and political challenges to bring books to eager audiences around the globe—even if it means ferrying those books down river by boat, or carrying them on a camel’s back!

Earlier this week In our interview series, Seven Questions, we continued our virtual tour to visit Hub City Bookshop in Spartanburg, SC. Manager Anne Waters let us in on all the hubbub about the store, which is also home to a thriving independent press and nonprofit arts organization. Join us next week when we swing by Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, NC. 

Finally, Ecotone contributor Paul Lisicky offered his Instagram followers a sneak peek at the layout for “Volcano,” his piece forthcoming in the pages of Ecotone’s tenth-anniversary issue. The Narrow Door, from which the excerpt is taken, is due out from our friends at Graywolf in 2016. (You’ll have to follow Paul to see it!)

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Seven Questions with Hub City

Next stop on our virtual road trip: Hub City Bookshop in Spartanburg, SC. Unique among the stores we visited, this store is also home to a thriving independent press and literary arts organization.

Founded in 1995 by a trio of writers who wanted to preserve a sense of place in their rapidly changing Southern city, the Hub City Writers Project hosts workshops and a summer writers conference, contributing to the vibrant literary scene in Spartanburg. The award-winning Hub City Press publishes high-quality works with an emphasis on the Southern experience. Celebrating their twentieth anniversary this year, they’ve included more than five hundred writers in sixty-six books, aided in renovating several historic buildings, and provided residencies and scholarships to emerging writers. The bookstore itself is the result of a renovation of the eighty-three-year-old Masonic Temple in Spartanburg’s blooming downtown.

Lookout’s publisher, Emily Louise Smith, was the organization’s inaugural writer-in-residence in 2006, and its deputy director, Meg Reid, was one of Lookout’s first, faithful staff members. All to say, we’re big fans of this organization and the terrific work they do.

We spoke with the charming Anne Waters, bookshop manager, to learn what all the hubbub’s about.

The Hub City crew, including founders John Lane and Betsy Teter (front and center) and Meg Reid, Anne Waters, Michel Stone, and Rachel Richardson

The happy recipients of a grant from James Patterson

What are some of the qualities that make Hub City Bookshop unique?

Hub City Bookshop is a non-profit bookstore operated by Hub City Writers Project, an advocacy organization that “cultivates readers and nurtures writers” through the work of a publishing house, a writers residency program, contests for emerging writers, workshops, educational programs, and summer camps.  

What book are you recommending most to customers right now?

Citizen by Claudia Rankine

Name a book you bought for its cover.

Honey from a Weed by Patience Gray

If you could adopt any fictional animal, which one would you choose and why?

Ralph Mouse from The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary because my son Eli would adore a motorcycle-driving companion

What emerging author or first book are you most excited about?

James E. McTeer II, author of the new novel Minnow

What do you see as Hub City Bookshop’s role in the community?

To be a community center where people gather to mingle, muse, and celebrate literature and writers!

Lightning Round:

Coffee or tea? coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon

Hard cover or paperback? paperback

Vowel or consonant? vowel

Highlight or underline? underline

Bookmark or dog-ear? dog-ear

Train or plane? train

Cake or pie? pie

Mountains or sea? mountains

Dog or cat?  cat

Thanks to Anne Waters for answering our questions and to UNCW alumna Rachel Richardson for the photos and awesome doodles! Stay tuned for the next stop on our indie bookstore road trip. 

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In the final installment of our three-week video series, we talk to Ecotone contributor Cary Holladay about place, travel, and risks in her writing. Read her beautiful story “Horse People” in Astoria to Zion: Twenty-Six Stories of Risk and Abandon from Ecotone's First Decade.

If you’re going to the AWP conference in Minneapolis this week, please stop by our tables (1018 & 1020) for great deals on books and magazine subscriptions. We’ll see you there!

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Lit News Roundup

Happy Friday! We’re gearing up for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference next week and looking forward to our Thursday evening mingle with Ecotone, the Common, Archipelago Books, New Directions, and the New York Review of Books. Please join us at Mackenzie's Scotch Pub in Minneapolis. 

If it’s your first conference, Bustle offers these tips for how to avoid literary burnout. Among them, locate your favorite lit mags and presses at the book fair in advance (we’ll be at tables 1018 & 1020 with the Ecotone crew) and keep an eye on Twitter for #AWP15 (and of course follow us: @lookoutbooks). 

Don’t miss the Lookout and Ecotone editorial team on the following panels:

Founding editor David Gessner But Seriously . . . Is It Time for More Humor in Environmental Writing? Friday, 4:30 p.m.

Publisher Emily Louise Smith Image Is Everything: Literary Magazines on Design, Friday, 4:30 p.m. Literary Publishing in the 21st Century, Saturday, 3 p.m.

Editor Anna Lena Phillips Ecotone at Ten: A Reading and Conversation Friday, 10:30 a.m.

Associate editor Beth Staples Pinning Editors Down: Lit Mag Fiction Editors Define What Works Friday, 9 a.m. 

If you get restless at the convention center and want to venture out, we suggest these lovely indie bookstore and restaurant pairings, recommended by the hometown Minneapolis team at Graywolf Press. From Birchbark Books (owned by Louise Erdrich) and The Kenwood, to Moon Palace Books and Peace Coffee, there’s a nearby bookstore and eatery to indulge every palate. 

Earlier this week, we revealed the cover of our forthcoming novel, Honey from the Lion, by Matthew Neill Null, as well as Matt’s new author website. Thanks to our crack design team, led by Anna Coe. You can now read an excerpt and the terrific advance praise for the book. Keep checking the website for forthcoming events, an author note, and the reading guide.

The gorgeous cover, illustrated by Alexander Heaton

In Ecotone author news, contributor Arna Bontemps Hemenway has won the prestigious 2015 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction. Read his story “A Self-Made Man” in issue 15.

Contributor Paula Meehan has won the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry. She will be reading in recognition of this award on April 24 in Saint Paul, MN. Meehan has a piece forthcoming in issue 19.

Finally, UNCW Presents delivered a van load of donated books to New Hanover Detention Facility on Wednesday, including the complete Lookout catalog, and we’re looking for other ways to share books within our community.

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Seven Questions for Parnassus Books

After returning from this year’s Winter Institute, where we met hundreds of dedicated booksellers from across the country, we decided to take a virtual road trip to learn more about their stores. For the next several weeks, our interview series, Seven Questions, will spotlight some of our favorites—including Parnassus Books, Quail Ridge Books, and Hub City Bookshop, among others. You just don’t find better people than the good folks who own and work at them.

The impressive book selection at Parnassus

Parnassus Books, which opened in 2011, is named after the sacred Grecian mountain known for its poetry, song, and knowledge. And the Nashville bookstore is indeed a home for literature and learning, with regular author readings and weekly story-time events for children. Co-owned by bestselling author Ann Patchett and publishing veteran Karen Hayes, the beautiful store offers an intimate and thoughtful selection of books.

When Lookout published its debut title, Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman, in 2011, Ann Patchett was generous enough to introduce it: “Say the words Edith Pearlman to certain enlightened readers,” she wrote, “and you are instantly acknowledged as an insider, a person who understands and appreciates that which is beautiful.” We’ve long admired Ann’s fierce advocacy for authors, books, and especially indie bookstores; and we couldn’t be happier that Parnassus continues to thrive. (Special thanks to Mary Laura Philpott, social media maven and editor of Parnassus’s blog, Musing, for arranging this interview, and to Catherine Bock for answering our questions.)

Catherine Bock is the special sales manager and office manager of Parnassus Books. She also manages the First Editions Club and says, “I really like the feedback I get from members—like when they tell me that they are having their whole book club read one of our picks. Being involved in picking the books is always a fun process too.”

Whenever someone orders a book online through the Parnassus website, Catherine Bock is the human being who processes that order—whether it's one book going out to one person or a shipment of more than three hundred books to members of our First Editions Club. She’s also the owner of Belle, one of our shop dogs. Catherine loves working at Parnassus because she’s constantly surrounded by books and people who love books. “It is so awesome to come in and have multiple people who can talk about what we just finished or what we are excited to read next,” she says. “I also love how our staff has such varied reading preferences. It pushes me to be a more diverse reader and to get out of genre ruts I would otherwise fall into.”

Name a book you bought for its cover.

In the Kingdom of Ice by Hampton Sides. I actually had read an advance copy already, but the finished book was so beautiful and the colors in the cover art were so rich and perfect for the book that I had to buy it. It didn’t hurt that the book was one of my favorites.

What do you see as Parnassus’s role in the community?

Nashville has long been a home for artistic people (be it literature, music, or visual art). Parnassus is a place where everyone who appreciates writing and books can gather. So, the community has always been here—Parnassus just gives people a physical, tangible place to go. Also, our events team and our partnerships with the Nashville Public Library and Humanities Tennessee (a regional nonprofit) allow us to engage with a wonderfully large audience and bring exciting authors to Nashville to meet readers. All that, and we just really love to recommend good books to people who like to read, which a lot of Nashvillians do.

Could you tell us an anecdote that captures the spirit of Parnassus?

We have a staff of shop dogs that come in to work with their humans. A lot of people think the dogs just live at the store, but they are actually pets of our employees. Belle is mine. Sparky, Opie, Bear, Gracie, and Belle are all the regulars, and Eleanor Roosevelt would make the sixth, if she could behave. But she sneaked out the front door after a customer and made a dash for the mall across the street one afternoon. Our inventory manager, Tristan, followed her across the busy four-lane road she crossed and brought her back. Now she mostly “works from home” at Mary Laura Philpott’s house. I think you could say that Eleanor Roosevelt’s free spirit and desire to go against the grain embody us in some way. You have to be a little crazy to be a bookseller!

Catherine reads with her dog, Belle, one of the many shop dogs at Parnassus.

What book are you recommending most to customers right now? 

One that I am constantly recommending to people is Anton DiSclafani’s The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls. It’s historical fiction that’s just a little bit steamy with this overhanging mystery that keeps you reading. I also just finished Mosquitoland by David Arnold, and it blew me away. It will be my beach read recommendation for everyone this summer.

What songs are on your store’s playlist?  

It depends on who is working. Karen Hayes, our co-owner, is always updating her playlist, which is on whenever she is here. Sissy, our assistant floor manager, almost always plays some Jason Isbell. And Andy, our store manager, usually goes for some Taylor Swift. (Just kidding. He sticks with classic rock or The Beatles).

The inside of Parnassus Books (Andy’s in there somewhere, rocking out to The Beatles.)

If you could open a bookstore anywhere in the world, where would it be?

Anywhere there are a lot of readers. It would be just terrible to have a beautiful beachside bookstore if there was no one there to discuss the books.

What do you sell in Parnassus besides books?  

We have some Parnassus swag for sale, including limited edition posters from local artists, totes with classic titles on them, and, of course, T-shirts. There’s a really fun selection of journals, book-related gift items, and some Nashville-themed gifts up front. We always have art on our walls for sale from a local artist. (You can see a bit of our current art collection from Tennessee artist Daryl Thetford in a recent article from our online lit mag, Musing: "If These Walls Could Talk").

Catherine with fellow Parnassus booksellers Miriam Mimms and Kathy Schultenover on a very rainy day at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, TN.

Lightning Round: 

Coffee or tea? tea

Hardcover or paperback? hardcover

Vowel or consonant? consonant

Highlight or underline? underline

Bookmark or dog-ear? Depends on what I have on hand. (Sorry, book corners!)

Train or plane? plane

Cake or pie? both 

Mountains or sea? mountains

Dog or cat? DOG, duh

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We continue our video series featuring three Astoria to Zion authors with Shawn Vestal, author of Godforsaken Idaho, a collection of short stories. Last week, we heard from Rebecca Makkai and the origin of her story: bog mummies! In this video, Shawn Vestal discusses place and risk in his writing, as well as what it means to write about his Mormon upbringing and family. Check out his story “Winter Elders” in Astoria to Zion: Twenty-Six Stories of Risk and Abandon from Ecotone's First Decade.

Come back next week when we hear from Cary Holladay about “knowing your turf.”

And don’t forget to join us for our AWP mingle this year with the Common, Archipelago Books, New Directions, New York Review of Books, and Ecotone!

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Lit News Roundup

Happy Friday, everyone!

Did you miss Bookriot’s feature on bookstores in weird and wonderful places? From barns to boats, abandoned trains to haunted houses, the descriptions of  these stores will leave you itching to travel.

Photos courtesy of the Gallifreyan Detective tumblr.

Judith Rosen of Publishers Weekly checked in on six indie bookstores opened within the past two years—from Scuppernong in Greensboro, NC, to Bookbound in Ann Arbor, MI—to see how they’re faring. As Scuppernong owner Brian Lampkin said, “There’s a growing shop-local movement. People are so ecstatic to have the downtown come back.” His NC store, which emphasizes literary fiction and poetry, also boasts an ambitious events schedule. Good news: they’re thriving!

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In author news, Ecotone and Astoria to Zion contributor Karen E. Bender‘s story collection, Refund, was reviewed in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review. In a collection ostensibly fueled by money, Refund is also grounded by the “subtler preoccupation [of] the eroding effect of emotional want.”

Brooklyn readers: you won’t want to miss the opening of Cage Dies Bird Flies, which features a series of eighty-one paintings by Dale Williams with text from Lookout author Ben Miller. The exhibit will run from March 27 to April 5 at Gowanus Loft. You can also catch Ben at several Boston events this spring.

If you missed her earlier this week, take a moment to listen to funny and brilliant writer Rebecca Makkai talk about place in her story “The Way You Hold Your Knife” from Astoria to Zion: Twenty-Six Stories of Risk and Abandon from Ecotone's First Decade. 

Also this week, the Offing, a channel of the Los Angeles Review of Books, published a lovely short essay, “Days and Nights of Candlewood,” by longtime Ecotone contributor Paul Lisicky. You can read more of Lisicky’s gorgeous prose in the tenth anniversary of Ecotone, coming in May.

And don’t forget to join us for our AWP mingle on April 9 with the Common, New Directions, Archipelago Books, the New York Review of Books, and Ecotone. We’ll also be at book fair tables 1018 & 1020 throughout the conference.

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With the AWP conference fast approaching, we can’t help reflecting on last year’s fabulous Astoria to Zion launch party and reading, when several contributors, including Ben Fountain, Cary Holladay, Rebecca Makkai, Brock Clarke, and Shawn Vestal, joined us to celebrate and to discuss their stories in the anthology. In this video, Rebecca Makkai, author of the novel The Hundred-Year House, talks about the inspiration for “The Way You Hold Your Knife" from Astoria to Zion: Twenty-Six Stories of Risk and Abandon from Ecotone's First Decade. Spoiler alert: it involves bog mummies!

Join us for another AWP mingle this year with the Common, Archipelago Books, New Directions, New York Review of Books, and Ecotone!

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Lit News Roundup

Looking for a book job with a view beyond the Empire State Building? Bustle rounded up some of our peer indie presses from across the country. Like us, they’re championing unique and original voices that may have been eschewed, or were not the right fit, for the big five. Glad to see two of our Southern favorites in the mix: John F. Blair Publisher in Winston-Salem, NC (our distributor), and Hub City Press in Spartanburg, SC.

Speaking of indie presses, our publisher, Emily Louise Smith, will give a presentation at the Pamlico Writers Conference this weekend on the role of independents in the current book publishing landscape. If you missed it on Facebook, check out Pamlico’s interview with Emily.

The biggest book fair of the year is fast approaching! We can’t wait for everyone to converge on Minneapolis in early April for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual conference. Don’t miss our mingle with the Common, Archipelago Books, New Directions, New York Review of Books, and our sister magazine, Ecotone, at Mackenzie's Scotch Pub on Thursday at 5:30 p.m.

You can also say hello to the Lookout and Ecotone crew at tables 1018 & 1020 in the book fair, and hear us talk about our favorite subjects on the following panels:

Founding editor David Gessner But Seriously . . . Is It Time for More Humor in Environmental Writing? Friday, 4:30 p.m.

Publisher Emily Louise Smith Image Is Everything: Literary Magazines on Design, Friday,4:30 p.m. Literary Publishing in the 21st Century, Saturday, 3 p.m.

Editor Anna Lena Phillips Ecotone at Ten: A Reading and Conversation Friday, 10:30 a.m.

Associate editor Beth Staples Pinning Editors Down: Lit Mag Fiction Editors Define What Works Friday, 9 a.m. 

Wondering what else to do when you’re not filling your tote bag with books or attending panels and readings? Claire Kirch of Publishers Weekly recommends the best bookstores, literary hubs, bars, and restaurants in the Twin Cities. There’s plenty to do beyond those convention center walls.

In author news, we’re thrilled for Tegan Nia Swanson, who has won the 2014 Horatio Nelson Fiction Prize for her debut novel, Things We Found When the Water Went. This annual award includes a $5,000 prize as well as publication by Black Balloon Publishing, an imprint of the newly established Catapult. We’re especially proud of this news, because Tegan’s first published story, “The Memory of Bones,” appeared in the pages of Ecotone 15.

In other award news, the longlist for the PEN Literary Awards was announced this week. Congratulations to all of the nominees, including Ecotone contributors Molly Antopol and David James Poissant—who has an essay forthcoming in our spring tenth anniversary issue.

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Lit News Roundup

Nothing makes us happier than seeing the talented emerging writers we champion in the pages of Ecotone go on to publish books and reach a wider audience. In Sunday's New York Times Book Review, Tom Bissell considers Elliot Ackerman's debut novel, Green on Blue, which is told from the perspective of Aziz, a young Afghan man. "Virtually every artist interested in what’s beyond our 'tiny skull-sized kingdoms' (to use David Foster Wallace’s phrase) is guilty of appropriation," Bissell writes. "Would that it happened more often; if Ackerman’s novel is any indication, there would be fewer wars if it did." Read Ackerman's story, "Charlie Balls," also set in Afghanistan, in Ecotone 16, the migration issue. Congrats, Elliot! 

In this week's prize news, the 27th annual Lambda Literary Awards announced their finalists, selected from a record 818 submissions from 407 publishers. The awards celebrate achievement in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender books published in 2014, and the winners will be revealed at a ceremony in June.

Elizabeth McCracken took home The Story Prize this week for her collection Thunderstruck. The acclaimed author's return to the short story form after more than twenty years earned her the $20,000 top prize. The judges called McCracken's book electrifying and cited her as a writer with compassion and as a master of the telling detail. Catch up on all the previous winners and finalists, including our own Edith Pearlman. 

Last year our staff members seeded a few Little Free Libraries across the country with Lookout books. BookRiot suggests five tips for running a Little Free Library and shares what it means to be a steward of a small, literary hub.

In the spirit of giving, UNCW's Campus Life Arts and Programs is taking book donations for New Hanover Correctional Center. This week the campus hosted Piper Kerman, author of Orange Is the New Black, who spoke to a sold out crowd of 900 about her experiences during her incarceration, her work with the Women's Prison Association, as well as her visit to New Hanover, where she discovered that female inmates have no access to a library. "Books were one of the things that saved my life," Kerman said. Lookout invites area authors and friends to join us in donating books. We're sending over the full Lookout catalog! Drop your donations with Campus Life staff; every book counts.

You may have noticed recently that Lookout's Roundup often includes news from our sister magazine, Ecotone. We've been working hard behind the scenes to develop a new unified blog format that will allow us even more opportunities to feature our family of publications, contributors, and authors, and we're getting a jump start here. Stay tuned for a sneak peek in the coming weeks. 

UNCW's spring break begins next week, and we hope all of you students have a good book to read on the beach.

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Lit News Roundup

We kick off this week's roundup with hearty congratulations to the nine writers awarded the Windham-Campbell prizes, including Ecotone contributor and our Wilmington neighbor John Jeremiah Sullivan. Read his essay "La•Hwi•Ne•Ski: Career of an Eccentric Naturalist" from the Evolution issue.

In this week's Bookends column in the New York Times Book Review, writers Mohsin Hamid and Francine Prose answer the question of whether fiction has sway in politics. All fiction is political, Hamid says, adding "Fiction can say publicly what might otherwise appear unsayable, combating the coerced silence that is a favored weapon of those who have power." Prose agrees: "Fiction can (though by no means is it required to) enable us to see the world through the eyes of people unlike ourselves and view them more empathetically; such changes may make us more likely to favor the creation of a more humane society."  

The late poet Maya Angelou will be honored with a forever stamp, the U.S. Postal Service announced earlier this week. We look forward to seeing her on future postal submissions to Ecotone! 

According to the Washington Post, digital natives prefer print and still buy 87 percent of their textbooks that way. “I like the feeling of it,” Frank Schembari, a junior at American University, said of reading a print book. “I like holding it. It’s not going off. It’s not making sounds.” Research shows that reading on the page can play a key role in comprehension. Readers remember information by its location in the layout—"that, say, the key piece of dialogue was on that page early in the book with that one long paragraph and a smudge on the corner . . . But that is more difficult on screens, primarily because the time we devote to reading online is usually spent scanning and skimming."

Speaking of books, the Daily Beast ran a terrific recap of the American Booksellers Association's annual Winter Institute, focusing on the strength of indies. Among others, the article mentions Elliott Bay Book Company, Brazos Bookstore, Graywolf Press, Lit Hub, and our NC bookseller friends Emoke B’Racz of Malaprop's Bookstore Cafe and Kimberly Daniels of The Country Bookshop. Check it out.

Finally, today is the grand opening of Cafe Zola at Wilmington's own Pomegranate Books! Stop by for tea and beer samples, as well as music by Andrew Anagnost and UNCW's Griffin Limerick. Teas and coffees are 20 percent off all day.

We hope that your weekend reading includes a book set somewhere warm!

[lookoutbooks]

Lit News Roundup

We loved meeting all of the smart, dedicated booksellers at the American Booksellers Association's Winter Institute in Asheville last week. Thanks to everyone who came to our NC Speakeasy, joined us for the rep picks lunches, and added Lookout's debut novel, Honey from the Lion, to your tote bags. If you weren't able to snag a galley, please e-mail us.

Four years after the collapse of Borders, "Independents are looking at adding locations and taking back some of the physical bookshelf space that had been lost," writes Judith Rosen of Publishers Weekly. We couldn't be happier to read about the ongoing resurgence.

Speaking of bookstores, this "carousel of light" just opened in the heart of Bucharest. Read on to discover six beautiful floors of more than 10,000 books. The space will also host cultural events and concerts.

In author news, we were thrilled to find Ecotone contributor Molly Antopol among the finalists for the New York Public Library's 2015 Young Lions Fiction Award, along with Catherine Lacey, Andrew Ladd, Jesse Ball, and Ben Lerner. The Young Lions Fiction Award has been honoring promising young writers for fifteen years. 

And in the New Yorker's 90th-anniversary issue, James Wood reviews Edith Pearlman's new collection, Honeydew (Little, Brown), calling Pearlman "one of God's spies." He adds that her singular work, "throbbing with restrained tenderness, treats both her characters and her readers as adults. These days, it seems almost radical." His consideration includes several stories in Binocular Vision, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

This week the world lost former United States poet laureate Philip Levine, “a large, ironic Whitman of the industrial heartland,” according to fellow poet Edward Hirsch. He received a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for his collection The Simple Truth and won two National Book Awards, for Ashes: Poems New & Old and What Work Is. In the New York Times this week, Margalit Fox wrote that critics "admired his deceptively simple style, which could belie the carefully worked out cadences beneath its colloquial surface. They also praised Mr. Levine’s unabashed use of poetry as a vehicle for radical social criticism, noting his frank explorations of the nature of masculinity and his cleareyed depictions of working-class lives and the immigrant Jewish experience."

[lookoutbooks]

Lit News Roundup

Winter Institute kicks off in Asheville this weekend, and we're proud to be hosting the NC Speakeasy on Sunday evening with fellow Tar Heelians Algonquin Books and John F. Blair, both of which are also featured in "North Carolina Indies Build Lists, Community" from Publishers Weekly. Booksellers, please look for Matthew Neill Null's debut novel, Honey from the Lion, in the galley room. Can't make it to Asheville? E-mail us for a copy. 

You can get a sneak peek at the galley, and maybe even a few photos of Winter Institute, by following us on our newly launched Instagram.

Our news feeds were abuzz with week with reports that Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, is publishing a new novel, which follows Scout twenty years after the classic. Titled Go Set a Watchman, it was written first but presumed lost until Lee's lawyer discovered it in the secure archive near the author's Alabama home last fall. 

Just this morning, Electric Literature and Grove Atlantic announced the launch of Literary Hub, “a new home for book lovers” (Wall Street Journal). Literary Hub will feature a mix of content contributed by partners and original material, including author interviews, features, excerpts, and essays. Sign us up, please!

We've all heard the phrase don't judge a book by its cover, but this Guardian article presents an unusual counterpoint to that adage: this book cover judges you! In fact, it won't open unless the reader has a neutral expression on her face.

Print magazine does some cover judging of its own in this article, a redux of some of the most compelling cover designs of the last year. Gather some cover inspiration and a list of great books to read.

Ecotone contributors Brock Clarke and Jamie Quatro, whose story is forthcoming in our spring 2015 anniversary issue, share their thoughts on McCarthy and Means in the Believer's latest installment of their alphabetical Influenced By series. See what "M" authors inspire your favorite writers.

We'll be watching closely to see which galleys the country's leading booksellers stuff in their tote bags next week. Stay tuned! The plan is to interview some of them for this space, and we'll preview their favorites in the coming weeks.

[lookoutbooks]

Lit News Roundup

Bookseller friends: anyone heading to the ABA's Winter Institute in Asheville? We've created a special preview edition of Matthew Neill Null's debut novel, Honey from the Lion, and we're excited to share the first copies with you! The final cover is forthcoming, but we couldn't wait to reveal the tremendous praise that has arrived already from Jaimy Gordon, Joy Williams, Salvatore Scibona, Ron Rash, Zachary Lazar, Jayne Anne Phillips, Smith Henderson, Lydia Peelle, and Anthony Marra.

Look for Honey from the Lion in the galley room, and please say hello to our publisher, Emily Louise Smith, at the Sunday night Carolina Speakeasy, sponsored by Lookout, Algonquin, Duke University Press, John F. Blair, and the University of North Carolina Press. (Rumor has it she'll be speed dating as part of the rep picks lunches too.) Missing the fun this year but want a galley? E-mail us!

Speaking of book covers, one of our favorite designers and art director at Knopf, Peter Mendelsund, gave a fascinating interview to the Rumpus this week. Read on to find out why he considers the art director a subsidiary editor and believes that showing cover comps in front of a room of people is always a recipe for disaster. "The approval process is getting in the way of good jacketing and good marketing. Editorial and marketing and sales and the infrastructure of publishing needs to recognize the design departments as the thinking creatures that they are, and then from the other end designers need to read more and become citizens of the world and be a little more articulate."

Again on the design front, we stumbled across this lovely collection of publisher colophons, from animals to objects (even an olive!), courtesy of Bookriot. Do you have a favorite?

Knopf's borzoi, in honor of Peter Mendelsund

After perusing "The year of books? Today's young people interpret reading as a social exercise" in the Independent, we wished we lived close enough to visit Beerwolf, a bookshop within a cozy, dimly-lit pub in Cornwall, where "books are flying out just as fast as pints." The owners are committed to creating an atmosphere that encourages both reading and socializing.

Finally, in author news this week, Lookout memoirist and Radcliffe Institute fellow Ben Miller has been working on a fascinating multilingual project called MuralSpeaks!, along with two Harvard students, to translate William Carlos Williams's “The Red Wheelbarrow” into 142 languages.

We hope that everyone has a good book—or three!—for the winter weekend ahead.