Because I was determined that my life be about more than my worst hours on earth — River Bend Chronicle by Ben Miller
Type treatment by Eric Tran, Lookout Intern
John Rybicki Begins North Carolina Book Tour
Lookout is proud to announce that poet and Lookout author John Rybicki will be heading out on a North Carolina tour this coming week. The tour, made possible with generous support from the North Carolina Arts Council, will include stops at oncology centers, a library, and a bookstore.
Planning this tour for John has been such a pleasure, and we are so excited about creating some new platforms for him to read his incredible work and to share his powerful messages of grief, hope, and healing.
(For the full tour details, including venue addresses, please go to http://www.lookout.org/Rybickireadings.html.)
Above: Tour kits sent to reading venues
On the evening of Sunday, April 7, John will be a guest on “That Cancer Show,” which airs from 8 – 9 p.m. on WPTF 680 AM in Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill and WSJS 600 AM in the Greensboro-Winston Salem-High Point area. You can listen to the program on the “That Cancer Show” website: http://www.cancersupport4u.org/that-cancer-showtrade.html. “That Cancer Show” is a program from Cornucopia Cancer Support Center in Durham.
On Monday, April 8, John will be offering a 6 p.m. workshop/poetry discussion and 7 p.m. reading at the Morrison Regional Library in Charlotte.
John will stay in Charlotte for the night of Tuesday, April 9, too, with an appearance at Levine Cancer Institute. This reading and program will be focused on the healing arts, and nurses, doctors, patients, families, and anyone whose life has been impacted by cancer are encouraged to attend. (Like the other stops on the tour, this event is also open to the public.)
On Wednesday, John will head to the Triangle. On the evening of Wednesday, April 10, he’ll be giving a reading at Cornucopia Cancer Support Center in Durham.
On Thursday, April 11, he’ll be reading alongside former NC Poet Laureate Kathryn Stripling Byer and the poet John Amen at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill. Feel free to join the poets for an informal discussion at Foster’s Market, next door to the bookstore, at 6 p.m. The official program at Flyleaf will begin at 6:30 p.m.
Each of the above events is open to the public. John’s Lookout title, the poetry collection When All the World Is Old, is will be available for sale at each event, and you’ll have the option to get your book signed.
John’s tour will conclude on Saturday, April 13, when he gives a presentation at the North Carolina Writers’ Network Conference at University of North Carolina Greensboro. Pre-registration is required for this event.
If you’re able to attend any of these events, please let us know what you think. We can’t wait for the tour to begin. Many thanks to the wonderful staff members at Morrison, Levine, Cornucopia, and Flyleaf for generously hosting us. See you on the road!
River Bend Chronicle Playlist up at Largehearted Boy
Ben Miller has a playlist for his memoir, River Bend Chronicle, up at Largehearted boy, a music blog that also has interest in the literary world. Here are some of our personal favorites from the list:
“Carry On Wayward Son” - composed by Kerry Livgren - performed by Kansas
Sudlow Junior High lunch room. Again I’ve beaten the rest of the losers to our table because I don’t push my flab through the line anymore. I bring an apple only. The words of this, my latest eating theme, runs over and over in my aching head. There will be peace when you are done. That is, finish what I am starting.
“Moonshadow” - composed by Cat Stevens - performed by Cat Stevens
When the anger bubble bursts there’s the quiet of this hymn - blue bringing blue out of black and black bringing black out of blue. Prayer prowling in a pulp grotto. Melody configuring my sensation of being shipped through weeks like a box not sealed, stuff spilling out…phosphorescence of spent emotion behind the postman, eyes calmly rolling on a sidewalk, mouth a tired rubber band draped over a curb.
“Free Man in Paris” - composed by Joni Mitchell - performed by Joni Mitchell
In her I heard the ire of my sisters reborn as direction, heard a mother’s keen reformed or resolved - ebullient demise of conflicted voices and the paralysis. “Alive,” she sang to my head on a pillow of notebooks. “Alive and unfettered.”
“SAVE THE DATE and raise a glass as we toast these seven One Story authors who have published their first books in the past year. The One Story Literary Debutante Ball will take place on Thursday, June 6th at Roulette in Brooklyn, NY and include music, dancing, food, and specialty cocktails. It is our most important fundraising event of the year. It is also a lot of fun.
Sponsorship Tickets will be on sale March 26th.
Individual Tickets will be on sale April 23rd.”
Read The Man in Blue Green + an interview on One Story.
Now that we’ve had some time to recover from AWP2013, here’s a little photo recap of our time in Boston. We had several great panels, including a tribute to Edith Pearlman, a talk on successful indie publishing, and our own four debut Lookout authors reading all together for the first time. They also signed books at our booth and got to talk with all our loving readers.
20 Excellent Photos of Famous Authors Partying
Here’s a little something to keep you all going till the weekend comes by again
(Hemingway, July 1959)
Friday’s almost here!
How was your weekend? On Friday we had a (belated) picnic to celebrate the release of Ben Miller’s River Bend Chronicle. Check the tasty bubbly Ben sent us!
Review of Edith Pearlman’s Binocular Vision in Financial Times:
“Sometimes, you look at a really intricate piece of work and you think something quite banal. You think: “How in the name of all that is holy did they get the ship into the bottle?” That is exactly what I found myself thinking as I read these stories – each of them meticulously made, miraculously precise, and so fully populated that you marvel one mind could invent so many distinct human beings from scratch.”
Ben Miller Review in Star Tribune.
“Miller’s prose throughout combines that knack for close observation and gently mocking tone, such as when he romanticizes his neighbor Mr. Hickey but bemusedly remembers how the man’s sister tried to equip him with a gun. His mother comes in for the harshest treatment, as he catalogs her self-martrying attitude and emotional disorganization, symbolized by a massive handbag he calls Moby Purse.”
Read the rest here!
