The Art of the Book Review - a series of interviews by Karen Lillis

Karen Lillies is currently posting a series of interviews with small press writers and reviewers about the art of book reviewing, and the state of book reviews.

Update: there's a new interview up now with author & reviewer Lavinia Ludlow, who reviews small press books for several publications, links are included directly here for the joy of browsing & reading:
- Small Press Reviews
- The Nervous Breakdown
- Smalldoggies Magazine
- Plumb Blog
- American Book Review

Book Review Interviews - a quote from the introduction: "Has new media itself degraded (or evolved) the idea of a book review? To some writers, the blog format seems like a good excuse to write a casual review that may be even less thoughtful than a blurb. To other writers, a Goodreads account is a fine platform to write intelligent responses to steady reading. And there are plenty of writers, young and old, who are writing well-considered book reviews and getting paid much less than they were a decade ago, or not getting paid at all."

Interviews: The interview series so far includes interviews with  Spencer Dew (a writer of short and long fiction),  Barrett Warner (poet and reviewer), Lynn Alexander (edior of Full of Crow), and Djelloul Marbrook (writer and poet).

Book Review Debate: Following the rich discussion of the state of bookreviews in August and September, the series also includes an annotated timeline of the key essays: "Book Reviews Debate Rages On"

Karen Lillis is a writer of novels, poetry, short stories, creative nonfiction, and journalism. She lives in Pittsburgh. Her novella Watch The Doors As They Close has just been published by SD. She is currently finishing her first book of nonfiction, Bagging the Beats at Midnight: Confessions of a New York Bookstore Clerk. She blogs at Karen the Small Press Librarian.

The Art of the Book Review
all entries / blog post tag: The Art of the Book Review

Indie Author Networks + Indie TV + 3 extra book clips

There are several websites that offer listings and services for independent authors who are self published or published by a small indie press and who actively promote their books - one of them is the Independent Author Network (IAN), a community of like-minded authors, with 750 authors who joined. Similar in idea is the Independent Author Index, with about 200 authors who joined. Both sites require set-up fees for joining authors (around 20-25$), but also offer extra services.

Indie Authors TV
The Independent Author Index now launched a special website that is dedicated to book video clips: Indie Author TV, and in a starting promotion, invited authors of recently published books to send their book video and a brief description. They are now featuring the clips, in a colorful and vivid mix of all genres. Watch and visit here: Indie Authors TV

3 Extra Book Clips
And some extra book clips, from Vimeo + Youtube:
- Birth of a Book: a book being created + printed
- The Bibilo-Mat: a random book dispenser
- The Joy of Books: in a bookshop at night..

McSweeney's Best American/National Magazine Award Bundle

McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern publishes on a roughly quarterly schedule, and each issue is markedly different from its predecessors in terms of design and editorial focus.

Stories of the issues 30 and 32—"Memory Wall," by Anthony Doerr, "Raw Water," by Wells Tower, and "Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events," by Kevin Moffett—have brought home a National Magazine Award:
"National Magazine Award 2010 FICTION - Recognizes excellence in fiction published in magazines - Winner: McSweeney’s Quarterly: Dave Eggers, Editor for “Memory Wall,” by Anthony Doerr, October 1; “Raw Water,” by Wells Tower, October 1; “Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events,” by Kevin Moffett; March 3"

In addition, both Kevin Moffett's and Wells Tower's stories, as well as Jim Shepard's "The Netherlands Lives With Water," have been selected for the 2010 edition of the Best American Short Stories.

To mark the event, McSweeney's has bundled issues 30 and 32 together at a special price, and has put the award-winning stories online.

About McSWEENEY'S
McSweeney’s began in 1998 as a literary journal, edited by Dave Eggers, that published only works rejected by other magazines. But after the first issue, the journal began to publish pieces primarily written with McSweeney’s in mind. Today, McSweeney’s has grown to be one of the country’s best-read and widely-circulated literary journals, with an expanding subscriber base and strong independent bookstore following. As a small publishing house, McSweeney’s is committed to finding new voices — Gabe Hudson, Paul Collins, Neal Pollack, J.T. Leroy, John Hodgman, Amy Fusselman, Salvador Plascencia and Sean Wilsey are among those whose early work appeared in McSweeney’s—and promoting the work of gifted but underappreciated writers, such as Lydia Davis and Stephen Dixon.

McSweeney's Best American/National Magazine Award Bundle
Product Code: BABDL
click here to read "The Netherlands Lives With Water" by Jim Shepard
Regular Price: $39.00
Sale Price: $26.00

Gristle (The New Press)

More than ever before, people are increasingly concerned about the impact of our factory-farming system of raising animals for food - and rightfully so. Gristle is for the growing number of people - from ominvores to vegans - who are thinking twice about the consequences of our industrial farm animal prodcution practices on workers, our health, the environment, communities, the animals, and more.

Multi-platinum musician Moby and leading food policy activist and expert Miyun Park have brought together fifteen of the country's leading voices on this issue--an eclectic group from such diverse backgrounds as farming, workers' rights activism, professional athletics, science, environmental sustainability, food business, and animal welfare advocacy--who together eloquently lay out how and why industrial animal agriculture unnecessarily harms workers, communities, the environment, our health, our wallets, and animals.

In the tradition of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Gristle combines hard-hitting facts with a light touch and includes fascinating charts and illustrations depicting the stark realities of America’s industrial food system

About the New Press
Established in 1990 as a major alternative to the large, commercial publishers, The New Press is a not-for-profit publishing house operated editorially in the public interest. It is committed to publishing in innovative ways works of educational, cultural, and community value that, despite their intellectual merits, may be deemed insufficiently profitable by commercial publishers. The New Press publishes about fifty titles each year.

Gristle
on factory farms & food safety
paperback, 160 pages, $14,95
ISBN: 978-1595581914

Tinkers - Paul Harding (Bellevue Literary)

Harding's short novel Tinkers is the story of a dying man, George Washington Crosby, and his relationship with his father, who suffered from epilepsy and eventually abandoned his family because of the affliction.

Tinkers won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in the past week. This is the first time a book published by a small independent press has won the Pulitzer for fiction since 1981 - back then, John Kennedy Toole posthumoulsly won the award for his picaresque novel A Confederacy of Dunces, published by Grove Press.

Paul Harding studied at the University of Massachusettes from 1986 to 1992 while drumming in the grunge band Cold Water Flat. Tinkers is his first novel. An interview with Paul Harding is up in Open Source: Paul Harding's Magical Tinkers.

About Bellevue Literary Press
Bellevue Literary Press, founded in 2005, publishes literary and authoritative fiction and nonfiction at the nexus of the arts and the sciences, with a special focus on medicine. Their authors explore cultural and historical representations of the human body, illness, and health, and address the impact of scientific and medical practice on the individual and society. The mission of Bellevue Literary Press is to bring together medicine, science, and humanism through literature: "The common starting point for understanding most things is a story.”

Paul Harding: Tinkers
novel
paperback, 192 pages, $14.95

How To Escape From a Leper Colony - Tiphanie Yanique (Graywolf)

The inhabitants of an island walk into the sea. A man passes a jail cell’s window, shouldering a wooden cross. And in the international shop of coffins, a story repeats itself, pointing toward an inevitable tragedy. If the facts of these stories are sometimes fantastical, the situations they describe are complex, and all too real. Lyrical, lush, and haunting, the prose shimmers in this nuanced debut, set mostly in the US Virgin Islands. Part oral history, part postcolonial narrative, How to Escape from a Leper Colony is ultimately a loving portrait of a wholly unique place—and an unforgettable, heartbreaking, hilarious, and mesmerizing collection.

Tiphanie Yanique is from the Hospital Ground neighborhood of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. She is an assistant professor of Creative Writing and Caribbean Literature with Drew University and an associate editor with Post-No-Ills. She lives between Brooklyn, New York, and St. Thomas.

About Graywolf Press
Founded in 1974, Graywolf Press is an independent, not-for-profit publisher dedicated to the creation and promotion of thoughtful and imaginative contemporary literature essential to a vital and diverse culture. A commitment to quality, and a willingness to embrace or invent new models, has kept Minneapolis-based Graywolf at the forefront of the small press movement. Today, Graywolf is considered one of the nation's leading nonprofit literary publishers, publishing fiction, memoir, essays, poetry, literary and cultural criticism, and literature in translation. Forthcoming this August is I Curse the River of Time by international bestseller Per Petterson, and out in November is Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems from President Obama’s Inaugural poet Elizabeth Alexander.

Tiphanie Yanique: How To Escape From a Leper Colony
a novella and stories
200 pages, $15.00
ISBN 978-1-55597-550-0

Where the Dog Star Never Glows - Tara L. Masih (Press 53)

In her debut collection, Tara Masih shows an intimate sense of understanding her characters' innermost feelings, creating a memorable map of diverse characters that span the globe and several eras. Ghosts dance, butterflies swarm, men crystallize, the sun disappears, and water plays a role in both destruction and repair of the soul.
With an unflinching eye, a mythical awareness of the natural world, and poetic, crafted prose, Masih examines the dark recesses of the mind and heart, which often leads to a small or great triumph or illumination that will resonate long after the last page is turned. Publishers Weekly says: “Striking and resonant . . .”

Tara L. Masih is a graduate of Emerson College’s Writing and Publishing Program. She has won awards for her fiction and received Pushcart Prize, Best New American Voices, and Best of the Web nominations. She is editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction (a ForeWord Best Book of the Year finalist).

About Press 53
Press 53 is an independent literary publishing house located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and was founded in October 2005 by Kevin Morgan Watson. Press 53 publishes 4-6 short story collections and 4-6 poetry collections each year. They also publish 1-2 novels or memoirs; the every-odd-year anthology series Surreal South; the annual Press 53 Open Awards Anthology; the new annual Press 53 Spotlight, which features 5 poets and 3 short story authors; and 1-2 out-of-print treasures under its Press 53 Classics imprint.
Other offerings for 2010 include Miracle Boy and Other Stories by Pinckney Benedict; the 1971 Pulitzer Prize-nominated novel Journey for Joedel by Guy Owen; the 2009 Spokane Prize for Short Fiction-winner Strange Weather by Becky Hagenston; and Rattlesnakes & The Moon by Darlin’ Neal.

Tara L. Masih: Where the Dog Star Never Glows
story collection
164 pages, $14
ISBN 978-0-9825760-5-2

Further Adventures in the Restless Universe - Dawn Raffel (Dzanc)

When Dawn Raffel was a very small child, her father used to read to her nightly from The Restless Universe--a layman's guide to physics by the Nobel Laureate Max Born. Although she loved the time spent with her father, she didn't--despite his statements to the contrary--comprehend a word of the physics. it was her first recognition that love so often comes with imperfect understanding.
The 21 stories in Further Adventures in the Restless Universe are about fathers, daughters, mothers, sisters, husbands, wives, strangers, lovers, sons, neighbors, kings, death, faith, astronomical phenomena, and the way the heart warps time. Of her previous work, one reviewer stated, "Raffel takes conventions and smashes them to bits" and another called it "extreme literature." Of Further Adventures, Publishers Weekly says, "Raffel's stripped-to-the-bone prose is a model of economy and grace."

Dawn Raffel's previous books are Carrying the Body (a novel) and In the Year of Long Division (stories). Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including NOON, the Mississippi Review, Conjunctions, Unsaid, and the Anchor Book of New American Short Stories. She is completing a memoir in vignettes.

About Dzanc Books
Dzanc Books was created in 2006 to advance great writing and champion those writers who don't fit neatly into the marketing niches of for-profit presses. As a non-profit, 501(c)3 organization, Dzanc Books not only publishes excellent books of literary fiction, but works in partnership with literary journals to advance their readership at every level. Dzanc is also fully committed to developing educational programs in the schools and has begun organizing many such workshops and Writers In Residency programs. Upcoming from Dzanc are: The Taste of Penny by Jeff Parker, Love Doesn't Work by Henning Koch, and Best of the Web 2010 - the third edition of Dzanc's annual print compilation of the best online fiction, poetry and non-fiction (link: Dzanc Best of Web series).

Dawn Raffel: Further Adventures in the Restless Universe
short story collection
100 pages, perfect bound paperback with french flaps, $14.95
ISBN 978-0-9767177-9-9

Prefab Eulogies - David Wolach (Blaze Vox)

David Wolach’s powerpoems imagine us into a world where prefab texts, codes, lists, templates, and schemas rebel into habitations, “testy machines” and “the dumpster in a field abandoned by an American minimalist.” Prêt-a-lire never had it so right-on funny or fierce. Box it to go and take it away. —Amy King

Wolach says: "This is a transitional book in many ways--though coming out now, much of it is earlier than the poetry I've published in more recent chapbooks. Hence, the book reflects (if anything) a transition from installation and performing arts into the questions of contemporary poetry, with which I'd been engaged for those years, but which I'd only written about--until falling ill, which really meant, for me, being unable to move in ways that I'd been used to in performance and in daily life.
Questions of how to incorporate earlier performance work into this book, larger-scale site-specific installation pieces, or how to translate that set of interests onto the page, became the interesting problems I had to address, hence the "hybrid" or "conceptual" feel to much of the book. So, Prefab Eulogies spiders out of the book itself, onto other platforms, e.g., the BlazeVox Prefab Eulogies website, where one can listen to a live recording of some of Nothings Houses."

David Wolach is founding editor of Wheelhouse Magazine & Press, and curator of the series devoted to the intersection of experiments in texts & radical politics, PRESS. David's new book, Occultations, is forthcoming from Black Radish Books, and will be launched, along with forthcoming books by Brenda Iijima, Dorothea Lasky, and Eleni Stecopolous on April 13th, as part of Belladonna Books' "Year of New Books/New Releases" reading series. (belladonnaseries.org)

About Blaze Vox (+Blaze Vox Journal)
Blaze Vox Books publishes poetry, short stories, experimental fiction, literary criticism (including companions, studies and histories), their catalog includes 160 titles with 25 new releases. Staff: Editor-in-chief: Ezra Pound; acting editor: Goeffrey Gatza. There also is Blaze Vox - The Journal, current issue: Blaze Vox 2k9.

David Wolach: Prefab Eulogies
poetry collection
116 pages, paperback, $16
ISBN: 9781935402688

Bone Worship - Elizabeth Eslami (Pegasus)

The debut novel from author Elizabeth Eslami, Bone Worship, explores the perilous intersection of familial and cultural mysteries, balancing the pull of tradition, the promise of the future, and all the possibilities in between.
Eslami tackles what it means to be a mixed race woman bearing the weight of romantic and familial expectations, from the rural American South to metropolitan Iran. American born Jasmine Fahroodhi struggles to connect with her Iranian father while also trying to find herself, all with the possibility of an arranged marriage looming in the background. Bone Worship is a bracing take on a cultural coming-of-age story, and Eslami’s voice, at once witty and poignant, is unforgettable.

Born in South Carolina in 1978, Elizabeth Eslami holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA in creative writing from Warren Wilson College. She has published short fiction and non-fiction in over a dozen magazines, including G.W. Review, Minnesota Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Matador, among others. Her debut novel, Bone Worship, received rave reviews in Library Journal and Booklist, and Eslami has been called “one of the freshest new voices in literature.” She lives in Eugene, Oregon.

About Pegasus Books
Pegasus Books, home of editor-in-chief Claiborne Hancock, editor Jessica L. Case, and art director Michael Fusco is “dedicated to the aim of independent publishing that stimulates the intellect and the imagination.” Their interests include history, philosophy, memoir, biography, literary fiction, and noir thriller. Pegasus believes that “good literature is essential to the health of our cultural life” and works to engender “vital dialogue” between its authors and readers.

Elizabeth Eslami: Bone Worship
novel
368 pages, paperback, $15.95
ISBN: 978-1-60598-074-4

Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction (Rose Metal)

With its unprecedented gathering of 25 brief essays by experts in the field, The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction meets the growing need for a concise yet creative exploration of the re-emerging genre popularly known as flash fiction. The book's introduction provides, for the first time, a comprehensive history of the short short story, from its early roots and hitherto unknown early publications and appearances, to its current state and practice. This guide is a must for anyone in the field of short fiction who teaches, writes, and is interested in its genesis and practice.

Featuring essays by: Steve Almond, Rusty Barnes, Randall Brown, Mark Budman, Stace Budzko, Robert Olen Butler, Ron Carlson, Pamelyn Casto, Kim Chinquee, Stuart Dybek, Pia Z. Ehrhardt, Sherrie Flick, Vanessa Gebbie, Tom Hazuka, Nathan Leslie, Michael Martone, Julio Ortega, Pamela Painter, Jayne Anne Phillips, Jennifer Pieroni, Shouhua Qi, Bruce Holland Rogers, Robert Shapard, Deb Olin Unferth, Lex Williford.

Tara L. Masih is editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, and author of the short story collection, Where the Dog Star Never Glows (Press 53, 2010). She received an MA in Writing and Publishing from Emerson College.

About Rose Metal Press:
Founded by Abby Beckel and Kathleen Rooney in 2006, Rose Metal Press is an independent, not-for-profit publisher of hybrid genres specializing in the publication of short short, flash, and micro-fiction; prose poetry; novels-in-verse or book-length linked narrative poems; and other literary works that move beyond the traditional genres of poetry, fiction, and essay to find new forms of expression. The press’s upcoming 2010 season includes The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry, edited by Gary McDowell and F. Daniel Rzicznek; We Know What We Are by Mary Hamilton (winner of the fourth annual Rose Metal Press short short chapbook contest); and Color Plates by Adam Golaski.

The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction
essay anthology
208 pages, paperback, $15.95
ISBN: 978-0978984861

Thaw - Fiona Robyn (Snowbooks)

Ruth is thirty two years old and doesn't know if she wants to be thirty three. Her meticulously-ordered lonely life as a microbiologist is starved of pleasure and devoid of meaning. She decides to give herself three months to decide whether or not to end her life, and we read her daily diary as she struggles to make sense of her past and grapples with the pain of the present. Thaw explores what makes any of our lives worth living. Can Red, the eccentric Russian artist Ruth commissions to paint her portrait, find a way to warm her frozen heart?

A page of Ruth's diary will be posted every day for the next three months in the Thaw blog, here the starting post: Welcome.

Fiona Robyn is an author and a blogger living in rural Hampshire in the UK with her cats Fatty and Silver. Thaw is her third novel.

About Snowbooks
Snowbooks is a feisty, award-winning independent book publisher, founded by Emma Barnes and Rob Jones, and later joined by Anna Torborg and James Bridle. They've been going since 2004 when their first books were launched. Since then they have sold hundreds of thousands of books, been nominated for and won lots of prizes, and have generally had a blast. Their authors include Thomas Emson and Sarah Bower, and they publish across genres.

Fiona Robyn: Thaw
novel, 2009
350 pages, paperback
ISBN: 9781906727093

Unheralded Artists of BC #2 (Mother Tongue)

The Unheralded Artists of BC is a beautiful, lively and well-written series dedicated to introducing many forgotten 20th-century Canadian British Columbia artists to the people while recognizing their artistic significance.

Filled with rare art reproductions and artists’ personal photographs, this 2nd book in the series - Life & Art of Frank Molnar, Jack Hardman & LeRoy Jensen - introduces the talent of three BC artist-mentors who worked and exhibited from the 1950s on in Vancouver, Burnaby, Victoria and Salt Spring Island, yet are known only to a few. Their common bond was their choice not to embrace, chameleon-like, the various artistic trends of the era, but to work passionately towards perfecting their own ‘timeless and individuated styles’. This book honours their important contribution to the BC art scene and tells the untold stories.

About Mother Tongue Publishing
Formerly Mother Tongue Press, Mother Tongue Publishing concentrates on publishing unique, bold and stimulating books of British Columbia art history, fine art and literature. Recent publications include Rocksalt: An Anthology of Contemporary B.C. Poetry, edited by Mona Fertig & Harold Rhenisch, and 4 Poets - this new BC poets series features emerging and established BC poets in a fresh format that explores the broader scope of the poet’s work. The first issue included poets Elza, Morin, Rempel & Yawnghwe.

The Life & Art of Frank Molnar, Jack Hardman & LeRoy Jensen
144 pages CDN $34.95
Trade paperback with French flaps
95 colour and b&w plates