LORETTA STINSON & LITTLE GREEN

Loretta Stinson has been doing all sorts of book events and interviews for Little Green since it came out on June 1st. The next big dates on the horizon are late August when she sets off for the Bay Area with readings at Green Apple Books on Wednesday, Aug. 25th and at Book Passage on Thursday, August 26th. We’re hammering out the details at the moment but we know that the San Francisco Domestic Violence Consortium will be participating in the Green Apple event and we’ve got some other things brewing in the area as well with various domestic violence organizations and crisis centers.

Check out this Literary Arts interview with Loretta here.

FRANK MEEINK ON THE HISTORY CHANNEL’S GANGLAND

Frank Meeink of Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead has been busy with all sorts of projects. In the middle of his 20-plus city book tour this spring/summer he took time to film this History Channel segment that airs Friday night….

COVER SET FOR LIDIA YUKNAVITCH’S CHRONOLOGY OF WATER

We’re so pleased with the drop dead gorgeous final cover for Lidia Yuknavitch’s upcoming spring 2011 Hawthorne Books title The Chronology of Water — designed by Adam McIsaac at Pinch. And just so you know, there will be a book belly band available for booksellers concerned with the nudity.

SCOTT NADELSON & PLOUGHSHARES

Scott Nadelson’s short story collection Aftermath will be published by us next summer but in the meantime Scott has been busy teaching at Willamette University and, of course, writing, writing and more writing. Ploughshares published Nadelson’s Dolph Shayes’s Broken Arm in its spring 2010 issue guest-edited by Elizabeth Strout and you can read the story in its entirety on their site.

Every once in awhile it’s good to do a roundup of Hawthorne goings-on. The past few weeks we’ve had a lot of great events and press for Hawthorne titles and authors that we’d like to share with you here. Loretta Stinson will be reading at Annie Bloom’s Books in Multnomah Village tonight at 7:30pm and she has a lot of upcoming events. Check out her beautiful revamped website for an up-to-the-minute Loretta schedule. Little Green has also been getting a lot of great reviews and coverage. Here are a few of the latest:

The Rumpus review of Little Green

Biblioklept’s review of Little Green

For all things Loretta Stinson head here...

PETER H. FOGTDAL & THE TSAR’S DWARF

Peter H. Fogtdal’s novel The Tsar’s Dwarf got a great review in the Spring 2010 issue of The Los Angeles Review. If you haven’t checked out this Red Hen Press publication you’re missing out. Included in the issue are stories by Barry Lopez, Tess Gallagher, Rick Bass and Mark Acito.

So happy to get this in the mail...

The Los Angeles Review's review of The Tsar's Dwarf.

MONICA DRAKE & CLOWN GIRL

Monica Drake’s novel Clown Girl continues to get a lot of great press and attention, not to mention the optioning of the novel by SNL’s Kristen Wiig. Here’s the latest Clown Girl review from Rose City Reader.

Still garnering great reviews...

FRANK MEEINK, JODY M. ROY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A RECOVERING SKINHEAD

Frank Meeink of Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead is winding down his 20-plus city tour and the media hits keep coming. Tune into The Leonard Lopate Show today or visit the online archives and listen to Frank talk about his past and the book. He will also be on CBS’ The Unfiltered Show.

Check out Frank Meeink on today's The Leonard Lopate Show.

SCOTT NADELSON & PLOUGHSHARES BLOG

Hawthorne Books author Scott Nadelson has been writing regularly over at the Ploughshares Blog. We’ve really been enjoying his posts and think you will too.

A lot of good writing from Scott Nadelson on the Ploughshares blog.

For more information about all of these titles and more please visit the Hawthorne Books website:
www.hawthornebooks.com

Check out David Shields' newest title.

Review by Scott Nadelson

For several years now, since he first published an essay in The Believer that would form the seed of his new book, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, I have been arguing in my head (and once or twice in person) with David Shields.

In that original essay, and far more expansively in the book—released this month—Shields makes an argument for a new literature that strives toward a “deliberate unartiness,” that embraces authenticity, that avoids contrivance at all costs. He champions collage over linear narrative, meditation over invention, lyric essay over the well-plotted novel. He challenges long-held notions about the primacy of fiction in the literary universe, calling instead for work that is self-reflective, confessional, messy. He encourages writers to borrow and recontextualize passages from others’ work the way hip-hop artists sample beats and riffs. He does so in a series of essays built on collage, aphorism, and appropriated quotation, few of which he attributes, except in a series of notes at the book’s end—these the publisher added against the author’s will, and he encourages readers to cut them out and throw them away.

In the private, imagined arguments we’ve been having, Shields is intelligent and articulate, saying things like, “Story seems to say that everything happens for a reason, and I want to say, No, it doesn’t,” and I answer with something less intelligent or articulate, something along the lines of, “But I like stories.” And it’s true. I do. I’m a sucker for the way a story can cast a spell, can draw me into the world of people I don’t know, can make me feel things other than the dull ache of boredom and anxiety I feel when I’m going through the motions of daily tasks, can allow me to experience things (or at least imagine the experience of things) I’ll never experience in the limited boundaries and duration of my “real” life.

And while I love much of the work Shields discusses in Reality Hunger—Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, for example, or Frederick Exley’s A Fan’s Notes, or Gregoire Bouillier’s The Mystery Guest, or Leonard Michaels’ Journal, or John Cheever’s journals—I also still long for stories with intricate plots and invented characters and beautiful language; I want to read “Goodbye, My Brother” at least as often as I dip into Cheever’s Journals. While reading Reality Hunger, I find myself nodding along with all the brilliant things Shields has to say, and yet…

And yet, this, I believe, is the point of Shields’ book.

What’s wonderful about Reality Hunger is that it asks you to argue with it, it demands dialogue and wrangling in a way that few books do. In the classic tradition of art manifestos, it is forceful, fiery, sometimes belligerent, but its main goal is to challenge readers to think deeply about preconceived notions, to defend their own artistic choices, their own aesthetic tastes. From now on, whenever I choose to read or write a linear narrative, I have to ask myself, what is the artifice hiding? What does it obscure? Is the work as honest as it can be, or does its construct keep me at a safe distance from the messiness of life and the ugly complexity of human nature?

Shields’ book is a guide for those of us hungry to connect with each other in a world that does all it can to keep us apart.

I finished it yesterday, and a few minutes after I put it down, I picked it back up and started reading it again. I have a feeling that my argument with Shields will continue for a long time to come.

Hawthorne Books author Scott Nadelson is author of The Cantor’s Daughter, winner of the Samuel Goldberg & Sons Fiction Prize for Emerging Jewish Writers and the Reform Judaism Fiction Prize, Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories, winner of the Oregon Book Award for short fiction and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, and the forthcoming Aftermath: Stories.
Visit Scott Nadelson’s website @ www.scottnadelson.com