First Taboo trade reviews

Tue 16 Jul 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Taboo cover - click to view full sizeIn a couple of months we will publish Kim Scott’s new novel, Taboo. Those in the know, i.e. Australian readers, have given the book 4 awards and we give it an enthusiastic thumbs up.

Kim is coming to the USA in August for the Library of Congress Book Festival on August 31 — I’m going down to DC for that, see you there? — and we’re working on a reading in New York City and maybe further north. More on that and his other events closer to the actual days and in the meantime to whet your appetite, here’s a word from Publishers Weekly

“In this assured, complex novel, Scott (True Country) delves into the fraught history of race relations in Western Australia. . . .  Scott’s novel memorably describes this dramatic resurrection and the enduring power of ancestral traditions.”

and another from Kirkus Reviews:

“Scott (That Deadman Dance, 2010, etc.) has created a shadowy and elliptical story, but it is not as hopeless as it sometimes feels: Tilly is a survivor, and though her Aboriginal culture is not a perfect salvation, it nevertheless provides her with a touchstone in the chaos.”

As The Conversation says, Scott talks about events we don’t want to remember. He circles back to one in particular, which he wrote about in an earlier novel, Benang, and then fictionalizes here in Taboo. There’s an out-of-time grace to some of Scott’s writing although he shifts registers easily from humor to tense scenes where the possible outcomes are unknown and perhaps violent. Scott is one of the writers who are taking on the hard work of actually considering how to live with our pasts and, novel after novel, building a way for it to happen.

You can listen to the first two minutes read by the author here.


LCRW 39, it’s out there

Mon 15 Jul 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 39 cover - click to view full sizeWe were in Portland, OR, last week at the Tin House Summer Workshop — what a feat that is! 250+ people come from all corners of the world to write, talk, and work together. Before it all began (by which I don’t mean 20 years ago, rather a week or so ago), Kelly and I stopped off at Powell’s books and I’m delighted to report that, yes, they still have some good books. Face out in the small & indie press section I was very happy to see the new issue, the 39th of its kind, of LCRW.

Did I take a photo? No. I did not, mostly because I stood there picking through the zines and the place was busy, busy so there was no time for a quiet photo. I picked up some other zines, and, oh a few books. They never have everything I’m looking for, but, oh, they always have some things I wasn’t looking for, such a joy.


Fundraiser this weekend

Wed 3 Jul 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

This July 4th weekend I hope you will join us in celebrating and supporting Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) as part of the #BookstoresAgainstBorders campaign. We are pledging a donation of 10% of gross sales from July 5 – 7th from sales of books and zines (including subscriptions) from our website.

If you can, please donate (anything from $5 or $500 or more!) directly here — every little bit helps me reach my goal.

Thank you for your support of this fundraiser and your action to help those desperately in need.


Readercon 2019

Tue 2 Jul 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Air Logic cover - click to view full sizeWhile we won’t be at Readercon this year — Kelly will be back at the fabulous thing that is the Tin House Summer Workshop and I’ll be part of an editor panel — our books will be there at a table run by the mighty Michael J. DeLuca, publisher of the journal Reckoning.

Some of our authors will be there including John Crowley, Jeffrey Ford, Laurie J. Marks, Sarah Pinsker,  Vandana Singh, and Howard Waldrop as well as innumerable friends and lovely people so I hope you get your books signed by them. We’ll have an ad in the program book, ping me if you see it, and their books will be available at the table — ok, not John’s forthcoming collection — as well as the current LCRW with the monster of gentrification on the cover as well as the zines Kelly and Ursula made this spring.

There will also be copies of all four of Laurie J. Marks’s Elemental Logic novels of which Katherine Coldiron says this in the new issue of Locus:

ETA: Jeffrey Ford & Howard Waldrop will be there.
Note: Laurie J. Marks will be there on the Saturday only and will be signing copies of her book at 3 p.m.