Out Today: The Invisible Valley

Tue 3 Apr 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Out Today: The Invisible Valley | Posted by: Gavin

The Invisible Valley coverToday we’re thrilled to publish Austin Woerner’s translation of Su Wei’s first novel, The Invisible Valley. It’s the story of an ambiguous utopia (is there any other type?) a young man comes across in the mountains of Southern China when he is “sent down” for re-education during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Lu Beiping’s big, weird story grabbed me and took me with him and by the time I had reached the end, I was looking forward to publishing the book — so, besides the author and translator, I also owe a debt of thanks to John Crowley for being one of the people who suggested Austin send it to us.

One of the most fascinating parts of the run up to publication was seeing the bilingual excerpt go up on Samovar. All this time we’d worked on the book, I’d barely looked at the original text. How great to see both versions together, thank you, Samovarians. I am delighted that Austin and Su Wei managed to get permission for us to use Liu Guoyu’s chapter illustrations — and one of which we used for the cover.

After launch events with both Su Wei and Austin Woerner at the Shanghai and Macau Literary Festivals, we’re in the process of setting up events for this coming July in Boston, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and maybe more.

As for the book, you can catch up with a few reviews below — I am fascinated by the reviews on this book because this period of Chinese history is so unknown to many readers, definitely including me, so I am appreciating the readers to whom this world is new as well as those who know the area or the history.

You can: read another excerpt here; reviewers: I think it’s still available on Edelweiss (I should know, but I find Edelweiss options a little opaque sometimes!); here’s an excerpt from a video of Austin Woerner telling the story of his life in translation and his relationship with Su Wei at Duke Kunshan in Shanghai, China; and as ever, you can get the book here or the DRM-free ebook here.

 

“The Invisible Valley takes the reader along a journey full of mystery, magic, and political intrigue. The characters are full of nuance and contradiction, each keeping their own secrets. As each secret is revealed, the reader comes closer to understanding the larger picture. Combined with the balance between the natural and supernatural, this makes the novel interesting for any reader.”
— Amy Lantrip, World Literature Today

“Wei’s pleasantly picaresque novel, his first to be translated into English, deploys humor and drama as it exposes the harsh realities of China’s agricultural reeducation program in the 1960s through the experiences of one of its hapless young victims. . . .  Western readers will find Wei’s novel a window to an unusual moment in his nation’s history. Though it sometimes defies understanding, that feels appropriate given the complexity of China’s Cultural Revolution.”
— Publishers Weekly

“A sensuous coming-of-age story set in a jungle during China’s Cultural Revolution, this historical novel flirts with the fantastic.
Su’s first novel translated into English tells the story of Lu Beiping, a 21-year-old Cantonese city boy who, along with many of his peers, has been sent to the countryside for ‘reeducation through labor.’ . . . The novel’s high drama is matched by complex, colorful characters.
This unique adventure of youth, identity, and the natural world intoxicates with overlapping mysteries.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“Based on the author’s own experiences, the story may surprise readers expecting a ghost story, but what comes to light at the end is more shocking and gritty than anticipated. The vernacular of the driftfolk, well translated by Woerner, recalls Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn; obviously these characters are not in the mainstream.”
— Library Journal

“As an outsider, Lu Beiping (and by extension, the reader) finds himself constantly, if vaguely, aware that he is missing context and subtext. The truth slowly reveals itself in Wei’s lushly atmospheric and haunting novel.” — Jennifer Rothschild, Booklist Online


In Other Lands in Audio

Tue 3 Apr 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on In Other Lands in Audio | Posted by: Gavin

Today Sarah Rees Brennan’s Hugo finalist (yay!) In Other Lands is released as an audiobook by Tantor Audio. It is read by Matthew Lloyd Davies and is available directly from Tantor (where you can listen to an excerpt) as well as from Audible and wherever else you get your audiobooks. Enjoy!


Juniper Fest & LCRW 37

Mon 2 Apr 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Juniper Fest & LCRW 37 | Posted by: Gavin

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 37 coverThis Saturday, April 7, from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., we will be tabling at the Juniper Lit Fest Bookfair along with many other local and not-so-local publishers, magazines, a couple of food trucks, and bookstores (see below).

We will be dropping (and picking up and wondering who put butter on our fingers) the new issue of LCRW, the one with the dragon on the cover and besides some new books our half table of wonders will include some 3-for-2 or 2-for-1 or 50-for-10 deals of some description. Hope to see you there!

  • Amherst Books
  • Bateau Press
  • Black Ocean
  • Big Big Wednesday
  • Calamari
  • Cosmonauts Avenue
  • Emily Dickinson Museum
  • Factory Hollow Press
  • Fence & Fence Books
  • jubilat
  • Juniper Summer Institute
  • Levellers Press
  • Massachusetts Review
  • Meridians
  • Mount Analogue
  • Noo Journal/Magic Helicopter Press
  • Ozy.com
  • Perugia
  • Post Road Magazine
  • Radius
  • Small Beer Press
  • Siglio Press
  • St. Petersburg Review
  • Straw Dog Writers Guild
  • The Common
  • University of Massachusetts Press
  • Wakefield Press

Here’s the fair’s own description:

The annual Juniper Literary Festival celebrates the literary community of the region and the UMass MFA Program present, past, and future and the intersections of those communities with the larger literary world. Join us for three days of events including readings by Sarah Lapido Manyika and Sally Wen Mao on Friday, April 6 at 8 pm.

Return on Saturday, April 7th for a small press and journal fair featuring local literary arts groups alongside local, regional, and national publications; discussions with literary agents and editors; an MFA alumni reading at 4:30 with Gabriel Bump, Stella Corso, Madeline ffitch, and Wendy Xu; community workshops with UMass MFA faculty; and a showcase of rare audio by Sterling Brown & Wallace Stevens. Experience Writers Off the Page and performance poetics. Explore a gallery of writing as visual art in the Visualizing Language exhibit. And join us for a reception where you can meet writers mentioned here and many others. Full schedule here.

There’s parking in the garage near South College ($1.75/hour) or on this map — there’s even an interactive parking map.


The Invisible Valley on Samovar

Fri 30 Mar 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on The Invisible Valley on Samovar | Posted by: Gavin

This is neat: Samovar magazine is running a bilingual excerpt from Su Wei’s The Invisible Valley, with Austin Woerner’s translation running interspersed with the Chinese original. The excerpt is from the third chapter where hapless teenager Lu is sent to be a cowherd and meets what to him is a very strange group of people:

The Invisible Valley cover - click to view full size


A Super-Intelligent Infection

Tue 27 Mar 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on A Super-Intelligent Infection | Posted by: Gavin

Alien Virus Love Disaster coverSometimes I get great emails:

“After I read this book, I woke up with bumpy, reddish growths along my spine. They burst, releasing marvels: aliens, robots, prefab houses, vinyl, chainlink, styrofoam, star stuff, tales from the edge of eviction, so many new worlds. Alien Virus Love Disaster is a super-intelligent infection. Let Abbey Mei Otis give you some lumps.”
— Sofia Samatar, author of Tender


Questioning the Paradigms

Tue 20 Mar 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Questioning the Paradigms | Posted by: Gavin

Ambiguity Machines coverThis weekend Vandana Singh was interviewed on the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy Podcast, which is featured on Wired. Although it has an odd title which doesn’t really fit the book or author (this is an author who whenever I talk to her she is always juggling 3 different tasks), it’s well worth a listen to try and catch up on some of Vandana’s thinking about the world, Arctic ice, the universe, and writing.

Since it came out last month Vandana’s first North American collection, Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories is shooting like a rocket through the sky and it’s looking increasingly likely that we’ll have to send it to back to the printer — always a cause for celebration! I am pretty optimistic when it comes to print runs:

Spreadsheets: There are 273 preorders for this title that publishes in 62 days.
Me: Everyone’s doing Just-in-Time Ordering these days. Let’s print 5,000!

And sometimes that means going over, oops, and even yet, sometimes the world is hungrier for a book than I expected. In which case everyone from the printer to the distributor to the bookstore to the author will be delighted — except for that period when it’s out of stock at the distributor, hmm.

The reviews have been pouring in from newspapers and magazines large and small:

“There’s a wonderful discordance between the cool, reflective quality of Singh’s prose and the colorful imagery and powerful longing in her narratives” (Washington Post) | “The capstone to this hopeful, enriching collection is the small masterpiece ‘Requiem.'”(Wall Street Journal) | “Rich, dense, and balanced.” (Tor.com) | “Singh’s compassionate imagination and storytelling talents are here clearly on display.” (Intergalactic Medicine Show) | “Singh underscores the ultimate point that stories make the world and the universe has a place for all of them.”(Woven Tale Press) | “Full of risky experiments that turn out beautifully: colorful, emotionally resonant, and consistently entertaining.” (Publishers Weekly [starred review])

And this review by Aditya Desai on Aerogram is particularly fascinating:

Singh is laying the groundwork attempt to re-write the plots of Chosen Ones, dystopian governments, and self-actualizing hero tropes common to Western literature, where the quest for “the meaning of life” is often seeking a single endpoint, an origin. Singh’s characters wish only to know for the sake of knowing. Life isn’t defined by linear time, it is the richness of experience.

And there’s be more reviews coming along soon.

Kelly and I have known Vandana and admired her writing for many years. One of her early stories, “The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet, was published in an anthology Kelly edited, Trampoline. Occasionally we’d run into Vandana at Readercon or at a Boston event and we’d talk about a collection but I don’t think it was until 2015 that I actually got Vandana to send us some stories.

A total bonus of publishing this book has been the reading the two essays Vandana wrote on the intersection of her work as a physics professor and her writing, one for Tor and one for Powell’s. Climate change is a semi-regular cause of personal despair, and these thorough and thoughtful essays are useful bulwarks against that.

You can read some of Vandana’s stories here: Life-pod · Wake-Rider · Ruminations in an Alien Tongue · Ambiguity Machines: An Examination; listen to Vandana on PW Radio with Rose Fox; or read an interview by Kylie Korsnack in the Los Angeles Review of Books: Transcending Boundaries, and of course pick up the book (or DRM-free ebook) here.


Out there in summerland

Wed 28 Feb 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Out there in summerland | Posted by: Gavin

People will be reading John Schoffstall’s Half-Witch. One bookseller, Christina at Ravenna Third Place in Seattle, got a jump on summer (see Edelweiss if this sounds like it could be you) and sent us this, heh.

Is there some kind of list available where I can sign up to join Lizbet and Strix’s witchy duo? Because that would be so amazing. This otherworldly, sweet story of madcap adventures shared between seemingly mismatched companions has shades of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth — it will totally delight any fans of Catherynne Valente’s Fairyland series.


LeVar Burton Reads Joan Aiken

Tue 20 Feb 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on LeVar Burton Reads Joan Aiken | Posted by: Gavin

This is amazing: LeVar Burton gives a fantastic introduction and then reads Joan Aiken’s story, “Furry Night,” from The People in the Castle.


Donations in Memory of Ursula K. Le Guin

Fri 26 Jan 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Ursula K. Le Guin loved this world — among others! — and rather than flowers, we are making a donation in her name to the non-profit closest to her heart, the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

We also decided that for each print copy of her books sold through our website in the first three months of this year we will donate:

—  $10 from each print copy of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Words Are My Matter

—  $5 from each print copy of her translation of Angélica Gorodischer’s Kalpa Imperial

We will send the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge a check in April and will include any reader’s name who bought books and would like to be listed.

Direct donations in Ursula’s name can also be made here: Malheur Field Station or here: Audubon Society of Portland (specify that the donation is for Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and Harney County).

Further reading: I took heart from this Metafilter thread and some of the tributes gathered here.


Sarah Rees Brennan: Audio + Events in Montreal & Boston

Thu 25 Jan 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Sarah Rees Brennan: Audio + Events in Montreal & Boston | Posted by: Gavin

I am posting this which I had foolishly left in “drafts” instead of publishing. Argh.

We are delighted to announce that Tantor has picked up audio rights to Sarah Rees Brennan’s In Other Lands and will release their audio edition on April 3.

The second lovely announcement is that Sarah will be over here in North America and will be doing two readings: the first at Argo Bookshop in Montreal & the second at the Brookline Booksmith in Brookline, Boston:

Events

Feb. 1, 4:00 p.m. book club
7:00 p.m. Argo Bookshop, 1915 Rue Sainte-Catherine O, Montréal, QC H3H 1M3, Canada

Feb. 5, 7:00 p.m. 279 Harvard Street Brookline MA 02446-2908 Tel: 617-566-6660 Fax: 617-734-9125
(with Kelly Link, Cassandra Clare, and Holly Black)

 


Her Words: the Best Words

Tue 23 Jan 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Her Words: the Best Words | Posted by: Gavin

“This is the truth. They stood on the stones in the lightly falling snow and listened to the silvery, trembling sound of thousands of keys being shaken, unlocking the air, once upon a time.”

Later on maybe I will have more to say and be able to post more of Ursula K. Le Guin’s words. Right now I am too sad and so I am only posting these last few lines from the late, damn it all, Ursula K. Le Guin’s story “Unlocking the Air,” one of many stories and novels of hers that I love.

Ursula K. Le Guin, 21 October 1929–22 January 2018. Much admired, much missed.


Austin Woerner’s translator origin story

Mon 22 Jan 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Austin Woerner’s translator origin story | Posted by: Gavin

How did a kid from Wellesley, Massachusetts become a Chinese-to-English translator lecturing at Duke Kunshan University in Shanghai?

Find out in this short video of Austin Woerner telling the story of his life in translation and his relationship with Su Wei, author of The Invisble Valley.


Sooner or Later Some Good News

Thu 18 Jan 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Sooner or Later Some Good News | Posted by: Gavin


Ghost Brides and Very Big Snakes

Thu 4 Jan 2018 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Ghost Brides and Very Big Snakes | Posted by: Gavin

John Crowley did us the kindness of reading our forthcoming translation of Su Wei’s The Invisible Valley and says:

“Su Wei’s The Invisible Valley is a remarkable work, pungent, funny, and mind-widening. Austin Woerner’s translation is nearly invisible: it erases all barriers of strangeness and places the reader deep within a Chinese experience that comes to seem as familiar to us as our own daily round — if ours too had ghost brides and very big snakes.”

(In case you missed it, John has a new website, here, which isn’t quite a deep dive but will be a very enjoyable browse for any Crowley reader.)


Happy Holidays

Sat 23 Dec 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Happy Holidays | Posted by: Gavin

Happy All-the-Holidays!


Worst Business Holiday Present Ever

Mon 18 Dec 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

Our distributor Consortium/Ingram just finished negotiations with Am*zon for the next year and forwarded the results. Ouch. After the distro’s fee, we will now receive less than 1/3 of the retail price on each book sold on Am*zon. (The details are confidential and not be shared — which is fine, it’s all fine.)

It is hard to pay printing, royalties, artists, advertising and marketing, rent, etc. with less than 1/3 of retail.

I know not everyone has a good local bookstore, a local branch of a chain, or a decent library, but if you have, *please* consider buying/borrowing books there. Am*zon still want to crush all competition (Bezos’s first name for the business was Relentless dot com) in all markets that they enter. They are fantastic at customer service, especially compared to some local businesses, but they are terrible for everyone else, suppliers, intermediaries, etc. If a company needs help with marketing, they should definitely hire SMR Digital.

The discount creeps up a little more every year — something has to give. I suppose it won’t be Am*zon. Guess it will be us Small Gazelle Presses who want to publish interesting books, work with a wide range of people and artists, and see if we can send these weird things out into the world and find readers.

We are all together building the world we want. I want small and big bookstores all over the place. Loads of publishers following their own visions. This Christmas/holiday of your choice, please consider Powell’s, Indiebound, Kobo, B&N, anyone, anyone but Am*zon.

Thank you.


Buy Any 2 New Books, Pick a Freebie!

Wed 13 Dec 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Buy Any 2 New Books, Pick a Freebie! | Posted by: Gavin

ETA: Thanks to all who took advantage of this. Must try a sale some time in 2018. But not anytime soon, too busy!

I put this in the newsletter yesterday and now we’re caught up with shipping from that, I’m posting it here.

Buy any 2 of our books and pick one of the books below FREE!
Include the title as a note or email us, we can deal with it! (Buy 4, pick 2 freebies, buy 12, pick, I don’t know, 7,8?)

Fine print:
Print titles only.
North America only: sorry. International mailing is abominable. (But: DRM-free ebooks are here.)
All US orders taking advantage of this will be upgraded to Priority Mail.
(Sorry: remainders not included.)
Offer ended 5 pm EST December 20, 2017.

Order Here!

  1. Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, A Life on Paper
  2. Alan DeNiro, Tyrannia
  3. Peter Dickinson, Emma Tupper’s Diary
  4. Peter Dickinson, The Poison Oracle
  5. Angélica Gorodischer, Prodigies
  6. Alasdair Gray, Old Men in Love (hc)
  7. Eileen Gunn, Questionable Practices
  8. Vincent McCaffrey, Hound (pb)
  9. Maureen F. McHugh, After the Apocalypse
  10. Lydia Millet, The Fires Beneath the Sea (pb)
  11. Lydia Millet, The Shimmers in the Night (hc)
  12. Benjamin Parzybok, Sherwood Nation
  13. Susan Stinson, Spider in a Tree
  14. Howard Waldrop, Horse of a Different Color
  15. Ysabeau S. Wilce, Prophecies Libels & Dreams

Holiday Shipping Deadlines.


Ambiguity Machines Giveaway

Tue 12 Dec 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Ambiguity Machines Giveaway | Posted by: Gavin

Now that Am*zonGoodreads has gotten a good amount of data on readers and giveaways, in January they’re going to start charging between $100 and $600 to run these so this will be among the last we do. But, hey, put your name in the hat to get an advance print galley of Ambiguity Machines now!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Ambiguity Machines by Vandana Singh

Ambiguity Machines

by Vandana Singh

Giveaway ends December 19, 2017.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway


Singh the Rising Star

Mon 11 Dec 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Singh the Rising Star | Posted by: Gavin

Who doesn’t like the letter “S”? Where would English plural words be without it*? What lovely sounds this post title makes — and can’t you just hear the implied semi-colon, a la “Singh: the Rising Star”? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe a comma? A semi-colon? Nothing at all?!

Anyway, the latest anyway in a line of 10,000, besides Publishers Weekly including it in their Top 10 SF, Fantasy & Horror Spring 2018 Announcements(!), Library Journal gave Vandana Singh’s forthcoming collection a very strong review in their December 1 issue**:

“In “Wake Rider,” a young woman faces death in different forms as she also contemplates the possibilities of her life. In “Oblivion: A Journey,” a long-held need for revenge keeps the protagonist striving for life beyond death until the realization sets in that mortality may be the only relief. The heroine of “Requiem” travels to Alaska a year after her aunt’s disappearance, seeking answers. All of the stories here feature characters who are trying to discover the nature of their existence and how their lives connect others. VERDICT Rising star Singh draws on her Indian roots and physics background to bring her first North American collection to readers. Admirers of literary sf will want to read this.”

* Answers on a postcard to the usual address, thank ee kindly!
** Also in that issue: their review of The Invisible Valley.


Who Among Us?

Fri 8 Dec 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Who Among Us? | Posted by: Gavin

Who among us hasn’t been tricked into entering a “ghost marriage”? Library Journal is first past the post with the first trade review of Austin Woerner’s translation of Su Wei’s novel The Invisible Valley:

“In 1960s China, life takes a dramatic turn for 21-year-old Le Beiping immediately after he is tricked into entering a “ghost marriage” with Han, the dead daughter of the foreman from his reeducation group. Sent off to work as a cattle herder in a remote area called Mudkettle Mountain, Lu meets Jade, a woman in a free, loving community of “driftfolk,” who has three children by three different men in the community. Lu is soon adopted into the group and enjoys the contentedly nudist lifestyle of several individuals there. Based on the author’s own experiences, the story may surprise readers expecting a ghost story, but what comes to light at the end is more shocking and gritty than anticipated. The vernacular of the driftfolk, well translated by Woerner, recalls Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn; obviously these characters are not in the mainstream.”

* Request a free copy from LibraryThing.


Chicago Love

Thu 7 Dec 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Chicago Love | Posted by: Gavin

Hometown prophet gets some love! Juan Martinez’s Best Worst American is one the Chicago Review of Books’s Best Fiction Books of 2017 — not coincidentally, it’s one of ours, too. Yay for another list of good books!

9781618731241_094d0Best Worst American
By Juan Martinez
Small Beer Press

“In his debut short story collection, Juan Martinez takes us across the country (and possible countries) in brisk tales that range from sci-fi and horror to realism and metafiction.” —Adam Morgan


Someday My Printz Will Come

Wed 6 Dec 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | 2 Comments | Posted by: Gavin

In Other Lands coverThere’s a lovely post by Karyn Silverman on School Library Journal‘s Someday My Printz Will Come blog about two books, Spellbook of the Lost and Found by Moïra Fowley-Doyle and Sarah Rees Brennan’s In Other Lands. The post starts with this intro:

Let’s talk about heart books. Because today I want to call your attention to two books that are long shots at best, but which I loved them dearly as a reader. More than that, despite the flaws that I predict will ultimately sink them, these are strong books that deserve close attention.

Oh well, thinks I — as I, of course, think all our books should win all the awardz, all! Well, maybe not. How about just most of them?

And the review begins:

Oh my heart. This book made me happy. It’s laugh out loud funny and also fantasy, which is not exactly a common pairing, and in a dark, miserable year when it seems like the sky really IS falling, this was exactly the breath of fresh air I needed.

Yes!

If you have not read the book and don’t like spoiler: Don’t Read This Post! But if you have read the book, this is such an enjoyable read. It is real fun thinking of this book being a contender for awards and Karyn lays out the reasons why so well. Either way, winner or not, the book is fab and making more readers happier every day which is a pretty fantastic result.


NPR’s 2017 Great Reads: Tender & The River Bank

Tue 5 Dec 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on NPR’s 2017 Great Reads: Tender & The River Bank | Posted by: Gavin

I’m delighted to see 2 of our 2017 titles on NPR’s endlessly entertaining Book Concierge Guide To 2017’s Great Reads:

Tender: Stories
by Sofia Samatar
Most of the 20 sumptuous tales in Sofia Samatar’s collection Tender take place on Earth – although not always the Earth we might recognize. Sprawling in subject from the supernatural power of names to the loneliness of a half-robot woman, Tender redefines the emotional power and literary heft that speculative fiction can convey. Where Samatar’s acclaimed fantasy novels exist in a strange, dreamlike world, her short stories daringly explore the overlap of familiarity and otherness.
— recommended by Jason Heller, book critic

The River Bank: A Sequel to Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows
by Kij Johnson

A beautiful, pitch-perfect sequel to Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, with characters original to Kij Johnson and spot illustrations by Kathleen Jennings, The River Bank is that species of fan fiction that unfolds new material from a beloved property with hardly a hint of a seam. Meandering with a river’s pace through musings on art, home and the end of summer, The River Bank is a more than worthy successor.
— recommended by Amal El-Mohtar, book critic


Clarion 2018

Mon 4 Dec 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Comments Off on Clarion 2018 | Posted by: Gavin

I’m delighted that Kelly and I are the final 2-week instructors at the Clarion Writers’ Workshop next summer in San Diego. This year’s full line up is Christopher Barzak, Holly Black, Mat Johnson, and Kij Johnson. It will be awesome. Applications are now open!


Thread of the Year (ha)

Fri 1 Dec 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal. | Comments Off on Thread of the Year (ha) | Posted by: Gavin


Read by Millions

Wed 29 Nov 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Comments Off on Read by Millions | Posted by: Gavin

The Invisible Valley coverMillions of Chinese readers have read this novel but over here in the USA, there are not that many who have. Even the translator, Austin Woerner, isn’t here at the moment. He’s over in Shanghai (hello!) teaching at the Duke University campus. However, the author lives here, so that’s one more person who’s read it (probably uncountable times). And, lucky us, we’ve read it.

What am I talking about? The Invisible Valley, Su Wei’s first published novel and first to be translated into English. It’s huge, babby, monstrous, hot, humid, fascinating, immersive, and we’re going to publish it in April 2018. Are you curious? Reviewers can get advance uncorrected copies on Edelweiss and we’ve just added an excerpt here.


Love the book on Publishers Weekly‏’s invite!

Tue 28 Nov 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Love the book on Publishers Weekly‏’s invite! | Posted by: Gavin

Which book? This one!


Holiday Deadlines 2017

Wed 15 Nov 2017 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Comments Off on Holiday Deadlines 2017 | Posted by: Gavin

Here is Our Beloved Annual Holiday Shipping Deadline post. Our office will be closed over the holidays from December 22 – January 2, 2017. It is unlikely we will ship over that period. (Weightless is always open.)

Might as well order now, order often!

Here are the last order dates for Small Beer Press — which, in case you’re thinking about waiting until the last minute to order some chocolate Christmas trees are about the same as every other biz in the USA. Dates for international shipping are here.

All orders include free first class (LCRW) or media mail (books) shipping in the USA.

But: Media Mail parcels are the last to go on trucks. If the truck is full, Media Mail does not go out until the next truck. And if that one’s full, too, . . . you get the idea. So, if you’d like to guarantee pre-holiday arrival, please add Priority Mail:

Domestic Mail Class/Product Cut Off Date
First Class Mail Dec. 19
Priority Mail Dec. 20
Priority Mail Express Dec. 22
First Class International (generally) Dec. 7

Order a book today!

Just like to read a book, don’t care about a ding or two?


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