Last spring I had the good fortune to carry on a dialogue with writer Brandon Schrand about form, language, and experimentation in the writing of memoir. The Mountain and the Fathers eschews chronology for fragmentation and thematic connection, and Brandon’s newest, Works Cited: An Alphabetical Odyssey of Mayhem and Misbehavior, is a freewheeling, fun, affecting memoir penned in the found form of a works cited. You can check out our conversation in this month’s issue of Brevity.
On Thursday, March 7, I’ll be at the Counterpoint Press table at the AWP Bookfair in the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, MA signing copies of my memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers. Stop by if you like!
Also, there’ll be lots of other wonderful Counterpoint titles at the table to peruse as well, including David McGlynn’s memoir A Door in the Ocean; BK Loren’s novel Theft and collection of essays Animal, Mineral, Radical; Susan Sherman’s novel The Little Russian; and Dana Johnson’s novel Elsewhere, California. Great books all!
I’ll be headed to the 2013 AWP Conference and Bookfair in Boston here in a few days for four days of book signings, readings, listening to panel presentations, catching up with friends, and wandering in and out of various pubs. If you’re in town, and you’re interested, here’s my event schedule:
Thursday, March 7, 2-3 pm, Bookfair, White Pine Press Table
Author Signing, Notes From the Journey Westward, Joe WilkinsThursday, March 7, 7 pm, Emerald Necklace Conservancy, 125 The Fenway
Wild Lives / Raucous Pens: Readings from Ecotone, Hawk & Handsaw, and
Terrain.org
Hosted by the Emerald Necklace Conservancy and located at the
Conservancy’s historic Shattuck Visitor’s Center on the Fenway, just a
15-minute walk from the Hynes Convention Center. Emceed by Kathryn
Miles and Simmons Buntin and featuring literary readings by David
Gessner, Sheryl St. Germain, Derek Sheffield, Cynthia Huntington, Joe
Wilkins, Lauren Eggert-Crowe, Hannah Kreitzer, and Bill Roorbach. Beer
and wine will be served in this cozy (you might say, intimate) cottage
setting.Friday, March 8 3-4:15, Room 208, Level 2
F238. New Writing from Orion. (Jennifer Sahn, Pam Houston, Chris
Dombrowski, Joe Wilkins, Tania James) The Orion editors believe that
people are a part of nature and that the environment is everything
that is—which translates into a broad mandate for a literary magazine,
allowing Orion to publish the best writing at the intersection of
ecology and culture. Join us as four recent contributors read and
discuss their essays and short stories from Orion.Saturday, March 9, 4:30-5:45 pm, Room 309, Level 3
S260. Counterpoint Press Reading. (Dan Smetanka, David McGlynn, Dana
Johnson, Susan Sherman, and Joe Wilkins) A reading by prose writers
who have had books published in 2012 by Counterpoint Press. Two
memoirists and two novelists read work spanning a range of landscapes,
time periods, and subjects. The editor who acquired the books
moderates and discusses what drew him to each title, while the authors
themselves read and reflect on their experience of working with one of
the nation’s largest and most respected independent literary
publishers.
Notes from the Journey Westward, my second full-length collection of poems, is featured in the latest edition of The Book Stand at Newpages!
This week you can check out David Gessner’s recently imagined sit-down with the Washington Post over at the always-entertaining Bill and Dave’s Cocktail Hour. And I’m very excited to be reading with Dave, one of my environmental writing heroes, as well as Kathryn Miles, Simmons Buntin, Cheryl St. Germain, Derek Sheffield, Cynthia Huntington, Lauren Eggert-Crowe, and Bill Roorbach on March 7th at Shattuck Visitor’s Center on the Fenway in Boston, MA!
Very excited to hear that The Mountain and the Father has been named a 2012 Montana Book Award Honor Book! Lots of great writers–Deidre McNamer, David Quammen, and Timothy Egan, among others–have won or been honored by the Montana Book Award in the past, and this year is no different, with two of my recent favorites, Emily Danforth’s The Miseducation of Cameron Post and David Abrams’s Fobbit, winning the prize and being named an honor book, respectively.
Just ran across this nice shout-out for The Mountain and the Fathers in the Missoulian. Nice to be named alongside greats like McMurtry, Doig, and Ford, and I’m particularly pleased to be keeping company with David Abrams and his wonderful debut novel, Fobbit.
As an undergrad at Gonzaga University, I always thought of the annual Get Lit! Festival as the main event in the Spokane literary scene. So I’m pretty much beyond excited to be headed back to Spokane as part of the Get Lit! 2013 lineup, which features luminaries like Joyce Carol Oates, Major Jackson, and David Shields, as well as my mentors from graduate school, Kim Barnes and Robert Wrigley.
Always wonderful to hear from readers, and I can’t help but share a few lines of this wise, kind note I received yesterday about The Mountain and the Fathers:
My father, like yours, was strong and gentle, but fortunate enough to live into old age. He too carried me in his large hands and on his broad shoulders, but in Iowa and Colorado. We loved each other without words and without bounds, but somehow we remained strangers. Perhaps no man ever finds his father. Thank you for a masterfully written story about your father and all our fathers.
Really pleased to see Notes from the Journey Westward on The Scrapper Poet’s list of the Best Poetry Books of 2012. Great company here, including Kathleen Flenniken, Bruce Snider, Johnathan Williams, and many others.
joewilkins.org 