I’m happy to announce that my new book, Kekekabic, is for sale now at Finishing Line Press! From now until March 25, you can preorder a copy of my book and it will ship to you on May 20. You can get a copy for $19.99 at finishinglinepress.com.
Duluth’s Holy Cow! Press author Jane Yolen, author of Kaddish: Before the Holocaust and After, has been awarded the Sophie Brody Medal for 2022.
The Northeastern Minnesota Book Awards have a new organizing body, Lake Superior Writers. As a fan of NEMBA, the University of Minnesota Duluth and LSW, I think this is good news for all.
It looks like (from the Online Computer Library Center records and the books I found at Gabriel’s) Duluth Benedictine Books was a brief experiment in recording the lives and institutions of sisters who live at St. Scholastica. (I just finished a jar of strawberry rhubarb jam I purchased at their most recent jam sale — so yummy.)
I wonder whether this was a project fueled by one of the sisters? By someone determined to write down history or by someone who recognized that telling these stories could also help recruit for the sisterhood (whose numbers are dwindling)?
Back in 2000 George Killough, then an English professor at the College of St. Scholastica, edited the book “Minnesota Diary, 1942-46” the journal of Sinclair Lewis during the time he lived in Duluth.
I’ve struggled with how to blend a history of publishers in Duluth with a history of authors. It feels like that would widen my scope beyond the manageable. And then I find a book like this.
Still working on building a literary history of Duluth. Has anyone information about “The Wordshed” as a Duluth publisher? I can only find:
Alaska: a man from Kanatak: the story of Paul Boskoffsky, by Paul Boskoffsky; Lloyd D Mattson; Harvey Sandstrom. The Wordshed, 2006. ©2002
Alaska: new life for an ancient people, by Lloyd D Mattson; Ruben Hillborn. The Wordshed, 1999. ©1999
Los Angeles Review of Books has a brief mention of Duluth in the opening sentence of a review of three books focused on trees. The reviewer, Barbara Kiser, is a former Duluthian who has lived in London since the 1980s.
I’m still working on my literary history of Duluth. Lake Superior Writers has published or co-published several volumes. If you were involved in some of these collections and have stories to share, message me or comment below.
I’m trying to build a history of literature in Duluth, and I’ve decided that one useful heuristic would be publishers. So, what can you tell me about Calyx Press and Cecilia Lieder?
Unforgettable things happen to us. Those pivotal events take on new meaning with the passage of time. Jan Chronister looks closely at those events in her past in her latest collection, Decennia (Truth Serum Press, 2020). The title means “decades.” Chronister splits her life into five of them and examines each in detail.
Hands and Heart Together: Daily Meditations for Caregivers
Patricia Hoolihan
Jan. 19
Holy Cow! Press
Available at holycowpress.org
The Old West End
Nick Nerburn
February
Available at niknerburn.bigcartel.com
It Could be Worse: A Girlfriend’s Guide for Runners who Detest Running
Beth Probst
Feb. 1
Available at circletouradventures.com
Prax and the Hazardous Countdown
Matthew Francis
Feb. 17
Available at amazon.com
In which I continue writing about the Situationists by telling the stories of the women involved.
The story of Peggy and Pegeen Guggenheim, as told by the Situationist painter Ralph Rumney, reads like Shakespeare: court intrigue, backstabbing, madness, and suicide. Rumney’s book The Consul provides a critical point of view on this fraught mother-daughter relationship cracking up at the cutting edge of the art world.
