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7/22/16 Launch Party for Can Everybody Swim? A Survival Story from Katrina's Superdome

What was it actually like to live inside the Louisiana Superdome in the week following Hurricane Katrina? Bruce S. Snow's book is the first memoir written by a New Orleans resident to answer that question. 

Join Bruce and Et Alia Press for a reading, book signing, and launch party on Friday, July 22. 

News coverage surrounding Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath captured America’s rapt attention and swelled our hearts. Stories of lawlessness and violence still abound from the flooded City. Who can forget the Louisiana Superdome? Can Everybody Swim? takes you beyond the camera’s lens on a journey through the maelstrom. A shortage of cash combined with a fierce loyalty to protect the Gentilly neighborhood family home purchased by his Ecuadorian immigrant grandparents led the then twenty-five-year-old author and his family to remain in their City to weather the storm, including enduring six days in the infamous Superdome. Follow this family of four and a half as they survive the worst natural disaster of the 21st century.

Pre-order Can Everybody Swim? today from Et Alia, and your copy will arrive in about a week. It will be available for sale at the launch party for $16.95 on credit card or $17 cash.

Click HERE for our Facebook Event Page. 

The Moon Prince and The Sea Now Available for Sale!

Following its Monday June 6 launch at The University of Utah School of Medicine, medical student Daniela Rose Anderson's stunning debut book for children and families facing terminal illnesses, The Moon Prince and The Sea is now available for purchase from Et Alia Press. All preorders have been filled, and we thank our customers for the outpouring of early interest in this moving and important children's book.

The Moon Prince and The Sea is based on the true story of a bond formed across an ocean between two children who found joy despite terminal illnesses. In a hospital in India, Sumit is surrounded by children who call the hospital their home; in a hospital in America, Marina is surrounded by her loving family and friends. The book is named for Sumit, the moon prince, who paints a map of two moons that the children will later find on their adventure, and Marina, whose name means “of the sea.” The pair embarks on a magical adventure that raises questions about love, life, and death in a manner designed to be accessible to and comforting for children and families. This book is intended for children and families experiencing sickness, grief, or loss, and for any child who is curious about these topics. Written in memory of Sumit and Marina, author Daniela Rose Anderson is generously donating her royalties from The Moon Prince and The Sea to support children otherwise financially unable to access the medical care they need.

Support Daniela's efforts to provide children's access to medical care by ordering your copy today, and stay tuned for a more expansive reading and resource list for children and families facing terminal illnesses. 

The Moon Prince and The Sea author, Daniela Rose Anderson, with Sumit in India. 

Author Daniela Anderson reads from The Moon Prince and The Sea at its June 6 book launch in Salt Lake City, Utah. 

Mike Groesser's Upload Podcast interviews et alia's erin wood

On Upload Podcast, Mike Groesser hosts creative entrepreneurs and side hustlers in conversations that "help you move from dreaming to doing." Groesser's dynamic format offers altering episodes of 30-45 minute in-depth interviews with creative types and follow-up lessons on what can be taken from each interview. 

In May, Groesser interviewed Et Alia Press co-owner and editor, Erin Wood. Listen to these episodes and enjoy all of Upload Podcast's sessions if you are eager to hear from other creatives and learn something about your own creative processes. 

Upload Podcast Episode #18, Interview with Erin Wood

This week, I chat with Erin Wood about her experiences as a freelance editor, writer, and co-founder of a small publishing company. 

Upload Podcast Episode #19, "Release, Revise, Repeat" 

Do you ever find it hard to say your work is good enough and share it? Many of us struggle with polishing too long after the peak -- where everything you do thereafter produces diminishing returns. The key is to learn to recognize that peak and release your work so you can start getting external feedback. Then, you simply revise and repeat.

This week, I talk about some of the lessons we can learn from my interview with Erin Wood, a writer, editor, and co-owner of a publishing company.

Philip Martin Wins 2016 Great Plains Journalism Award

Congratulations to Philip Martin, author of The President Next Door: Poems, Songs, and Journalism, for his 2016 Great Plains Journalism Award. The President Next Door collects poems and song lyrics, many of which were inspired by Martin's journalistic work, and was recently part of the 2016 Arkansas Literary Festival. Martin is an award-winning newspaper columnist, critic, and songwriter. 

Et Alia Celebrates 4 Books by Arkansas Authors Featured in the Arkansas Literary Festival

All four of Et Alia's books written by Arkansas authors have been featured in The Arkansas Literary Festival, held each April in Little Rock. Not too shabby for a very small press!

In 2016, Philip Martin's The President Next Door: Poems, Songs, and Journalism and Erin Wood's Scars: An Anthology participated in the festival. Previously, F. H. Thurmond's books Ring of Five: A Novella and Four Stories and Before I Sleep: A Memoir of Travel and Reconciliation were featured in 2015 and 2014, respectively. 

Et Alia is proud to bring Arkansas voices to the state and beyond, and to participate in this nationally recognized event. 

Philip Martin reads, plays his guitar, and sings from his collection, The President Next Door: Poems, Songs, and Journalism, at a session of the 2016 Arkansas Literary Festival. 

Scars was in good company on the Main Library sales tables at the 2016 Arkansas Literary Festival. 

Scars: An Anthology panelists, editor Erin Wood and contributor Andrea Zekis, at The MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History prior to their panel during the 2016 Arkansas Literary Festival. 

Erin Wood signs a copy of Scars for former Congressman Ed Bethune and his wife, Lana, during the Scars panel at the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History during the 2016 Arkansas Literary Festival. Photo courtesy panel mediator Michael Hibblin of KUAR radio. 

Join Scars: An Anthology Panel at the 2016 Arkansas Literary Festival

Join "Scars: An Anthology" panel for "Hurting and Healing" at 5:30 pm Friday, April 15 at the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History during the Arkansas Literary Festival! Readings and conversation with Scars contributor, author of The President Next Door: Poems, Songs, and Journalism (Et Alia, 2016), and Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Philip Martin; contributor and transgender activist Andrea Zekis; and editor and contributor Erin Wood.

Panel description: "Through various genres and mediums, the topics of self-mutilation, art, cancer, gender confirmation surgery, birth, brain injury, war, pain, and love are explored in Scars: An Anthology."

Hope you'll join the conversation next week!

April 14-17, 2016. Little Rock, AR

Scars: An Anthology Contributor Hosts Disability and Identity Panel in DC

If you live in or around DC, join Scars: An Anthology contributor, poet, and chair of the Disabilities Studies Program at The University of Toledo Jim Ferris for a panel next Thursday,  4/14/16, "Cripping the Intersections: Readings Probing Disability and Identity." (Facebook Event Page.) His Scars: An Anthology contribution, "Scars: A Love Story" is a script of Ferris's performance piece which, like a scar, transforms in the telling. Jim writes: 

"Scars are places where the separation of inside and out has been breeched and then reestablished. Scars help to keep outside out and inside in. But they also mark that breech, even historicize it: a breech occurred here . . . and it may return."   

Panel Description: Disability – the one identity category that cuts across all the other lines. This themed reading will use poetry to explore some of the ways that the range of human circumstances we call disability weave through many other facets of identity, including race, gender, class, religion and spirituality, sexual orientation, level of education, and age. Disability intersects in complex ways with all other identity categories. This reading promises to challenge and trouble a variety of identity categories, probing the sometimes startling ways that seemingly disparate vectors of identity can converge. Discussion will follow; challenges, provocations, and jokes encouraged. Cripping the Intersections: Readings Probing Disability and Identity Jim Ferris, Jill Khoury, Mike Northen, L. Lamar Wilson, Kathi Wolfe. At Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives Room 102.

Below, "Scarbill" by Et Alia Press's layout and graphic designer Kathy Oliverio precedes Ferris's piece in Scars: An Anthology. 

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The President Next Door: Poems, Songs, and Journalism Launches in Little Rock

More than 60 guests gathered at Cantrell Gallery in Little Rock on Thursday, March 18 to celebrate the launch of Philip Martin's The President Next Door: Poems, Songs, and Journalism (Et Alia Press, 2016). 

The President Next Door is the latest book by award-winning newspaper columnist, critic and songwriter Philip Martin. It collects poems and song lyrics, many of which were inspired by Martin's journalistic work. Martin's enormous impact on our community was evident, drawing guests ranging from former Congressman and author Ed Bethune, to author Kevin Brockmeier, to Et Alia two-time author and UALR Professor Frank M. Thurmond, to Matt Smith, owner of Little Rock's independently owned Riverdale 10 Cinema. All enjoyed Martin's time at the mike, as he sang three songs from his book, followed by a greeting and book signing. 

Et Alia thanks Cindy, Clarke, and Helen at Cantrell Gallery for graciously volunteering their beautiful art space for this event. Cantrell Gallery is the oldest gallery and custom frame shop in Little Rock, and features art by over 30 established and emerging local/regional artists. In their large gallery space, they feature special exhibits that generally run for roughly seven weeks before rotating. The Gallery carries everything from prints to original works of art, including three-dimensional pieces, gift items, and custom framing. 

Columbia University Panel Podcast and Review of Scars: An Anthology

Columbia University's Seminar on Narrative, Health, and Social Justice presented "Scars as Art, Text, and Experience" on December 10, 2015. 

On December 10,2015, Columbia University's Seminar on Narrative, Health and Social Justice presented "Scars as Art, Text and Experience" at the Faculty House, featuring Editor Erin Wood and contributors Kelli Dunham, Lorrie Fredette, Samantha Plakun, and Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes. Marsha Hurst, who is a lecturer in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University and co-chairs the University Seminar on "Narrative, Health, and Social Justice" introduced the panel. Hurst is co-editor with Sayantani DasGupta of Stories of Illness and Healing: Women Write Their Bodies. Click and scroll to the bottom of the book review to listen to the two hour conversation in its entirety. 

Review of Scars: An Anthology by Donna Bulseco in Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, January 24, 2016:  

"For some two years, Erin Wood spent her time examining scars. As careful and probing as a surgeon, the writer and editor of Scars: An Anthology examined a wealth of poems, photographs, and prose about the subject and handled each person's revealing narrative with the emerging understanding that "there is a great deal about our scars that extends far beyond the individual body and the self."

Wood, whose essay "We Scar, We Heal, We Rise" was a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2013 (it appears in this volume) reflects on the ways scars may "belong to different versions of ourselves: our past selves...or new selves, selves in transition, or even selves we wish to regard more fully."

Stories that address these issues make the collection a rich reading experience that at times can be intense and painful, but also enlightening and entertaining. . . ." READ MORE