Order Can Everybody Swim? A Survival Story from Katrina's Superdome 9/7-9/15 and we'll donate 10% of your purchase to the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, posting a picture of the total donation to our Voices Blog and Instagram.
Check Out Our Ad in the Oxford American's Fall Issue
As you thumb through a great fall issue of the Oxford American, including "Becoming Integrated: Trying to achieve black selfhood in Little Rock" by Frederick McKindra, you will stumble across our ad for Et Alia's Neglected Histories of Arkansas Contest on page 61. For complete information, go to etaliapress.com/contest. The deadline in a few months away, but we're already pumped to read and view your very best work that (re)writes Arkansas.
THE RUMPUS INTERVIEWS BRUCE SNOW
Enjoy Erica Berry's THE RUMPUS MINI-INTERVIEW PROJECT #99: BRUCE SNOW! Haven't read Can Everybody Swim? A Survival Story from Katrina's Superdome? Order your copy today with free shipping from Et Alia.
Harvey's Destruction on the Eve of Katrina
Et Alia Press is holding our southeast Texas neighbors in our thoughts.
Hurricane Harvey’s intensity and destruction are all too familiar to Bruce Snow. On the eve of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall twelve years ago—Sunday, August 28, 2005—Bruce, his ill mother, uncle, uncle’s wife, and dog awaited Katrina in horror. 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.
About this day twelve years ago, Bruce writes,
“Satellite images of the multicolored, vicious swirl overlying the entire Gulf Coast were in my peripheral vision, but I wasn’t paying much attention. The sun filtering through the Venetian blinds of my grandparents’ home began to fade. It would be the last sunset of my old life. . . . I wandered my block in a catatonic stupor, nothing moving around me but the gentle breeze. Everyone was gone. Not just my friends, but everyone. The City had been emptied, and we were all alone. Our home, just a tiny island of light in the silent metropolis.”
Mud & Lotus Now Available for Purchase
The Mud & The Lotus: A Guide and Workbook for Students of Yoga is now on sale for $39.95 plus free domestic shipping. Order by September 22 to get your signed copy by mail, and stay tuned for details about the Hot Springs, AR, book launch in October.
Pictured below, 7 cartons weighing 158 lbs. of Mud & Lotus excitement arrive on Et Alia's doorstep, and author Courtney Butler displays the cover as she takes copies to be signed.
Thank you to nearly 50 customers for pre-ordering your books, which will be shipped or available for pick up at Balance Yoga and Wellness on September 15, 2017.
LAST DAY TO PRE-ORDER MUD & LOTUS
If you're looking to deepen your knowledge of yoga or are an aspiring yoga teacher . . . LAST DAY to PRE-ORDER The Mud & The Lotus: A Guide and Workbook for Students of Yoga! Pre-order before midnight tomorrow August 15 to receive a 10% discount + free shipping. Beautifully illustrated by Arkansas artist Elizabeth Hartzell and "highly recommended" by international yoga great Larry Payne, among others, this hatha curriculum shares history, physical and energetic anatomy, teaching tips, cautionary notes, business advice, class plans, demonstrative illustrations, and much more.
PRE-ORDER The Mud & The Lotus!
In celebration of International Yoga Day, THE MUD & THE LOTUS is now available for pre-order on our website! Buy early, receive a discount, and by mid-September you'll have access to the advice of veteran yogini and business woman Courtney Denise Butler.
Want to learn more about Courtney's credentials, which include earning every credential available from Yoga Alliance? Visit her author page to learn more. We proudly welcome this talented author to our Et Alia family of authors.
The Mud & The Lotus: A Guide and Workbook for Students of Yoga
$29.95
COURTNEY BUTLER ROBINSON
8.5 X 11 paperback. 248 pages. 50+ illustrations and charts. ISBN: 978-1944528928. Cover illustration: Lotus from the Mud by David McBurney davidmcburney.com.au
Robinson has every credential available from Yoga Alliance. She was one of the first yoga therapists to be recognized by the International Association of Yoga Therapists as a Certified Yoga Therapist (C-IAYT), and has been providing private yoga therapy for more than a decade.
Rooted in the understanding that yoga teachers are themselves lifelong students of yoga, The Mud & The Lotus: A Guide and Workbook for Students of Yoga offers opportunities for aspiring teachers and new students alike to grow in their practice. Guided by hatha yoga traditions, Courtney Denise Butler presents the curriculum she uses to train student-teachers at her Balance Yoga and Wellness Yoga School (R.Y.S. 200/300/500).
Quantity:
Ms. Magazine Blog Features Scars: An Anthology Contributor Kelli Dunham
Q&A: Comedian Kelli Dunham on Storytelling as a Radical, Transformative Act
Ms. Magazine's Blog today features Et Alia's Erin Wood interviewing Scars: An Anthology contributor Kelli Dunham in a Q&A, "Storytelling as a Radical, Transformative Act." Enjoy reading about Kelli's latest project, Organ Recital: A Storytelling Festival about Bodies, Health, and Healthcare, her shitty knees partly attributable to her life as a nun, her next comedy CD Leak of Faith, and lots of other fabulous stuff. READ HERE.
More About Kelli:
A self-described “ex-nun genderqueer nurse author nerd comic so common in modern Brooklyn,” Kelli Dunham’s long list of “funny person/serious subjects” projects include appearances on Showtime and Discovery Channel, 7 books of humorous nonfiction with witty titles like Freak of Nurture, and 4 comedy CDs (I am NOT a 12 Year Old Boy, Almost Pretty, Why is the Fat One Always Angry, and Full of Bad Ideas) regularly on Sirius/XM and Pandora’s comedy stations. Her fifth comedy CD, Leak of Faith (tales of an exploding knee replacement, surviving the Lord’s Boot Camp, and the never-ending search for a gender friendly bathroom) will be released September 15. Kelli is considered an expert on grief and caregiving, and presents nationwide to healthcare providers about LGBT issues, LGBT health, and using humor to prevent compassion fatigue.
Thank You for Coming out to Handmade in the Heights!
Thanks to all who came out to Handmade in the Heights on Saturday, May 6! We had a great time speaking to readers and writers, slinging paperbacks, and sharing the excitement of past and current Et Alia projects.
Author Grace Vest and Champ share news about the FALL 2017 release of HOME SWEET HOME: Arkansas Rescue Dogs and Their Stories. We even got a visit from the cover dog herself! The photoshoot for the final dog featured in the book was complete yesterday. Et Alia is thrilled for Grace and all these special doggies as enthusiasm builds for the release!
HOME SWEET HOME: Arkansas Rescue Dogs and Their Stories author Grace Vest and her resuce dog, Champ.
Et Alia author Philip Martin (The President Next Door: Poems, Songs, and Journalism) wife Karen, and their fur kids; Et Alia author and co-owner Erin Wood with her mamma; and a fun customer sharing her new poster, purchased just down the way from Yella Dog Press.
ANNOUNCING Neglected Histories of Arkansas Contest. Deadline January 15, 2018
Et Alia Press needs fresh perspectives to (re)write Arkansas.
Especially if you’re an Arkansan of color, identify as a woman and/or LGBTQ, live with a serious health issue, are a whistle-blower, or live a lifestyle outside the mainstream, you probably know a different Arkansas than some histories have fabricated. Neglected Histories of Arkansas welcomes writings of any genre that explore and share tough truths in and about Arkansas. We need work that will preserve and expand cultural memory in its diversity, and shine a light on the neglected and alternative histories of The Natural State.
Details:
- Deadline: January 15, 2018 by midnight. Contest opens April 19, 2017, and early submissions are encouraged.
- Send manuscripts of no more than 25,000 words or 10 poems and a $10 reading fee via Submittable.
- Must be a current resident of Arkansas or have resided in Arkansas long enough to "call it home" and be willing to return for readings and events.
- In your cover letter, specify your work as nonfiction, fiction, poetry, or hybrid; indicate length of Arkansas residency at the time of submission; provide full name, address, and contact information. No identifying information should appear in your manuscript so that, to the extent possible, submissions will be anonymous.
- The winner receives $125, and five copies; two runners-up will each receive $25 and two copies. It is our hope to publish the work of the winner and two runners-up as an anthology, but we may publish fewer.
- Simultaneous submissions are acceptable, but please withdraw work without delay if it is placed elsewhere.
- The short list will be announced mid-February.
- The winning manuscripts will be judged by H.K. Hummel, and will be published Fall 2018.
Email questions to etaliapressbooks at gmail dot com, with the subject line “Neglected Histories of Arkansas Contest.” If the $10 reading fee presents a substantial financial hardship and is the only thing keeping you from submitting your work, please reach out to us via email and request a waiver of the fee.
H.K. Hummel is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and founding editor of Blood Orange Review. She is the author of Boytreebird and Handmade Boats, and co-author of Short-form Creative Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2018). Her poems have recently appeared in The Hudson Review, Meridian, Booth, and Iron Horse Review. Visit her website at www.hkhummel.com.
Join Et Alia at Handmade in the Heights, Booth #82 THIS SATURDAY!
Look for us at Handmade in the Heights from 10-4 Saturday 4/22, booth #82! We'll be offering event discounts, info about an exciting new contest from Et Alia, and a special guest appearance from Grace Vest who will share about her book Home Sweet Home: Arkansas Rescue Dogs and Their Stories (forthcoming Fall 2017).
Congratulations on Pushcart Nomination, Dennis Vannatta!
Congratulations to Dennis Vannatta on the Pushcart nomination of "Fireflies" from The Only World You Get: Arkansas Stories. We hope you'll join Et Alia in celebrating "Fireflies" and every story in this Porter Prize-winning author's collection. Use code "PUSH10" to receive a 10% discount (along with every day FREE SHIP) on Et Alia's site. Keep your fingers crossed for great news from Pushcart in early May!
AWP 2017, Washington DC, February 8-12
The Association of Writers and Writing Programs 50th anniversary conference was incredible with more than 12,600 attendees, 550 events, and more than 800 exhibitors.
Erin Wood received a grant of $500 from the Arkansas Arts Council's Sally A. Williams Artist Fund to attend the conference. She went to many panels and readings, a few of which are highlighted below. It was Erin's first time to meet Scars: An Anthology contributors Jim Ferris and Chelsey Clammer in person after years of contact by email, and it was delightful to reconnect with Scars contributor and friend, Jill Christman.
SELECT PANELS ATTENDED
With 550 events, choosing what panels to attend is a terrible challenge. Then again, too much compelling stuff is a good problem to have! Click the link in each title to learn more about the panelists.
PUBLISHING DIVERSELY: Challenges and Successes
It's one thing to talk about diversity. It's something else to actually achieve it. Small press publishers, authors, and arts leaders will share their approaches to addressing, and achieving, diversity and representation in independent literary publishing.
THE VEIN OF JADE: What a single detail can reveal in nonfiction
"When the vein of jade/is revealed in the rock," Lu Chi writes in his classic The Art of Writing, "the whole mountain glistens." Likewise, a single detail can reveal the meaning and mystery of a scene, an essay, or a book. Practitioners of various nonfiction forms, from journalism to hybrid, each choose a particular detail from a well-regarded nonfiction and show how it becomes—by its context, its imagery, its power to—the vein of jade that allows the whole to glisten.
BODY OF WORK: Exploring disability, creativity, and inclusivity
What is the physical body’s relationship to the creative mind? Four writers with disabilities will discuss their writing lives, and how social progress and technology are transforming representations of the human body. What effect has this had on literature? Where do we read ourselves in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry? Our panelists will discuss whether or not literature is representing the current climate and how they have represented their own bodies in writing over time.
INVISIBLE SCAFFOLDS: The Writer-Editor Collaborative Process
Successful collaborations between writers and editors must involve mutual trust and respect in order to best serve manuscripts and the needs and vision of the presses that publish them. This panel of widely experienced editors, poets, fiction writers, and critics will explore the challenges and rewards of those collaborative processes that guide manuscripts from their initial acceptance, through various stages of revision, and ultimately, to publication.
KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY AZAR NAFISI (one of the more moving and motivating experiences of Erin's life)
Azar Nafisi is best known as the author of the national bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, which spent over 117 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. Her other work includes Anti-Terra: A Critical Study of Vladimir Nabokov’s Novels, the memoir Things I've Been Silent About: Memories of a Prodigal Daughter, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books, and the children’s book BiBi and the Green Voice. Among her numerous honors include the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, a Nonfiction Book of the Year Award from Booksense, the Frederic W. Ness Book Award, the Latifeh Yarsheter Book Award, and the Persian Golden Lioness Award for literature. She has lectured and written extensively in English and Persian on the political implications of literature and culture, as well as the human rights of Iranian women and girls. Nafisi is currently a Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC, where she was a professor of aesthetics, culture, and literature, as well as was Director of The Dialogue Project & Cultural Conversations.
WHAT WRITERS OF COLOR WANT WHITE EDITORS TO KNOW
In 2017, what message does an all-white masthead send to writers of color? Beyond the content of their work, what issues must these writers contend with in publishing? Four writers of color and one white editor explore real and perceived tokenism, the pressure to change a story or voice to fit an editor’s racialized assumptions, the continued erasure of writers of color in the canon and awards systems, and the highs and lows of working with editors in the face of these and other challenges.
OUTSIDE THE UMBRELLA: Poetry and the Vantage Point of the Atypical (featuring Scars: An Anthology contributor Jim Ferris)
What does it mean to write poems from what disability studies scholar Simi Linton called “the vantage point of the atypical?” How do body/mind differences that fall outside the umbrella of normality serve as fonts for work by non-normative poets? These are some of the questions that four noted crip poets brought into a year-long correspondence in prose and poems. The poets share some of that work and discuss ways the differences called “disability” complicate and enrich their lives and work.
SUCH MEAN STORIES: Women Writers Get Gritty (featuring Jill McCorkle, of whom Erin is now a superfan)
Violence, hungry children, booze, sex, drugs, hand-to-mouth living; the hardscrabble life has affected just as many women as white men. But the male writers get far more attention than the females. Who are the women writers of the rough south, grit lit, or blue collar world? Why are their stories marginalized, their graphic details criticized? The diverse group of women writers on this panel aren’t afraid to get dirty, write close to the bone, and tear down literary walls. Time to get mean.
Erin was thrilled to discover Scars: An Anthology for sale at the AWP Bookfair's Disability Lit Consortium table!
The Only World You Get: Arkansas Stories ON SALE NOW!
The Only World You Get: Arkansas Stories is on sale now from Et Alia Press and (if you must!) Amazon, both for $16.95 + Free Shipping.
"This collection confirms what we already knew about Vannatta: that he belongs in the company of Charles Portis and Donald Harington, as one of the truest tale-tellers of The Natural State."
—Gary Craig Powell, Stoning the Devil
2016 Louisiana Book Festival Hosts Two Et Alia Books
More than 200 authors were featured at the 13th Annual Louisiana Book Festival in Baton Rouge on Saturday, October 29, 2016. A whopping 17,451 attended the Festival, enjoying activities throughout Capitol Park including the book fair, author readings and panels hosted in the historic state capitol building, live music, food, a children’s story tent, and so much more.
Two Et Alia Press books—Can Everybody Swim? A Survival Story from Katrina’s Superdome and Scars: An Anthology were featured as part of the Festival.
Can Everybody Swim?
David Johnson mediated a lively discussion of Can Everybody Swim? with Bruce Snow. Following the discussion was a Q&A with lots of hands raised in the packed room, many of whom had first-hand stories of the Hurricane. A busy signing followed in the Barnes & Noble book tent.
Scars: An Anthology
A panel discussion about themed anthologies featured Scars: An Anthology and Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History. Scars was represented by New Orleans contributors Maurice Carlos Ruffin (Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNI) and Emilie Staat (who also mediated the panel) and editor Erin Wood. Long Hidden was represented by New York Times Bestselling author and editor Daniel Jose Older and National Endowment for the Arts Prose Fiction Fellow and contributor Jamey Hatley.
During this dynamic discussion, panelists considered how anthologies are conceived, curated, and funded, what they are and can be, and what the fact of their being means for the subject matter they address.
A signing followed in the Barnes & Noble book tent. (Maurice Carlos Ruffin and Erin Wood are pictured at the signing.)
Of course, no matter one's original purpose for traveling to Louisiana, eating has a way of becoming prioritized. When Erin said she'd never had a grilled oyster, Bruce saw fit to put a stop to it. Below are pictured one of two platters of grilled oysters and Shrimp Bienville shared by Bruce, his wife Erin, and Amy Ashford (brilliant cover designer for Can Everybody Swim? who just so happens to live in Baton Rouge). Laissez les bons temps rouler Louisiane!
The Only World You Get: Arkansas Stories by Dennis Vannatta Slated for Release
Mark your calendars for the November 16 release of THE ONLY WORLD YOU GET: ARKANSAS STORIES by Dennis Vannatta.
Dennis is a recipient of Arkansas' most lucrative and prestigious literary prize, The Porter Prize, given annually to an Arkansas writer who has accomplished a substantial and impressive body of work. This is his sixth published collection of stories.
New Orleans' Times-Picayune Features Can Everybody Swim? on Katrina's 11th Anniversary
On August 30, 2016, Times-Picayune writer Robert Mann says, "On this 11th anniversary of Katrina, let us resolve never to forget the thousands of heroes in the Dome and those trapped at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center who bravely endured and maintained their dignity and humanity in the most inhumane of circumstances."
"Bruce S. Snow, a resident of the Dome that week . . . has published an engrossing memoir of his family's ordeal, Can Everybody Swim? A Survival Story from Katrina's Superdome, (Et Alia Press, $16.95). Snow vividly describes each day in the Dome. It's grim and depressing at times. . . . however, what shines through are those individuals who cared for each other.
Snow's retelling of his stumbling across a double-length cot holding 13 overheated babies, each wearing only diapers, is poignant. "Before them stood a black man in his thirties wearing a do-rag and an oversized, brightly colored Polo shirt," Snow wrote. "He just stood there waving a piece of cardboard from a box that once held MREs. READ MORE.
Kent Walker Artisan Cheese to Host Three Et Alia Authors this Sunday
We are thrilled to be hosted this Sunday, August 28, 2016 @ 4pm by Kent Walker Artisan Cheese as part of their Author! Author! series. This new series at Kent Walker Artisan Cheese features authors with published books, including self-published and chap books. Philip Martin will read from The President Next Door: Poems, Songs and Journalism, Bruce S. Snow will read from Can Everybody Swim? A Survival Story from Katrina's Superdome, and Erin Wood will read from Scars: An Anthology.
Be sure to arrive at 3 for a tour of the cheesery, and receive 10% off your tab. We thank Kent Walker for supporting local writers, musicians, artists, and creators!
The Kent Walker Artisan Cheese Story:
"Great food and drink are my life's passions. I left a successful engineering career to apply that passion towards amateur cheesemaking: cool whip container molds, bricks and metal rods for a press, & aging cheeses in the vegetable crisper with the fridge temp set as high as my roommate would allow me to. While casting about, working jobs at wineries, breweries, and distilleries I fell in love with the production industry. In 2011, I decided to unite my joy for great food & drink, my love of cheesemaking and experience working in production:Kent Walker Artisan Cheese was born. We grew from a small batch maker in a church kitchen to a full fledged production facility and tasting room. It is a true pleasure to make cheese from the delicious raw cow, goat, and sheep milk of Central Arkansas.
At Kent Walker Artisan Cheese, we proudly offer the highest quality cheese possible. We have a strong team of cheesemakers, affineurs, mongers, and volunteers. Every wheel of our handcrafted, natural rind cheese ages to perfection in our walk-in cave. We believe that working with local farmers and keeping animal welfare a top priority creates a better cheese and sustainable, people-first model of business."
Two Et Alia Books to Participate in 2016 Louisiana Book Festival
Et Alia proudly announces that both Can Everybody Swim? A Survival Story from Katrina's Superdome, by Bruce S. Snow, and Scars: An Anthology, edited by Erin Wood, will participate in the Louisiana Book Festival in October.
Festival participants will also include Scars: An Anthology contributors Maurice Carlos Ruffin and Emilie Staat.
Can Everybody Swim? on KATV Channel 7's Midday Arkansas
See author Bruce Snow's interview on KATV Channel 7's Midday Arkansas about his memoir Can Everybody Swim? A Survival Story from Katrina's Superdome. Order your copy from Et Alia today and receive 10% off + Free Shipping with code "KATV."
