Fall News from Empty Bowl Press
September 18, 2023
Dear friends,
We hope this finds you well as we slide into cooler fall days in the Northwest. Life continues to be full here at Empty Bowl.
Last week we celebrated the release of Shin Yu Pai’s No Neutral, her second collection from Empty Bowl. Her Seattle book launch takes place the evening of September 28 at Elliot Bay Book Company. Be sure to check out Shin Yu’s podcast series on NPR, Ten Thousand Things. Her interview with Shawn Wong recently received a Golden Crane award. She also received a grant from the Academy of American Poets for her project as Seattle’s Civic Poet. Upcoming events are posted on her website.
We’re happy to announce that the anthology I Sing the Salmon Home, edited by Rena Priest, was the top-selling book of poetry for August at our distributor, Small Press Distribution, surging into first from second place in July. And Tele Aadsen’s What Water Holds held steady in third place for nonfiction for June–July. In other exciting news, Rebekah Anderson’s novel The Grand Promise was selected as a finalist for the Nancy Pearl award! Rebekah will be reading on Oct. 2 at Third Place Books in Ravenna to celebrate being a finalist and maybe the winner!
Tele Aadsen will be reading from What Water Holds at Pelican Bay Books in Anacortes on Sept. 30 at 7 p.m. with poet Tess Gallagher. On Oct. 1 at 4 p.m., Tele will be in conversation with Holly at Village Books in Bellingham. If you’d like a preview, you can read the title essay on Terrain.org. For the past week, Tele has returned to Southeast Alaska, giving readings to full houses in Sitka, Juneau, and Ketchikan. Check her website for other upcoming readings.
We continue to organize readings from I Sing the Salmon Home and just welcomed the salmon home with a reading on Sept. 14 at Finnriver Farm & Cidery in Chimacum. Another reading for I Sing the Salmon Home is being planned for later this fall in Shelton—we’ll keep you posted.
We’ll be at the Cascadia Poetry Festival Oct. 6-8 at the Spring Street Center in Seattle. Holly is giving a reading, participating on a panel, and hosting a workshop by Tess Gallagher. John will be at the Empty Bowl book table. Please come by and say hello.
Several Empty Bowl books and a recent issue of The Madrona Project have garnered attention:
Curve by Kate Reavey: a review by MaryEllen Talley appeared in MER: Mom Egg Review.
I Sing the Salmon Home: a review by contributor Rob Lewis in his blog, The Climate According to Life.
Madrona Project #5, The Universe Is a Forest: a review by Nina Burokas appeared in Raven Chronicles.
No Neutral: a review of No Neutral and Less Desolate, also by Shin Yu Pai, appeared in the Tupelo Quarterly. An interview with Shin Yu was featured in the Port Townsend Leader.
Old Growth: New and Selected Poems by Mike O’Connor: an interview with coeditor Tim McNulty is available on the KPTZ website.
What Water Holds: a review by Nancy Lord appeared in the Anchorage Daily News.
We’ll be releasing two new books in October. A Watershed Runs through You is a posthumous collection of essays by Freeman House, author of Totem Salmon: Life Lessons from Another Species. On October 28, we’ll be celebrating Petrolia, California, where Freeman led the effort to restore salmon runs on the Mattole River.
Rounding out our list is The Rain Sweeps Through, a collection of haiku and drawings by John Brandi, author of numerous books, including The Way to Thorong La, published by Empty Bowl in 2020. We’ll be scheduling readings with John Brandi and will post details on our website.
We’ve selected our titles for 2024 and look forward to sharing them with you in our next newsletter. This fall, we’re implementing a new plan for submissions: Rather than read submissions throughout the year, we’ll have an open submission period from Oct. 15 – Nov. 30. In keeping with our mission, we ask that submissions “explore human communities in wild places,” especially in the Cascadia bioregion. This new submission model will allow us to pursue our mission and offer a balance of genres and voices. Look for more information on this on our website.
Once again, thank you for supporting Empty Bowl, whether that’s by ordering our books, asking your local indie bookstore to order copies, attending readings, posting reviews on Amazon or Good Reads, liking us on Facebook, or simply telling your friends, “Hey, I read a good book and think you’d like it, too…”
Wishing you cozy evenings by the fire with a good book in hand,
Holly & John
PS: If you’re on Facebook, please do check the Empty Bowl FB page—all the news that goes into this newsletter is posted there first! Be the first to know!
Have a question or concern? Email us at editor@emptybowl.org