[Updated 3/23/22]

Our next book, Ways of Walking, won't quite be ready for the AWP conference in Philadelphia, but we'll be celebrating it anyway, with handouts, a preorder discount code, and a sample booklet. Look for us at the Blue Stoop table (T1108) in the Bookfair exhibit at the Convention Center.

In conjunction with Ways of Walking, and out of compassion for those who can't listen to fellow writers chatter for more than four hours at a time, we're hosting an afternoon of walks outside the convention center, guided by contributors to the book. These will take place on Friday, March 25, between 2:00 and 4:30 p.m. The walks will vary in length and destination, and we promise not to get you lost in the all-too-square layout of downtown Philly. It'll be fun!

The meetup site will be the Blue Stoop table at the Bookfair. The walks are also open to writers not at the conference; to join from outdoors, hang out at the NE corner of Arch St. and Broad St. by the time listed below for your walk. The walk leaders will stop by that corner to check for eager participants.

Here are the planned routes, durations, and starting times (but check in with us at the table for any late changes):

2:00: Market Street East and Independence Mall, 2 hours
2:00: Delaware Riverfront, 2 hours
2:30: Society Hill to Queen Village, 1 hour
3:00: Italian Market, 1 hour
3:30: Rittenhouse Square, 1 hour
4:00: Eraserhood/Ridge Avenue (1/2 hour)

(The originally planned 3:30 walk to Logan Circle has been canceled because of a family emergency.)

​We hope to see a lot of people we know and meet a lot of new writers.

The first two advance reviews have arrived for Ways of Walking:

​“Walking’s pleasures are infinite, and those in Ways of Walking hardly less so. Editor Ann de Forest has assembled an eloquent team of rambling writers who offer readers intriguing discoveries at every turn of the page. The twenty-six essays assembled here contain fresh takes on city streets and foggy mountaintops, haunting riversides and dicey edgelands. Often, the celebrated wonders of walking stand aside to let danger, disability, and discouragement have their say, too. One high point is a self-doubting pilgrimage through library vaults to commune with the climate-controlled notebooks of Henry David Thoreau. In 1851 Thoreau advised himself, ‘Probe the universe in a myriad points.’ That could be the epigraph for this rewarding volume. Whether you take your steps in ten-league boots or bedroom slippers, you will find insight and inspiration a-plenty in these stimulating pages.”
--William Sharpe, Barnard College, author of The Art of Walking: A History in 100 Images (Yale University Press, forthcoming)

“This rich, readerly collection of essays on the multiple possibilities open to us as members of a species constitutively shaped by its ability to walk on two feet is, simply, inspiring. Its writers vividly record the travails and the triumphs of their travels on foot, in ways that force us to reconceptualise our relationship both to the environments we inhabit and to one another. The book is a moving, endlessly stimulating invitation to walk, to think, and to rethink walking.”
--Matthew Beaumont, author of The Walker: On Finding and Losing Yourself in the Modern City

The book will be published in May. To request an advance review copy, use the Contact page.

At long last, we can announce our next book, coming out in May 2022: WAYS OF WALKING, a collection of essays edited by Ann de Forest.

Is walking a subversive act? For the authors of this book, it can be.

Ways of Walking brings together 26 writers who reflect on walks they have taken and what they have discovered along the way. Some walk across forbidden lines, violating laws to seek freedom. Some walk to bear witness to social injustice. Still others engage in a subtler subversion—violating the social norm of rapid, powered transportation to notice what fast travelers miss.

Through walking, these authors become more attuned to the places they move across, more attentive to intricate ecologies and layered histories—and more connected to themselves as well. Their small steps of rebellion lead to unexpected discoveries.

The volume includes writers of national renown such as Tom Zoellner, Ruth Knafo Setton, and Rahul Mehta, as well as contributors in other fields, from photography to music to archaeology.

The editor, Ann de Forest, is a California native who has been living and writing in fairly happy exile in Philadelphia for more than three decades. An expert in the urban landscape and the resonance of place, she is a contributing writer for HIDDEN CITY DAILY and editor of EXTANT MAGAZINE. Her poems, short stories, and essays have appeared in COAL HILL REVIEW, NOCTUA REVIEW, UNBROKEN, HOTEL AMERIKA, THE JOURNAL, PIF, CLEAVER MAGAZINE, and THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF PHILADELPHIA.

Contributors:

Our friends at Toho Publishing have issued a great anthology, The Best Short Stories of Philadelphia 2021. We're especially glad to see it because three of our Editorial Board members have stories in the volume.

Congrats on a fine editing job to Quinn Eli and Matthew Perez.

​#Fiction #ShortStories #Philadelphia

The video of Nathaniel Popkin's appearance in the Hidden Timber Books Small Press Author Reading Series is now online at YouTube.

The program was shared with Jesse DeLong, a poet whose book The Amateur Scientist's Notebook uses a plethora of natural themes. An interesting interplay of authors and genres put together by Christi Craig of Hidden Timber.

We're happy to be a "Marketplace Partner" (odd name, but we'll take it) of the 215 Festival, Philadelphia's own literary fest that's celebrating its 20th anniversary. Check the lineup for a diverse selection of virtual readings on an astounding range of topics, featuring Philly writers and editors both well-known and emerging. There's even a session on literary translation, including our old friend Erik Beranek.
#Literature #YA #WomensFiction #Poetry #WhatToRead

Mountain Journal's review (click on the image) of To Reach the Spring begins with an Editor's Note:

The review continues with passages like this:

Charlie Quimby is a novelist with deep affinity for Western American landscapes, which (as Wallace Stegner warned us long ago) are among the most threatened by human actions. His essay gives an artful and appreciative overview of the book and of the crisis it addresses.

And, by the way, To Reach the Spring just won the Firebird Book Award from Speak Up Talk Radio.

#ClimateCrisis #ClimateChange #ClimateJustice #GlobalWarming

Our previous and forthcoming authors have been busy!

• The anthology The Best Short Stories of Philadelphia 2020, forthcoming from Toho Publishing, includes three members of the Working Writers Group, which runs our press: Ann de Forest, who is editing a book on walking that we'll formally announce soon; Debra Leigh Scott; and Sam Gridley, whose novel we published a few years ago.
• Ann's poem "Ammonites" has just appeared in Cleaver Magazine.
• In a recent blog post, Sam offers a somewhat whimsical explanation of why people should preorder his novella The Bourgeois Anarchist for use as a household weapon.

​Happy spring, everyone!

NATHANIEL POPKIN:
New archived discussions about the climate crisis in connection with Nathaniel's book To Reach the Spring:

• 2/6/21: Interview with Norman B. on Life Elsewhere radio, show 410.
• 2/18/21: Interview on This Climate Podcast from Indiana University's Environmental Resilience Institute and IU Media School. Available on Spotify.​​
• 3/6/21: Virtual discussion with Andri Snær Magnason, one of Iceland's most noted writers, about his forthcoming book about the climate crisis, On Time and Water (trans. Lytton Smith). Part of the Saturday Community Bookfair at the AWP virtual conference; archived on Vimeo.
• 3/14/21: Interview on Wild Connection: The Podcast, focusing on "ecological grief."

​
SAM GRIDLEY:
Sam, the author of our book The Shame of What We Are, has a novella coming out from Finishing Line Press: The Bourgeois Anarchist, now available for preorder.