Mid-fall roundup: Reviews, media attention, and author events

Foreword Reviews has the first published review of Rachel King’s Bratwurst Haven, which is praised as “an endearing composite portrait of a working class community in transition.” This fall, King will read at a mix of in-person and virtual events in Portland, Pittsburgh, Morgantown, Baltimore, Washington (DC), and Raleigh.

Kristine Langley Mahler’s Curing Season is reviewed in Booklist. “Through careful excavation,” it finds, “Mahler manages to create a time machine harking back to the simplicity and complexity of adolescence in 1990s America.” The author—whose fall tour includes events with bookstores in Asheville, Pittsburgh, and Lawrence—appears in Electric Lit and on Friday Live from Nebraska Public Radio. Her book is recommended as “skillful” and “agile” at the Ploughshares blog.

New accolades continue to arrive for Neema Avashia’s Another Appalachia—in Book Riot (“I devoured this beautiful memoir in one day”) and Daily Yonder (“I cannot get enough of Neema Avashia’s collection of essays”). Speaking with the Asheville Mountain Xpress, David Joy praises work by Avashia and others, saying: “I think we’re at a really beautiful moment in literature . . . where we’re finally getting a more complex and fuller understanding of the lives that are lived in this place.” Avashia talks with the Louisville Courier Journal as part of its coverage of the Appalachian Big Ideas Festival.

Charles Dodd White’s A Year without Months lands on the Garden & Gun fall reading list: “Talk about a slim book with a powerful and emotional punch. White wrestles with unfathomable loss, difficult relationships, and the loss of Appalachia, yet somehow finds beauty and truth.” The Rivanna Review is equally supportive, saying: “White is good company, a worthy son of Appalachia.”

Inclusive Teaching continues its celebratory rollout, with authors Kelly Hogan and Viji Sathy appearing in the Chronicle of Higher Education and on the podcast Teaching in Higher Ed.

In other news from our higher education series, authors Joshua Eyler and Susan D. Blum are quoted in a report on the ungrading movement from NPR’s Mindshift. And Derek Bruff, author of Intentional Tech, talks with Inside Higher Ed for a piece about active learning spaces.

The new initiative LIT 16—which includes Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies—is profiled in the Orange County Register. New Orleans Magazine previews Philyaw’s upcoming event at Blue Cypress Books, and Secret Lives is chosen as one of “10 Florida Books We’re Curling Up With This Fall” in Flamingo.

Renée Nicholson’s Fierce and Delicate is named a finalist for the Housatonic Book Award from Western Connecticut State University.

Transportation and the Culture of Climate Change is recommended in Energy Today from the American Energy Society.

And in Los Angeles, the program Freedom Now from KPFK public radio talks with Tess Chakkalakal, coeditor of our new edition of Imperium in Imperio.

Don’t miss fall author events on our calendar, including Mark Powell and Charles Dodd White at the Kentucky Book Festival. And watch for our new catalog, coming October 14!

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