Violence, longing, magic and loss: Claire Jimenez and Megan Howell in conversation

January 8, 2025January 9, 2025 BooktimistLeave a comment

Claire Jimenez—teacher, archivist, and award-winning author of the short story collection Staten Island Stories (Johns Hopkins Press, 2019) and the novel What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez (Grand Central, 2023)—caught up with Megan Howell earlier this month.

First, Megan, congratulations on your debut collection. I love the strangeness of these stories, and how you defamiliarize violence that is often normalized by the day-to-day grind of the world: the violence between parents and children, teachers and students, between lovers, and between best friends. I want to begin with the title. So many of these stories deal directly with cruelty, and yet the collection is entitled Softie. How did you come to name this book? When did you realize that you were straddling a tension between vulnerability and brutality?

Thanks! Super grateful to see that Softie is finally out in the world.

Cruelty is definitely a huge theme in the collection. Initially, it was called “Make a Home with Sadness,” but the title’s length and abstractness made me fall out of love with it. I wanted something pithy and cute that also conveyed emotional vulnerability. When I think of the word “softie,” I imagine something malleable and sweet like soft-serve ice cream but also a lot of my characters who, because of their softness, struggle not to be consumed by cynicism.Read More »

The author of Indigenous Ecocinema describes new ways to approach Indigenous responses to climate issues

December 12, 2024December 17, 2024 BooktimistLeave a comment

Stephanie Foote’s Salvaging the Anthropocene series is one of our most active and provocative, offering scholarly but accessible books about daily intellectual, artistic, social, and aesthetic responses to global environmental degradation.

Introducing the concepts of d-ecocinema and d-ecocinema criticism, Salma Monani’s Indigenous Ecocinema expands the purview of ecocinema studies and not only brings attention to a thriving Indigenous cinema archive but also argues for a methodological approach that ushers Indigenous intellectual voices front and center in how we theorize this archive. Its case-study focus on Canada, particularly the work emanating from the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto—a nationally and internationally recognized hub in Indigenous cinema networks—provides insights into pan-Indigenous and Nation-specific contexts of Indigenous ecocinema.

This absorbing text is the first book-length exploration foregrounding the environmental dimensions of cinema made by Indigenous peoples, including a particularly fascinating discussion on how Indigenous cinema’s ecological entanglements are a crucial and complementary aspect of its agenda of decolonialism.

What inspired you to explore the intersection of Indigenous cinema and ecological issues in this book?

When I was a PhD student examining the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) controversy that had once again erupted in U.S. politics, I was struck by how little attention was being given to Indigenous voices and relatedly, film expressions, in mainstream media. Despite the fact that there were such vibrant and complex ways in which Indigenous communities were sharing their perspectives onscreen, I also noticed there was little ecocritical scholarship on Indigenous cinema. These early engagements with Indigenous cinema speaking to environmental concerns started my journey into Indigenous cinema’s intersections with ecological issues.Read More »

Selections from This Book is Free and Yours to Keep: Notes from the Appalachian Prison Book Project

December 1, 2024 BooktimistLeave a comment

December brings us three new books. Softie: Stories by Megan Howell and Indigenous Ecocinema: Decolonizing Media Environments by Salma Monani will each be the focus of an upcoming post.

Today’s featured title, This Book Is Free and Yours to Keep: Notes from the Appalachian Prison Book Project presents a collection of letters and artwork by people in prison that highlights the crucial work done by the Appalachian Prison Book Project (APBP), a nonprofit that provides books to incarcerated people in West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Maryland. Through the words of people directly impacted by the criminal punishment system, the collection provides uncommon insight into reading practices and everyday life in prisons and jails while being an inspiration for prison book projects, prison reform, and abolition.

Simultaneously communicating the vital importance of access to books and education, and conveying the power of community, the letters sent to APBP by incarcerated people spark conversations about racism, poverty, and incarceration and shed light on the movement for accountability for state violence. This Book Is Free and Yours to Keep elucidates the violence and neglect perpetuated by carceral systems and offers a way forward based on solidarity and collaboration.

The book has excerpts from letters along with essays and poetry from APBP book clubs and WVU classes in prison; reflections from volunteers; an introduction by project founder Katy Ryan; an afterword by Steven Lazar, a former student, now exonerated; and a preface composed in solitary confinement by Hugh Williams Jr.

“If we could find a book on the sky for me, I would love it very much.” –writer from Tennessee

“I’m sorry I burdened you with my sadness. I’ll be fine. I’ll go watch my friend the spider outside my window. I call him Big Boy because he’s pretty big. He cheers me up.” –Wayne “Gator” Bates

“Then one day the guard opened my cell tray slot and said Underwood I got a book for you. I jumped up and there it was. I said darn they really did answer my request. To make a long boring letter short, I am now sitting in a cell getting ready to take a test dealing with my G.E.D.” –Underwood

Stepping UP to Health Humanities and Narrative Medicine with Connective Tissue Series Editor Renée K. Nicholson.

November 15, 2024November 21, 2024 BooktimistLeave a comment

Last month we launched a new book series, Connective Tissue, dedicated to the health
humanities with a focus on narrative medicine. The series is edited by writer and scholar Renée K. Nicholson, MFA, former director of the Humanities Center at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. Connective Tissue seeks to provide a range of books for clinicians, artists, writers, scholars, and others to more fully engage with health humanities, narrative medicine, and art in medicine. As the field of health humanities programs in narrative medicine grows, so does the need for a literature that includes creative works, critical theoretical work, and, importantly, hybrids of the two as it relates to health, illness, medicine, and related subjects. “I’m excited to see how the Connective Tissue Series will create an intentional venue for work that explores the breadth and depth of the health humanities, art in medicine, and narrative medicine,” says Nicholson.Read More »

AUP #StepUP Blog post – An Interview with WVU Press Director Than Saffel

November 11, 2024November 13, 2024 BooktimistLeave a comment

Congratulations on officially taking the reins of West Virginia University Press! Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I was born in Morgantown, left with my partner Susan in our twenties and early thirties to acquire education and work experience, and returned in 1996 to live on her family farm just outside Morgantown, where we’ve raised our two kids. Like a lot of West Virginians, I’m attached to this place in a way that’s difficult to explain or understand, and seems to transcend reason.

A Booktimist Sneak Peek of Megan Howell’s Softie

November 1, 2024November 13, 2024 BooktimistLeave a comment

Megan Howell’s book Softie: Stories is about a fantastical range of people; a former child-star haunted by a past she can’t remember, an Afro-French girl with an obsession for earlobes, a loner whose only friend is hiding a terrible, otherworldly secret. What each of these stories shares in common are situations that are sometimes fantastical, sometimes commonplace but always strange. From a Corsican vacation-town in its off-season to hospital rooms and a seedy hotel suite in Chicago, experience the everyday come fully untethered from reality.

The following is one of the short stories from the now-available book.Read More »

Fall Roundup 2024

October 21, 2024October 20, 2024 BooktimistLeave a comment

It’s hard to believe it’s the end of October, and even more difficult to believe that North Central West Virginia is now Northern Lights territory–but here we are. The days are getting shorter, and a chill is settling in. Whether you’re relishing the changing leaves on a brisk walk, gathering with friends around a fire, or diving into seasonal baking, this time of year invites reflection and warmth. As we hunker down for the coming cold, we’ve curated a selection of captivating podcasts, insightful interviews, fresh reviews, and a lineup of events to invigorate your autumn.