Danielle Legros Georges, prizes, Pattern-book, book festing, beer gardens
New England Literary News
Dear friends, colleagues, poets, writers, readers, everyone, it’s grey and cool in Cambridge this morning. Smoke from the wildfires is blurring the edges. Out of the city over the weekend, a forest walk in the rain, ferns and squirrels and a rhododendron grove, where it felt like skirting a party, all the rhododendrons circled together, a reunion, fuchsia blooms surrounded by tall trees. I’ve been looking at the flowers. I’ve been looking at the greens. Is this literary news? Not exactly, but I’ve been feeling the press and flattening of the screen and wondering about how to make this feel more personal, for you, for myself. What’s the literary news?
Pattern-book is on its way
Éireann Lorsung launched her new poetry book in the UK last week. It’s called Pattern-book and it’s out from Carcanet, and it’ll be released here in the U.S. at the end of July. I recommend pre-ordering it. Lorsung has a brain that changes your brain, that makes you move differently — more attentively, more generously — through the world.
A new chapbook by Danielle Legros Georges
This week brings the publication of Acts of Resistance to New England Slavery by Africans Themselves in New England, a chapbook by the late poet Danielle Legros Georges, published by Cambridge-based Staircase Books. Here Legros Georges pairs the archive with her singular lyricism, writing of Phillis Wheatley, Crispus Attucks, a 2-year-old enslaved girl named Violet, a 6-year-old formerly enslaved girl named Med. In the title poem, she writes of self-emancipation, “In the court of one’s mind / In the court of one’s body / Through the course of one’s body / Through the course of one body / And the newness of the day.” We hear her voice, we hear the voices of the people she voices, we hear the voices of the dead, and history is urgent and right here with us. She quotes Éric Morales-Franceschini: “black (negro) once meant the color of the ‘night sky’ nigrum…” And she writes, “Is the color of morning before first / Light. The color of cusp / And nerve. The color of mourning / Deferred.”
The book launch takes place Tuesday, June 10 at 6 pm at the Boston Public Library with Jennifer Barber, Toni Bee, Martha Collins, Erica Funkhouser, Gerard Georges, Tatiana Johnson-Boria, Tom Laughlin, Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah, Patrick Sylvain, and Eddy Toussaint Tontongi. For more information, click here.
The David Ferry and Ellen LaForge Poetry Prize winner announced
Poet Laureate of Somerville, Lloyd Schwartz was recently named the winner of the David Ferry and Ellen LaForge Annual Poetry Prize for 2025 given by the Suffolk University English Department to a poet with a strong body of original work as well as a background in translation and facilitation of genres. Judges were drawn to Schwartz’s “mastery of the dramatic monologue,” the “delicacy and ferocity of introspection,” as well as his editorship of a volume of Elizabeth Bishop’s work and his Pulitzer-winning classical music criticism, noting that Ferry was a classical music devotee, and that it isn’t “hard to imagine him calling such brilliantly eloquent interpretations of music and performance a distinct form of translation.” The honorarium is $1000. Previous winners include Greg Delanty, Rosanna Warren, Roger Reeves, and Alan Shapiro.
Lit Crawling and Nantucket Book Festing
Boston Book Fest’s annual Lit Crawl takes place this Thursday, June 12 from 6-9 pm in Union Square in Somerville, an explosion of literary fireworks in varied venues. There’s a Collage Poetry Workshop, a Somerville poets reading, a Sharpie Showdown with comics artists, Global Stellar Stories from a group of international storytellers, a Boston in 100 Words flash fiction reading, a Two Page Tuesday of short-short readings, and a lot more. It's free. Find all the info here.
"To the very chairs and tables small clams will sometimes be found adhering as to the backs of sea turtles,” Melville wrote of Nantucket Island. It’s “no Illinois,” he observed. True. And this weekend brings the Nantucket Book Festival back from June 12-15, with readings and workshops and gatherings. Authors include Meenakshi Ahamed, Dawn Tripp, Shantaw Bloise-Murphy, Imani Perry, Geraldine Brooks, Alice Hoffman, Jennifer Finney Boylan, Ocean Vuong, and many more. The whole schedule is here.
New bookstore, new bookstore beer garden
The line for lobster rolls at Red’s Eats in Wiscasset, Maine can wend half a mile, people standing in the sun (or fog or rain) awaiting the summer sandwich as traffic backs up on the bridge. Up the road from Red’s, a new bookstore opened this spring in a building built in 1797. Fiction: A Novel Bookshop (which, despite its name, also carries non-fiction, poetry, kids’ books, and gifts), was opened by Toni Chappell, a former journalist who recently completed a PhD in writing in England. The shop occupies about 1000 square feet, and Chappell has plans to host readings and book clubs. Fiction is at 49 Water Street in Wiscasset, Maine. For more, click here.
The Guild, a brewery based in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, has plans to open a new beer garden at An Unlikely Story Bookstore & Café, owned by Jeff Kinney, author of the blockbuster Diary of a Wimpy Kid series and his wife Julie, in Plainville, Massachusetts. It’s the first time a Rhode Island brewery has partnered with a bookstore on a permanent basis. There will be outdoor seating, as well as covered areas in repurposed shipping containers, and there are plans for author events and live music.
Booksellers Best: Staff Picks from New England Independent Bookstores
Lily at the Brookline Booksmith recommends Open Throat by Henry Hoke (Picador): "A beautiful, captivating story told from the perspective of a mountain lion living in the hills of Runyon Canyon in Los Angeles. Experimental in its structure, this book presents an illuminating perspective on human nature and what it means to exist, love, and find belonging on the margins of society."
I recently read 2666 by Roberto Bolaño. I’d started it fifteen years ago and set it aside midway through, unable to manage the hundreds of pages on the murders of women. I tried again and it landed and I was so into its wild unwieldiness and its simultaneous total control. This isn’t news, but I’m also curious about what you’ve been reading and what’s landing for you. This can be a conversation. We’re here together.
Thank you for being here. Thank you for reading. This is a pleasure to do, and it is work. If you can afford to pay, please pay.
Raising Hare: A Memoir by Chloe Dalton … I learned a word! Leveret .. and now I can’t stop thinking it…. Or of the hare.. fantastic
Thanks for the news of Danielle Legros Georges's new chapbook (and the great Craig Bailey photo!). She was a beautiful poet and a vital member of this community..... As for Bolaño's "2666," I remember a friend of mine years ago saying he was reading it and "after the 200th woman found mutilated and murdered by the side of the road you start to feel crazy." I'm impressed you could get through it and found it rewarding!.... I just finished reading "Waiting on the Moon: Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters, and Goddesses," by musician (and Boston resident!) Peter Wolf. Highly recommended -- Wolf has met and befriended many writers over the years. . . . I am now undertaking a comparative reading of Edith Wharton's "The Portrait" and Henry James's "The Story of a Masterpiece" -- stories about paintings by two long-time Massachusetts residents -- though both stories are set in New York (harumph!). Question: Who was the better novelist, Wharton or her friend Henry? Discuss.