Yesterday, Michigan Radio featured an interview with me and Fracture contributor Maryann Lesert on their Stateside program. We discussed fracking, the book, and our upcoming events in northern Lower Michigan. Listen here.
Tag Archives: book tour
More Michigan Fracture Events
Here are a couple photos from our April event at Lansing’s Everybody Reads. Sorry about the quality; we did have a professional photographer attend our Creston Wellness Center event, and I hope to share the photos from that soon.
Here also are a few more dates for upcoming Fracture readings in Michigan. As always, they are free and open to the public!
Saturday, August 6 – Traverse City, Michigan
Join us at the Horizon Books for a reading and book signing with contributors Stephanie Mills and Maryann Lesert as well as yours truly.
Details on the Horizon’s event page.
Tuesday, August 9 – Pellston, Michigan
The University of Michigan Biological Station will host a reading and discussion with me as well as contributors Maryann Lesert and Stephanie Mills.
Details on the UMBS event page.
Tuesday, September 20 – Lansing, Michigan
In partnership with Lansing Community College’s Science Department, Schuler Books (Eastwood) hosts the monthly discussion group Cafe Scientifique, an outreach program to promote public interest in science. This September, the group will discuss fracking and Fracture with contributor Maryann Lesert as their honored guest.
Find a list of Cafe Scientifique’s past events here.
There are still more events in the works, and on Thursday, I’m going into the studio with Maryann Lesert to talk to Lester Graham, host of Michigan Radio’s Stateside program. I’ll post those dates and a link to the interview when I have them!
A frequently updated list of past and upcoming readings can be found at the bottom of our page on the publisher’s (newly redesigned!) website. Be sure to follow both the book and the press on Facebook to keep up with the latest news, and tweet at us @icecubepress, @fractureanth, and @brooktrouting.
The Fracture Tour Continues
Photo by Taylor Brorby at our U Wyoming event
Here’s an update on our Michigan Fracture events, all of which are free and open to the public.
There are a couple more in the works—I’ll let you know when we have the details for you!
Tuesday, May 10 – Grand Haven, Michigan
Join us at the Bookman for a reading and book signing with contributors Stephanie Mills and Maryann Lesert as well as yours truly.
Details on the Bookman’s event page.
Tuesday, May 24 – Grand Rapids, Michigan
The Creston Wellness Center will host an evening of music by Sarah Barker and Max Lockwood as well as readings by contributor Maryann Lesert and myself. With just one week left to gather enough signatures to put fracking on Michigan’s 2016 ballot, the Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan will be on site with petitions.
Find details about this event here.
Tuesday, August 9 – Pellston, Michigan
The University of Michigan Biological Station will host a reading and discussion with me as well as contributors Maryann Lesert and Stephanie Mills.
Details on the UMBS event page.
A frequently updated list of past and upcoming readings can be found at the bottom of our page on the publisher’s website.
Fracture on Tour
Since early February, my co-editor, Taylor Brorby, and many of our contributors have been sharing Fracture with audiences across America–from Pennsylvania to Colorado, from Wisconsin and Minnesota to Texas, and all across Ice Cube Press’s home state of Iowa and Taylor’s home state of North Dakota. Though Ice Cube Press is a “Midwest Book Publisher,” fracking and its impacts know no such geographical distinctions.
I’m looking forward to joining the tour in April, traveling throughout my own home state of Michigan and even all the way to Laramie, Wyoming. All events are free and open to the public.
Stay tuned for additional Michigan events (including Harmony Brewing and Creston Wellness Center in Grand Rapids, The Bookman in Grand Haven, and Schuler Books in Lansing) as we finalize dates, but for now, you can plan on the following opportunities:
Tuesday, April 12 – Grand Rapids, Michigan
Grand Rapids Community College‘s School of Arts and Sciences and English Department will host an evening of music by Sarah Barker and readings by contributors Maryann Lesert and Stephanie Mills as well as me. Details on our Facebook event page.
Saturday, April 16 – Laramie, Wyoming
The University of Wyoming Creative Writing Program will present an all-day event devoted to Fracture, including readings, presentations, and book signings with contributors Kathleen Dean Moore, Rick Bass, and Antonia Felix as well as both editors. Find details about this event here.
Saturday, April 23 – Lansing, Michigan
Everybody Reads will host a reading with contributors Maryann Lesert and Stephanie Mills as well as me. I’ll update this post with a link to the event page soon.
Tuesday, August 9 – Pellston, Michigan
The University of Michigan Biological Station will host a reading and discussion with contributors Maryann Lesert and Stephanie Mills as well as me. Details forthcoming on their event page.
A frequently updated list of past and upcoming readings can be found at the bottom of our page on the publisher’s website.
Local Wonders Event
AMES
Sunday, May 3, 2015, at 5:00 pm
Design on Main, 203 Main Street
This weekend is the 2015 Local Wonders Community Potluck sponsored by AgArts. Last year, the attendees voted for two winners of the 2014 Local Wonders Grant, one of which was Prairie Gold: An Anthology of the American Heartland. On Sunday, PG editor Lance Sacknoff will present on all the awesome things the AgArts grant helped us do. Find more details here.
We wrapped up Prairie Gold‘s Midwestern book tour at the biggest literary conference in North America. (NBD.) Here are some photos from our epic reading at Subtext Books, featuring work by Lindsay Tigue, Matthew Fogarty, Sandy Marchetti, Nancy Cook, Sarah Turner, Stephanie Schultz, John Linstrom, Michelle Menting, and Molly Rideout.
Also, since I’m always the one taking the photos, I’m never in them. But Sandy caught a shot of me listening attentively:
And here are a few photos from the book fair, including our author signing–all three editors united again!
AWP 2015
Fun in the Twin Cities: AWP Events
Are you attending AWP 2015 in Minneapolis?
Please stop by the Ice Cube Press booth at the book fair, Exhibit Space 119. Also, consider checking out the following featured events.
Wednesday, April 8
AWP Festival of Language 2015
Brit’s Pub Vault, 1110 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis
The seventh annual celebration of language and literary arts will feature established and emerging writers in three sets of rapid-fire readings with over 60 participants reading for a maximum of five minutes each.
The festival starts at 4:00 and ends at 11:00. I’ll be reading in the 8:30-10:30 set.
My Festival Writer publications
Thursday
Prairie Gold Contributor Signings
Ice Cube Press Exhibit Space 119
Two Prairie Gold contributors, Matthew Fogarty and Sarah Turner, will sign books at the Ice Cube Press booth, Exhibit Space 119.
Catch Fogarty from 12:00-1:30 and Turner from 4:30-6:00.
Prairie Gold Reading and Celebration of Midwestern Writing
Subtext Books, 165 Western Ave N, St. Paul
Readings from contributors to Prairie Gold, a collection of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that delves into the nuances of Midwestern identity. The event starts at 6:30 and ends at 9:00. Here’s the line-up:
- Lindsay Tigue (poetry)
- Matthew Fogarty (fiction)
- Sandy Marchetti (poetry)
- John Linstrom (nonfiction)
- Nancy Cook (poetry)
- Stephanie Schultz (poetry)
- Sarah Turner (nonfiction)
- Michelle Menting (poetry)
- Molly Rideout (fiction)
(H/T to John Linstrom for finding links to everyone’s author pages.)
Friday
Prairie Gold Editor Signings
Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment Exhibit Space 1314
All three Prairie Gold contributors, Lance M. Sacknoff, Xavier Cavazos, and I, Stefanie Brook Trout, will sign books from 10:00-11:00 a.m. at the Flyway/Iowa State MFA program table, Exhibit Space 1314.
More about ISU’s MFA program in Creative Writing & Environment
*
Also, Taylor Brorby and I will be spreading the word throughout the conference:
We are still taking submissions for Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America. The deadline for submissions is June 1.
Read our submission guidelines and our call for visual art.
Readings in Cedar Falls and Iowa City: January 29-30
Cedar Falls
Thursday, January 29, 2015, at 7:00 pm
Hearst Center for the Arts, 304 W Seerley Boulevard
Fellow Prairie Gold editor Lance M. Sacknoff and I will be traveling up to Cedar Falls on Thursday to discuss writing and publishing with the Craft of Fiction students at University of Northern Iowa.
That evening, we will read as part of the Final Thursday Reading Series at the Hearst Center for the Arts, followed by a Q&A and book signing.
For more details, visit the Hearst Center’s website or download their Winter 2015 brochure [PDF].
Iowa City
Friday, January 30, 2015, at 5:00 pm
Englert Theatre, 221 E Washington Street
Fellow Fracture editor Taylor Brorby and I will be joining other artists for Beyond the Anthropocene, an exhibit and opening reception exploring “the illusory boundary between what is ‘natural’ and what is ‘man-made.'” Showcasing the work of three photographers, one musician, and five writers, the exhibit is part of the University of Iowa’s Obermann Humanities Symposium, “Energy Cultures in the Age of the Anthropocene,” March 5-7, 2015.
More details on our January reading here.
Info about the March symposium here.
The Prairie Gold book tour continues with a stop at Prairie Lights!
The reading featured nonfiction by Will Jennings and Meghan Brown, fiction by Barbara Harround, and poetry by Salvatore Marici. An audio archive is available through the University of Iowa Digital Library.
Many thanks to AgArts for the 2014 Local Wonders Grant that helped make this event possible.
Live from Prairie Lights
New Pubs, Upcoming PG Readings, & More
It’s October now. Leaves are changing, the temperature is cooling, my wind chime is getting noisier. At the same time, there have been developments in my personal and professional life. Here are some updates from the latter:
New Pubs
I’m honored to have had not just one, not even two, but three pieces published in the October 2014 issue of Festival Writer. Check out the issue here and then click on my name to view all three of my contributions. These pieces tend to resist easy genre classification. This is how I would describe them:
“Baconer” is a prose poem (with formatting) about factory farming, from the perspective of a pig in a CAFO. Please note that this poem uses plenty of profanity and unpleasant imagery. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read it, but I think it’s important to know what you’re getting into.
“First Beard” is a nonfiction vignette about my dad, and “Performance Review” is micro fiction. They are so short, I better not say anything else about them (Spoilers!) except that I hope you enjoy reading them.
Upcoming Prairie Gold Readings
As mentioned in a previous post, our Midwestern book tour of Prairie Gold: An Anthology of the American Heartland will include two October events: one at the Rozz-Tox in Rock Island, Illinois, (Quad Cites area) on October 9 and one at Prairie Lights in Iowa City on October 16. Details:
Thursday, October 9, 2014 – SPECTRA Reading
8:00 pm – Rozz-Tox – Rock Island, Illinois
Our Quad Cities reading will feature fiction by T.C. Jones and Barbara Harroun as well as poetry by Esteban Colon, Salvatore Marici, and Ryan Collins. Part of the Midwest Writing Center’s SPECTRA Reading Series, the event will also include readings by featured poets Lauren Haldeman and Erin Keane. Check out the Facebook event page for more details.
Thursday, October 16, 2014 – Reading
7:00 pm – Prairie Lights – Iowa City, Iowa
Our Iowa City reading will feature nonfiction by Will Jennings and Meghan Brown, fiction by Barbara Harroun, and poetry by Salvatore Marici. Check out the event page for more details.
Video Debut
Since I switched from teaching English 150/250 at Iowa State University to my current position as a communications research assistant at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture (also at ISU), I have been involved in a lot of cool multimedia projects. My job includes writing news releases and articles, updating the Center’s website, managing our social media, publication design, and video production. That last piece is such new and exciting territory for me, and I’m thrilled to share the final version of “STRIPS the Movie” (not the official title), a 13-minute video on the conservation practice of prairie strips that was four months in the making. It premiered at the 2014 Extension Energy and Environment conference in Ames and was followed by a Q & A with the researchers. Now that the feature documentary is done, we are in the process of using the extra interview footage to make a series of video shorts that will, among other things, help introduce a broader audience to the STRIPS project.
Goodreads
Our Goodreads Giveaway is still going on. Five free copies of Prairie Gold are up for grabs! The contest closes October 31. Details here.
If you already own the book and are on Goodreads, please take a moment to add it to your shelf, which you can do here. It helps us out when, after reading the book, our fans take the time to rate it, review it, and vote for it on relevant lists. (Contributors: Goodreads recommends that authors write a brief note on the inspiration for the piece in lieu of a review.)
Also, as part of having a book out, I’ve converted my personal Goodreads page into an author profile. It’s the same as before but with a few extra features, like the ability to have “fans” in addition to friends. I only have two fans so far! If you are on Goodreads and a fan of my work, please visit my author profile to make it official. (Lance needs more fans too. Here’s his author profile.)
I have lots of other exciting news I’d love to share, but I’m going to keep my beak buttoned for just a little while longer until details are finalized. So that’s all for now. Thanks for reading!
Last week, Lance and I celebrated the release of Prairie Gold with the good people of Ames. Four of our talented contributors (Michelle Donahue, Rachel Lopez, Claire Kruesel, and Meghan Brown) read their work, so many people came out that at one point we were standing room only, delicious refreshments courtesy of a 2014 AgArts Local Wonders grant were enjoyed by all, and our dedicated audience stuck around long after the event ended (9:00 on a Friday night, mind you) to discuss literature. Plus, we sold a bunch of books.
In sum, our first Prairie Gold event was a great success!
The College of Design was wonderful enough to loan us their amazing downtown space for the night. It’s great to be fostering connections between the literary and visual arts. Here’s our event in a news release published by the College of Design: Book Release Party Marks Start of ISU Design on Main Gallery’s Fall Programming Aug. 29.
(Psst! Follow us on Facebook to make sure you don’t miss updates about the rest of the stops on our book tour. Oh, and invite your friends to follow us on Facebook too. We’re so close to 500 likes, we can already taste it. It tastes like love.)
Ames Release Party
Prairie Gold Events
I am pleased to announce three exciting pieces of Prairie Gold news: an upcoming radio interview, our Midwestern book tour, and a Goodreads Giveaway.
Live On the Air
Today, editors Lance M. Sacknoff and Stefanie Brook Trout will discuss Prairie Gold on KRUU 100.1 FM, the Voice of Fairfield. Stefanie will read an excerpt from her essay “Letters After Achilles.” Listen live from 1:00-2:00 pm to catch the Writers’ Voices talk radio show.
Midwestern Book Tour
Prairie Gold: An Anthology of the American Heartland is hitting the road! A 2014 Local Wonders Grant from AgArts (Iowa Chapter) is helping to support a book release party in Ames and several readings in cities throughout Iowa. See the list below for all of the event details we’ve nailed down so far. (Download a news release.)
Friday, August 29, 2014 – Book Release Party & Reading
7:00 pm – Design on Main – Ames, Iowa
- Featuring fiction by Michelle Donahue and Rachel Lopez, nonfiction by Meghan Brown, and poetry by Claire Kruesel
- Publisher Steve Semken and editors Lance M. Sacknoff and Stefanie Brook Trout will give remarks, introduce the readers, and answer questions about the project
- Copies of Prairie Gold will be for sale at a special Ames Release Party discount of 15% off
- Download our Release Party Flier
Thursday, October 9, 2014 – SPECTRA Reading
8:00 pm – Rozz-Tox – Rock Island, Illinois
- Featuring fiction by T.C. Jones and Barbara Harroun and poetry by Esteban Colon, Salvatore Marici, and Ryan Collins
- Publisher Steve Semken and editors Lance M. Sacknoff and Stefanie Brook Trout will attend and can answer questions about the project
- Part of the Midwest Writing Center’s SPECTRA Reading Series, the event will also include readings by Lauren Haldeman, Erin Keane, and one more TBA
Thursday, October 16, 2014 – Reading
7:00 pm – Prairie Lights – Iowa City, Iowa
- Featuring nonfiction by Will Jennings and Meghan Brown, fiction by Barbara Harroun, and poetry by Salvatore Marici
- Publisher Steve Semken and editors Lance M. Sacknoff and Stefanie Brook Trout will give remarks, introduce the readers, and answer questions about the project
Thursday, January 29, 2015 – Final Thursday Reading
7:00 pm – Hearst Center for the Arts – Cedar Falls, Iowa
- Part of the Heart Center’s Final Thursday Reading Series
- More details to come!
Thursday, April 9, 2015 – AWP Reception and Reading
7:00 pm – Subtext Books – St. Paul, Minnesota
- Featuring poetry by Lindsay Tigue, Sandra Marchetti, Nancy Cook, Stephanie Schultz, and Michelle Menting; fiction by Matthew Fogarty and Molly Rideout; and nonfiction by John Linstrom and Sarah Elizabeth Turner.
- Publisher Steve Semken and editors Lance M. Sacknoff and Stefanie Brook Trout will give remarks, introduce the readers, and answer questions about the project
- In addition to the off-site reading, we will also have a table at AWP, so come see us at Booth #119!
We expect to add one more Iowa reading in Des Moines and a few more outside of Iowa, so follow Prairie Gold on Facebook to make sure you don’t miss any additional developments.
Goodreads Giveaway
Prairie Gold is on Goodreads, which means you can now add it to your shelf. Have you already read it? Please take a minute to rate and review the book. Don’t have a copy yet? Enter our Goodreads Giveaway contest by October 31, and you could win one of five copies!
Goodreads Book Giveaway
Prairie Gold
by Lance M. Sacknoff
Giveaway ends October 31, 2014.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
Stefanie Brook Trout 